True to its ridiculous history of attacking anything they didn’t think of first, medical orthodoxy has always viciously impugned any suggestion that electrical healing has validity and it’s been labeled charlatanism for the best part of a century. Now they are having to eat humble pie and admit that claims, all along, had some validity albeit in a rather hit and miss fashion until the advent of modern scientific trials.

We’re now learning to speak the electrical language of the body – and using it to develop treatments for diseases from arthritis to diabetes and possibly even cancer.

It’s no surprise to me, of course, nor should it be to anyone who knows of Robert O. Becker’s classic book The Body Electric. He first wrote vividly about experiments with salamanders, in which correctly applied electrical currents could stimulate the remarkable regrowth of whole limbs.¹ 

I predicted in the first edition of Virtual Medicine that this is the direction healing would be going and introduced the revolutionary Russian SCENAR device, which swept the world as a result. We’ll see more about that device in a subsequent chapter.

Cell migration and multiplication plays a key role in development and healing. Most research in this area, true to form, has been on chemical factors, totally ignoring the energy element (bioelectromagnetism). Now several studies have shown that applying electric fields can affect cell migration and division as well. 

Cells and tissues essentially function as chemical batteries, with positively charged potassium ions and negatively charged chloride ions flowing across membranes. This creates electric field patterns all over the body. When tissue is wounded this disrupts the battery, effectively short-circuiting it. 

Take, for example, a Scottish study, at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, looking into repair of the cornea (in the eye).

In a healthy eye, cells pump positively charged ions into the cornea and push negatively charged ions out, creating an electrical potential of 40 millivolts. But in damaged areas this voltage disappears, setting up an electric field between the damaged area and the surrounding corneal tissue. By enhancing or diminishing this electric field, scientists found they could speed up or slow down the rate of healing.² 

The conclusion: the electric field is the primary driver of the healing process. As one of the researchers stated, it’s a big step forward to realize that fields play an important part in healing. They are just so far behind the pioneers in this! ³ 

Nowhere is the old adage more true than in this domain of bioelectromagnetic fields and healing, that discovery goes through four stages; 

1. It’s quackery and nonsense 

2. There might be something in it 

3. There might be something in it but where’s the proof? 

4. We knew that all along!

A Little History

Electrotherapy has a long history. William Gilbert, the Cambridge mathematician who later read medicine and became Queen Elizabeth’s court physician in 1600, experimented with static electricity.

In 1757 John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote in his diary of prescribing treatment with a specially made electrostatic machine for people “ill of various disorders: some of whom found an immediate, some a gradual cure”.

In 1882 James Wimshurst invented the machine bearing his eponymous name. 

By the end of the 19th century, the work of Faraday and many others had produced a host of convenient ways of generating electricity of various kinds: electrostatic, direct current and low-frequency and high-frequency alternating currents. Each had its advocates and to each was ascribed marvelous healing powers for every conceivable medical situation.

Magnetos proved more convenient to use than the Wimshurst and other electrostatic machines, which tended to be temperamental and intolerant of dust. Catalogues of the General Electric Company in the late 19th century had a number of such devices. Its 1893 catalogue illustrates nine magnetos, ranging from one 20 centimetres long, boxed in pine, to the Phoenix, boxed in mahogany with a dial “to measure strength”. Assorted electrodes “for foot, tooth, and ear, with plated handles” were available for the device.

Crank the handle and it generates a low-voltage alternating current. Instructions inside the lid claim that, when wound at the speed “most agreeable to the patient”, this magneto will treat no fewer than 50 ailments, from weak eyes to spinal and nervous diseases, debility, fits, paralysis and gout.

Another type of device was the induction coil, originally developed to detonate explosive charges. By 1888, GEC was offering induction coil apparatus for medical use, complete with bichromate battery, in a wooden case. By 1890 their range had grown to 10 models, with many variants, and electrodes engineered to treat particular parts of the body, from eye muscles to the spine. 

Early in the 20th century so-called “hydroelectric baths” became fashionable. A wooden or porcelain bath was fitted with plate electrodes. Sometimes medicines were added to the bathwater in the belief that the patient would thereby receive whole-body treatment through the skin, cataphoresis as it was called. Knowing what I know now, all these devices make sense and although they were not subject to modern-style scientific trials, there is little question they had benefit to some, at least equivalent to today’s pharmaceutical drugs.

