Category Archives: General Health & Nutrition

General Health & Nutrition

The Saatchi Bill: too little, too late?

The Saatchi Bill

The so-called Saatchi Bill passed the House of Lords last week – a ray of hope for cancer patients and pioneers of innovative medicine. After three years of revisions, amendments and debates, it’s ready to face the House of Commons. We can only hope that our MPs know that they hold in their hands a chance for a better life for thousands of British cancer sufferers.

Cancer treatment is a long, painful and sometimes futile road. On top of the agony of their disease, a patient currently faces gruelling months of harsh chemical treatments that weaken their immune system, isolate them from loved ones and ravage their bodies. For elderly patients, it’s often too much. Doctors and carers chirp that a patient’s best hope for recovery is a “positive attitude” – but that’s tough to maintain when your body and your world are falling apart around you.

The cancer treatments currently available are almost all in the same vein, but in laboratories and hospitals all over the world, a rebellion has long been brewing. The Medical Innovation Bill gives better legal protection to doctors who want to try new techniques on patients in desperate need. In a medical world where a patient’s health is often weighed against the risk of failure and legal action, it gives doctors the freedom to “treat outside the box.”

While this is great news for health advocates promoting alternative remedies as well as to patients unable to bear the pain and indignity of current treatments, the reality is that the Saatchi Bill might just be too little, too late. When unfamiliar treatments are combined with timid doctors, the outcome is that only the most hopeless cases are likely to reap any benefits from this bill. Experimental, radical treatments tend to be used as a last resort, on patients who have already been through gruelling rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy with no results.

The bill could give these patients another precious shot at life – however, their damaged state means the likelihood of any kind of successful treatment is extremely low. After disease and medicine alike take a toll on their bodies, they are often too weak to fight on. Those unsuccessful results could mean negative publicity for new and brilliant innovations, and patients in need will have fewer opportunities to take control of their cancer treatment.

We also still have the Cancer Act 1939 to contend with – a rather archaic piece of legislation which hasn’t been entirely repealed by the Saatchi Bill. The Act prohibits advertisements for cancer treatments, including offering advice and regardless of format. How can patients request a new remedy, or doctor’s find the answer to their prayers, when the entire industry is gagged?

Hurdles aside, this is still a great step forward for innovative treatments in the UK. It’s inspiring to see such progress being made despite often draconian EU laws governing alternative remedies. We can only hope that the benefits of this law go not just to ease the passing of critical patients, but to give a second chance to those who still have a hope of recovery.

General Health & Nutrition

Lucuma & Xylitol: Natural sweeteners

How Xylitol and Lucuma can bring the sweetness back into your life.

It’s about 25 years since I was first familiarised with the notion of candida overgrowth syndrome. Sufferers had no choice but to avidly avoid sugar in all its forms, as sugar fed the candida. The only alternative to sugar was artificial sweeteners. They did not aggravate candida directly, but they did contribute indirectly because most naturopaths and natural health practitioners regarded them as extremely damaging to the immune and neurological system. So most people in the natural health field were implacably opposed to them, leaving candida sufferers who happened to like sweet food with no get out of jail card.

Enter Xylitol and Lucuma: Natural Alternatives to Sugar

Xylitol (Xylobrit brand)
Xylitol (Xylobrit brand)

First we’ll talk about Xylitol. The cheaper brands are derived from corn, and the very slightly dearer one we provide is derived from birch trees, which causes less problems for food allergy sufferers.

Technically Xylitol is a ‘sugar’, specifically a ‘sugar alcohol’. However the term ‘sugar alcohol’ is a little misleading in the sense that Xylitol is nothing like sugar.

First of all it will NOT feed candida. Candida cannot metabolise Xylitol. Some commentators have claimed it it not only doesn’t feed candida, it actually has anti fungal / anti-candidal properties. For many people Xylitol is a “miracle” food which makes the misery of candida a lot less miserable.

Secondly, it will not rot your teeth. In fact it protects them because of its anti-microbial action in the mouth, which means it helps prevent plaque. it also turned out that candida could not metabolise it.