I was pleasantly surprise in my research to find that the famous Mayfair chemists John Bell and Croydon, just around the corner from my former Harley Street clinic, at one time carried a range of electrotherapy devices. They even had their own workshop, making induction coil machines tailored to what the doctor wanted for his patients in terms of output, portability and price, and the electrodes necessary to deliver the current where it was needed.

Historically, as far back as 1890, the American Electro-Therapeutic Association conducted annual conferences on the therapeutic use of electricity and electrical devices by physicians on ailing patients.

The effect of an electrical current on the body depends on its intensity. At 25 milliamps, the current, if it lasts for about 20 seconds, can stop the heart beating, so they are not inherently safe (the electric chair operates on this principle). But below 10 milliamps, whether direct current from a battery or an alternating current at ordinary mains frequencies (50 to 60 hertz), the current can create a rather pleasing tingle.

Writing in New Scientist, David Fishlock, an avid collector of these early devices, tells us that in the 1920s, a version of the Tesla apparatus (see below), known as Roger’s Vitalator, began to make its appearance in barbers’ shops as a way of treating minor ailments, including bald patches and dandruff. The barber would fit one of a number of glass tubes into an ebonite holder and switch on, whereupon sparks sizzled from the tube to scratch and tickle the pate. The maker recommended it for 127 conditions, including sexual debility, impotence and breast development. That’s barbers for you!⁴ 

Fishlock asks the question: do black boxes emitting electricity or rays have a serious place in medicine? There is no doubt that the early inventions attracted the “snake-oil merchants”. As early as 1882, Silvanus Thompson, a fellow of the Royal Society and president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, warned of the “gross impositions of the quacks and rogues who deal in the so-called magnetic appliances and disgrace alike the science of electricity and medicine while knowing nothing of either”. 

We shouldn’t worry. Don’t forget Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), the greatest scientist of his day, declared that x-rays were a hoax!

To learn about one of the most remarkable modern electronic healing devices available in the modern world (the Avazzia) go here.

[We’ll try and get the old purchase link, with its special discount, in case you want to purchase one]

And for amazing psychological transformations, again due to modern electronic wizardry, go here.

To your good health (and superior wisdom!),Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor

References

1. Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric, Morrow, New York, 1985, pp. 994-102
2. Nature, vol 442, p 457
3. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI:10.1073/ pnas202235299)
4. New Scientist, 1957, 24 December 1994, p.58

Measuring Biological Aging

There is no single dial on the body that reads “You are 47.3 years old, biologically speaking.” Instead, we triangulate. We infer. We listen to multiple systems at once and look for points of convergence.

That said, we can now go far beyond the guesswork of old.

The first thing to understand is that biological age is not one thing. It is a composite signal emerging from many interacting systems. Any attempt to measure it with a single marker is guaranteed to be incomplete. Accuracy comes not from perfection, but from overlap—when different measures, drawn from different layers of biology, begin to tell the same story.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man re-imagined!

One of the most powerful approaches currently in use is epigenetic aging. This is based on DNA methylation patterns—chemical tags that sit on DNA and regulate which genes are turned on or off. These patterns change predictably with biological aging, but crucially, they change faster or slower depending on lifestyle, stress, illness, trauma, and environment.

Epigenetic clocks—such as those developed by Steve Horvath and others—compare an individual’s methylation profile to large population datasets to estimate biological age. When someone’s epigenetic age is higher than their calendar age, it correlates strongly with increased disease risk, frailty, and mortality. When it is lower, it correlates with resilience and longevity.

What makes epigenetic clocks compelling is not that they measure time, but that they measure cellular memory. They capture the imprint of lived experience on gene regulation. This is why they respond to interventions—diet, exercise, stress reduction, sleep, even psychosocial changes. The clock can slow. Sometimes it ticks backward.

Another major axis of measurement involves inflammatory burden. Chronic, low-grade inflammation—often called inflammaging—is one of the strongest drivers of biological aging. Markers such as C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, fibrinogen, and white blood cell ratios reveal whether the immune system is in a state of calm vigilance or chronic activation.

An immune system stuck in alert mode ages tissues faster. It degrades collagen, damages blood vessels, disrupts insulin signaling, and interferes with repair. Elevated inflammatory markers often predict biological age more accurately than calendar age ever could. 

The importance of the immune system is such that over 35 years ago, I wrote: “We live just as long as our immune systems will allow us”.

That came from the observation of AIDS victims, whose immune systems collapsed. They aged frighteningly fast, often dying within months but suddenly looking decades older.

Then there is metabolic age, which quietly governs how efficiently the body turns fuel into life. Measures like fasting insulin, insulin sensitivity (HOMA-IR), triglyceride-to-HDL ratios, HbA1c, lactate thresholds, and resting metabolic flexibility give insight into how “old” the metabolic machinery is behaving.

Cardiovascular measures also serve as remarkably accurate proxies for biological age. Arterial stiffness, pulse wave velocity, blood pressure variability, endothelial function, and heart rate variability reflect the condition of both blood vessels and the autonomic nervous system. A heart that recovers quickly, varies its rhythm fluidly, and responds gracefully to demand is biologically younger than one that plods, stiffens, and overreacts.

Heart rate variability, in particular, is fascinating because it bridges physiology and perception. It reflects vagal tone, emotional regulation, and nervous system flexibility. High variability correlates with youthfulness, resilience, and longevity. Low variability correlates with accelerated aging, chronic stress, and disease risk. The heart, it turns out, is an excellent historian.

There is also functional age, which medicine is slowly rediscovering after decades of obsession with lab values alone. Grip strength, gait speed, balance, reaction time, VO? max, recovery from exertion—these are not cosmetic metrics. They integrate muscle strength, nerve tone, cardiovascular vitality, and metabolic health into real-world performance.

How fast do you get tired? How fast do you recover? How confidently does your body move through space? These questions often predict mortality better than sophisticated imaging.

At the cellular level, markers of repair capacity matter enormously. Telomere length was once hyped as the aging marker, and while it is no longer considered enough on its own, it still tells an important part of the story. Telomeres shorten as cells divide, but their rate of shortening varies dramatically based on stress, inflammation, oxidative load, and lifestyle. Short telomeres are not destiny, but they do signal accumulated strain.

Equally important—but less commonly measured—are markers of mitochondrial health. ATP production efficiency, oxidative stress levels, mitochondrial DNA integrity, and metabolic byproducts reveal how energetically “young” cells are. Aging, at its core, is often an energy problem before it is a structural one.

Cognitive and neurological measures also belong in any serious assessment of biological age. Processing speed, working memory, sensory acuity, sleep architecture, and circadian rhythm robustness all decline with biological aging—but not inevitably with time. Brains, like bodies, age fastest under chronic threat and slowest under curiosity, safety, and engagement.

Here is the key point that often gets missed: no single test gives you biological age. Accuracy emerges from accumulated pattern recognition across systems. When epigenetics, inflammation, metabolism, cardiovascular function, and performance all point in the same direction, you are no longer guessing. You are listening to the body in stereo.

And there is an even deeper layer—one medicine is only beginning to acknowledge. Biological age is inseparable from nervous system state. A body that feels perpetually unsafe (high active stress) ages faster, regardless of diet or supplements. A body allowed to regularly enter deep parasympathetic repair modes slows aging across every measurable domain.

This is why two people with identical lab panels can age differently over time. One heals. One doesn’t. The difference is not compliance—it is coherence.

So how do we accurately measure biological age?

We triangulate it like a constellation. We track trends over time rather than relying on single numbers. We investigate whether the organism is becoming more resilient or more brittle, more adaptable or more reactive, more coherent or more fragmented.

Back to our first metaphor, let’s say calendar age tells you how many laps around the sun you’ve completed. Biological age tells you how intact the vehicle is—and whether it’s learning how to repair itself while still moving!

Identifying reliable biomarkers of aging is a current major goal in geroscience. Things have moved very fast in the last 2 decades!

Testing Biological Age

The most widely validated and scientifically accepted biological age tests are epigenetic clocks. These look at chemical tags on your DNA — especially DNA methylation — that change in very predictable ways as your body ages.