Thirdly it does not unbalance blood sugar like regular sugar (actually Xylitol does have some degree of blood sugar raising activity, but has a much lower glycaemic index than sugar). 

Fourthly it contains around 40% less carlories. 

Xylitol looks like sugar, tastes like sugar, has about the same level of sweetness as sugar per teaspoon, and has no unpleasant aftertaste, and can be used in exactly the same way as sugar in baking, and in your tea, coffee and hot chocolates.

So if its natural, where does Xylitol come from?

Xylitol is actually present in small amounts in a lot of fruits, especially stoned fruit such as cherries, plums etc.

What is commercially available Xylitol derived from?

Usually birch or corn. The corn derived xylitol is slightly cheaper, and is usually the one you will find in supermarkets. But it is more likely to cause problems in those cannot tolerate corn easily (65% of the population, according to one of my teachers).

Are there any drawbacks to using Xylitol?

Yes. Firstly, excessive amounts can cause diarrhoea – though not in everyone. Also, in many cases this effect subsides as the body gets used to Xylitol. Secondly a small percentage of people find it bloating, and cannot tolerate it. This is NOT because it feeds candida (it doesn’t). And ironically some people have stated that is has reduced their bloating. Thirdly, and very importantly, Xylitol must NEVER be given to dogs. Like chocolate, Xylitol is toxic to dogs.

In some cases people can tolerate our birch derived Xylitol but cannot tolerate the cheaper corn derived variety. So if you’ve tried another brand before which you couldn’t tolerate it is conceivable that you will be able to tolerate our Xylobrit.

Click here to buy Corn-free, Birch derived Xylitol from The Finchley Clinic Ltd

Price: Was £4.35 Now Only £2.99 for 250g

Lucuma: Another healthy choice for sweetening food.

Lucuma Powder 300g
Lucuma Powder 300g

Lucuma is a fibrous fruit has been cultivated and harvested for thousands of years. It is also known as egg fruit, as the outer layer resembles the color and consistency of cooked egg yolks-a little dry and chalky. The texture and flavor of the fruit inside has been said to resemble a cross between the sweet potato and maple, and is high in beta carotene and other B vitamins. Often referred to as Incan Gold, the dried powder of the lucuma is a perfect way to add a unique sweet flavor to your favorite foods and beverages while maintaining a low glycemic index. Like Xylitol, is is lower in calories than traditional sweeteners, and it will not cause major spikes and crashes of blood sugar to those who consume it.

Price £9.99 for 300g, available by clicking here.

Wishing good health to all our customers.

Mark G. Lester

Director, The Finchley Clinic Ltd

 

General Health & Nutrition

The Finchley Clinic Blog Is Born

Link

I am Mark G. Lester, Director of The Finchley Clinic Ltd, and I would like to thank you for reading this first posting on our new blog. We have been talking about having a blog on the web site for literally about 5 years. Yep, it really has taken that long. We knew it was important in terms of publicising our work. Yet when it came to installing and formatting the relevant software plugins, making the time to write something interesting and relevant, linking it to our main web site, there always seemed to be something more important that needed our attention. It was always next on the list,  for The Finchley Clinic, yet something else kept getting in the way. Anyway, it’s here, and thank you for honouring us by reading it.

Today The Finchley Clinic Focus will be on Naturya Superfoods

The Finchley Clinic's range of Naturya Superfoods.
The Finchley Clinic’s range of Naturya Superfoods.

It’s so hard to know what to write about as there are countless things for me to share, but I thought I’d start today by introducing customers to our new range of Superfoods from Naturya. They are all organic, very reasonably priced, and of top quality. Our favourites would have to include Wheatgrass, Barleygrass, Spirulina and Maca. The first three are all great alkalizers of the body, rich in minerals and chlorophyll, and great for detoxification. Maca is particularly noted for hormonal balancing in both men and women, maintaining a healthy sex drive, and for maintaning endurance and stamina. Try them, and let us know what you think.

https://www.thefinchleyclinic.com/shop/naturya-m-53.html