Unlike genetic sequences (which are fixed in your DNA), methylation patterns shift depending on life history: lifestyle, stress, diet, pollution, inflammation, and even social experiences leave detectable scars on your epigenome. By reading these patterns across hundreds to thousands of sites in the genome, algorithms can estimate your “biological age” relative to a population average.

The famous Horvath clock, developed by Dr. Steve Horvath, analyzes over 350 CpG sites (regions of DNA where methyl groups attach) and has a median error of only a few years compared to chronological age — remarkably precise for a biological process.  

Commercial tests like TruDiagnostic’s TruAge and myDNAge are based on this kind of analysis — you send a blood or saliva sample, and they return an estimate of your biological age along with personalized insights. 

Researchers have also developed variations like PhenoAge, GrimAge, and the DunedinPACE clock — each tuned to different aspects of aging (disease risk, mortality prediction, aging pace, etc.). 

Telomere Length Tests. Telomeres are protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that shorten with each cell division. Early aging research popularized telomere length as a proxy for biological age. Today, we know telomere tests are noisy and less predictive than epigenetic clocks — telomeres can vary widely between individuals and even fluctuate with temporary stressors — but they still supply useful context when interpreted alongside other biomarkers. 

Companies such as Life Length specialize in telomere diagnostic services, often combining telomere length with telomerase activity (the enzyme that rebuilds telomeres) for a richer picture. 

Blood-Based Biomarker Age and Machine Learning Models. Some commercial and research programs don’t rely solely on DNA at all. Instead, they analyze panels of blood biomarkers and use machine learning (AI) to derive an age estimate based on how your physiology compares to large datasets.

These can include patterns across:

• Inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein

• Metabolic markers like glucose and triglycerides

• Hormones, cytokines, and more

Such tests — sometimes called proteomic or deep aging clocks — can use hundreds of circulating proteins and cell counts to estimate biological age and even predict disease risk before symptoms appear. 

Composite Age Scores with Frailty and Functional Metrics

Some approaches combine clinical measurements (like blood pressure, glucose regulation, body composition) with functional performance (strength, gait speed, cognitive tests) into composite indices that estimate biological age.

This is less molecular but very practical for assessing overall physiological reserve and real-world function. 

Emerging and Multimodal Tests

Cutting-edge methods blend multiple data layers — epigenetics + proteomics + metabolomics + phenotypic signs — often refined by with AI models to give an age estimation beyond what any single marker can offer. 

None of these tests claim to measure a literal “number of years lived,” because that wouldn’t be biological. Instead, they measure patterns that correlate with:

• Cellular maintenance capacity

• Immune function

• Metabolic resilience

• Inflammatory burden

• Epigenetic change rates

• Disease susceptibility trajectories

In short, they measure how your body is functioning relative to its chronological peers, which is far more meaningful for health outcomes than the number of candles on your birthday cake.

Accuracy and Real World Use

Epigenetic clocks currently represent the most scientifically robust measure of biological age available — but it’s not perfect. Different clocks can give slightly different ages, and results are influenced by which tissues are sampled (blood vs saliva, etc.), the model used, and technical variability in lab processes (no two lab give identical results). 

Many experts caution that these tests are predictive tools, not definitive statements of destiny. But compared to traditional age markers like telomeres, they are far more predictive of disease risk and mortality patterns. 

Poetically speaking, what all these tests do is read the echo of your life in your biology. They read the impact left by nutrition, trauma, adaptation, stress management, repair capacity, and systemic resilience. They capture your physiological biography rather than your chronological biography.

All of them, in their own way, try to answer one question: Is your biology older, younger, or on track — and what does that mean for your future health?

To Your Good Health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

Calendar age is the number stamped on your passport and defined by how many times the earth has gone round the sun since you were born. It’s what we normally mean when we refer to a person’s age.

But in terms of health, and especially longevity, we need to look at things slightly differently. Here we are concerned with how vibrant your organs and tissues are and how long they will last, starting from NOW! We call this “biological age.”

Say a person is sixty years old (calendar age) but has lived a healthy life, done all the right things and not “burned the candle at both ends”. Such a person’s body might be in roughly the same biological shape as the average fifty year-old. That would mean he or she has a biological “age” of fifty and is 10 years in credit for a long and healthy life. This individual might expect to live well past 80, maybe even 90 – 95 or more.

But another kind of sixty year-old individual who smokes, eats badly and doesn’t take nearly enough exercize might be in similar condition to someone healthy but 20 years older. Chances are her or she will die younger than the first individual, maybe a lot younger. Maybe very soon, in fact!

See it’s easy, really. 

Your calendar age is exact: you have a certificate, given when you were born, that tells us exactly how “old” you are. But how old you body “feels” and what sort of dynamic shape it’s in—actually more important—is not nearly so easy to establish.

It depends on what is happening within: are your organs doing the job as well a they should? Is some of you deteriorating, while other parts are not? See, that is important because if you are healthy in every way EXCEPT your heart is stressed, swollen and beating irregularly at times, then you might die quite soon, while MOST of the rest of you is in good shape.

Maybe everything is OK in the heart and blood vessels department but you start to lose your mental skills and grow a bit dotty over the years. That happens, but clearly the person is defined by the onset of dementia, not by heart health! He or she will be “old” before their time.

[It’s a tricky example because dementia is unlikely without considerable deterioration of the circulatory system, even if it’s undetected for a time. The blood brings nutrients and carries away toxins, so any under-performance of the circulatory system (properly called the cardio-vascular system) will have widespread aging consequences, but you get the idea].

Biological aging is intimate, cellular, and deeply personal. It unfolds not by birthdays but by biochemical conversations happening in your tissues, your mitochondria, your epigenome, your immune system, and—if we’re being honest—your nervous system’s relationship with meaning, stress, safety, and love.

To confuse the two is one of modern culture’s great conceptual errors.

Calendar age measures time elapsed since birth. That’s it. It does not care whether you slept, loved, healed, raged, starved, meditated, or laughed yourself senseless. It ticks forward with the same indifference whether you are flourishing or unraveling. Two people born on the same day share a calendar age but may inhabit bodies that differ by decades in functional capacity, resilience, inflammation, cognitive clarity, and regenerative potential.

Biological age, by contrast, asks a far more interesting question: How old is your body behaving?

It is an emergent property, not a single number. It arises from the cumulative state of cellular repair, metabolic flexibility, immune competence, hormonal signaling, mitochondrial efficiency, epigenetic regulation, and nervous system tone. It is shaped not just by genetics, but by environment, nutrition, trauma, beliefs, relationships, purpose, sleep, movement, toxins, and the stories the body has been forced to tell itself in order to survive.

Calendar age is destiny only if you believe in clocks more than cells.

At the biological level, aging is damage accumulating faster than repair. When repair keeps pace, aging slows, stalls, or even partially reverses. Yes, that is possible.

When damage overwhelms repair, biological aging accelerates—sometimes dramatically. This is why a person can “age” ten biological years in five calendar years under chronic stress, illness, or grief, and why another can appear to grow younger across a decade of conscious living.

See, cells do not own calendars. They respond to signals.

One of the most profound discoveries in modern biology is that aging is plastic. Not infinitely so, perhaps—but far more malleable than once believed. Telomeres shorten, yes, but their rate of shortening varies wildly. DNA accumulates mutations, but repair pathways can be upregulated or suppressed. Proteins misfold (which is bad), but chaperone systems can be strengthened. Mitochondria decline, but they also biogenically rebound under the right conditions. Epigenetic markers drift, but they can be re-patterned.

Biological age is not fixed at birth. It is negotiated daily.

Calendar age moves in a straight line. Biological age zigzags, stalls, accelerates, decelerates, and occasionally moonwalks backward when conditions allow. At 50 calendar years, one person may have the inflammatory profile, muscle mass, insulin sensitivity, and cognitive speed of a 35-year-old, while another carries the metabolic and immune burden of 70.

This divergence is not cosmetic. It predicts disease risk, recovery capacity, and mortality far more accurately than birthdate ever could.

What we call “aging” in everyday language is usually not aging at all—it is accumulated dysregulation. Systems falling out of coherence. Communication breakdowns between cells. Chronic low-grade inflammation smoldering like an unattended fire. Hormonal rhythms flattening. Repair cycles shortening. Autophagy (removal of dead cells and debris) slowing. Sleep architecture fragmenting. The nervous system remaining stuck in vigilance long after the danger has passed.

None of this is required by time itself.

Calendar age has no memory. Biological age remembers everything.

It remembers famine and abundance. It remembers safety and terror. It remembers loneliness, overwork, grief, unresolved shock. It remembers whether the organism felt supported or hunted by life. It remembers whether the body was treated as an ally or a machine to be driven until parts failed.

This is why two seventy-year-olds can walk into a room and feel like different species.

One carries stiffness, brittleness, and caution in every movement. The other carries fluidity, curiosity, and strength. One’s immune system is reactive and exhausted; the other’s is responsive and calm. One’s cells whisper inflammation; the other’s murmur repair. Calendar age cannot explain this. Biology can.

Modern medicine historically conflated age with inevitability. Decline was treated as natural rather than conditional. Wrinkles, sarcopenia, cognitive slowing, insulin resistance, osteopenia, immune senescence—these were framed as the unavoidable tax of time. “You’re growing old, what do you expect?”

But what we are now discovering is that many of these phenomena correlate far more strongly with biological age than with calendar age. Rather than the phenomenon of clocks ticking down, the real emphasis is systems wearing out under load.

There is also a crucial distinction between appearance and biology. Some people look young but are biologically old—propped up cosmetically while inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, and immune exhaustion quietly advance. Others look weathered but function with remarkable resilience. The grizzly old goat type of countenance. Skin is a visible organ, but it is not the whole story. Biological age lives in blood markers, tissue elasticity, mitochondrial output, cognitive flexibility, and recovery speed.

The Search For Markers Of Aging

The emerging science of aging biomarkers—epigenetic clocks, glycation levels, inflammatory indices, immune cell ratios—exists precisely because calendar age is such a blunt instrument. These tools attempt to quantify biological age, not because time matters less, but because time alone explains so little.

And here is where things get quietly radical.

If biological age is responsive to signals, then perception matters. Meaning matters. Belief matters. A nervous system that perceives life as hostile and difficult ages faster than one that perceives life as joyous and workable. A body trapped in perpetual defense spends its resources on survival, not regeneration. Over time, that trade-off becomes visible as “aging.”

The immune system, endocrine system, and nervous system are in constant conversation. Fear ages. Safety heals. Purpose stabilizes. Joy lubricates repair. Loneliness corrodes at a cellular level. Chronic resentment is not just an emotion; it is a hormonal climate.

Put another way, calendar age does not care whether your life makes sense or not. Biological age very much does care!

Perhaps the most important implication of this distinction is ethical. When society treats calendar age as the primary metric of vitality, it enforces decline narratives prematurely. People are told they are “too old” to heal, adapt, learn, love, desire, or change. Biology does not agree. Cells are opportunistic. Give them the right signals and they respond—often astonishingly late into life.

We are not aging because we are getting older. We are aging because our systems are losing coherence.

Today that coherence can be restored to degrees once thought impossible.

This is not talking about immortality. It means flexibility. It means that aging is not a straight slide into the pit (entropy), but a dynamic negotiation between damage and repair, stress and recovery, meaning and exhaustion.

In the end, the difference between the two is the difference between counting years and telling a story. Calendar age is like a tax, a tally. Biological age is a narrative story written in cells—edited daily, revised constantly, responsive to how you live, what you eat, how you breathe, how you move, how you love, and whether your nervous system believes it is allowed to rest.

To Your Good Health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

Influenza-like illness (ILI), on the other hand, refers to a syndrome characterized by symptoms similar to those of influenza, such as fever, cough, and sore throat, but which may be caused by other pathogens. 

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that since 2010, influenza has resulted in millions of illnesses, hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations, and tens of thousands of deaths each year. 

Be alert: these are “estimates”  as it says, not based on facts or figures. It’s a game. If you are going to publish guesses, you can paint any scary scenario you like. Alert individuals would also note that flu statistics were suddenly not being collected or published in 2020 – 2022. They wanted to artificially boost the COVID deaths and so reported all flu as SARS-CoV-2 and suddenly there was “no flu”!

According to orthodox doctors, vaccination remains the primary preventive measure against influenza; however, they admit that challenges persist regarding its effectiveness and public acceptance.?

That’s because, contrary to all their propaganda, vaccination is very little use. Some years its “effectiveness” (questionable) is as low as 40%.

Couple the false claims with the fact they totally ignore natural preventatives, which can be formidable and even try to demonize them. Vaccination is NOT the only viable preventative. More of that later.

Background

Influenza viruses are a family, categorized into types A, B, C, and D, with types A and B responsible for the seasonal epidemics observed annually. Type A viruses are further divided into subtypes based on two proteins on their surface: hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). So, for example, H5N1, which is bird flu.

The big problem with flu viruses is that they mutate constantly. What is prevalent at the start of the winter season may be gone by Christmas and a new strain emerges. So immunity cannot last very long.

And that’s the problem for flu vaccines: by the time they come to the market they are out of date and worthless. Only a steady symphony of false boasts (marketing lies) and credulous doctor enthusiasm keeps the myth going from year to year.

“Must get your shot this year,” is the constant chime. “Get your FREE flu shot here,” say the placards outside the pharmacy.

No doctor worth his degree would ever say “Don’t bother with the flu vaccine this year; it’s the wrong formulation.” It might be true but he or she would face heavy censure.

So annual vaccination remains the primary strategy for preventing influenza and its complications. To protect Big Pharma profits they always claim that even when the vaccine and circulating viruses are not closely matched, vaccination can still reduce the severity of illness and prevent hospitalizations and deaths.

But there is another failing: since flu vaccines are designed to protect against specific influenza viruses, they do not prevent illnesses caused by other pathogens that present with similar symptoms. This limitation means that even vaccinated individuals can experience ILI due to non-influenza viruses.

Historical events have also influenced public perception of flu vaccines. The 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign in the United States, for example, was associated with an increased incidence of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (a kind of paralysis), leading to heightened public concern about vaccine safety. However, the official line is that subsequent studies (read: hasty damage limitation) have shown that the risk of GBS following flu vaccination is very low, and the benefits of vaccination in preventing influenza complications outweigh this risk.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

According to my old pal from the UK, Dr. Damien Downing, a major review appeared in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases¹, in October (principal author Prof. Michael Osterholm, a respected researcher into infectious diseases). The paper, which found only 31 studies worthy of inclusion out of a massive 5,700 screened, concluded that there was only good evidence for moderate flu vaccine efficacy in healthy adults, and no real evidence of protection in those over 65 years, or for that matter in children. Of course it is the elderly, and particularly the frail elderly, that doctors are more concerned about – and in whom 90% of flu cases occur – and there was no evidence that flu vaccine prevents flu infection in this group.

Put another way, after nearly 6,000 studies of all sorts, there is no good evidence that flu vaccine prevents flu in its main target population.

The pooled effect in those healthy adults, aged 18 to 65, is reported as 57%, which means the vaccine roughly halves your chances of getting flu. 

BUT: what is well known about placebo effects can account for most of that 57% effect. If you know you’ve had a shot for the flu you think you’re invincible. But since the chance of getting flu in that age group was less than 3% to begin with, that’s really only about a 1.5 percent reduction. 

Then of course, this all happens at a price. Whatever you may have heard, there is no such thing as a medication without the risk of side-effects. In vaccines that risk can also come from the adjuvants. A vaccine is a small dose of an organism plus adjuvants – chemicals that are irritants to the immune system and trigger it to react to the organism part. Without adjuvants vaccines generally won’t work. Popular adjuvants include the antibiotic gentamicin (too much of which can make you deaf), aluminum compounds (which probably contribute to Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases)², and the mercury antiseptic, thiomersal/thimerosal (long known to be toxic and recently suspected in autism) – after all, they have to be toxic to work as adjuvants. Fluarix, one of the main brands of flu vaccine in the USA and UK, is stated by the manufacturers to contain both gentamicin and thimerosal.

We also used to think that flu vaccine prevented deaths from flu to a significant extent, even if it didn’t prevent overt infection – until we realized there was a major artifact at work. This is known as the healthy vaccine recipient effect, and the clue is in the name; a frail elderly person is much less likely to get down to their GP to have the vaccine than is a fit elderly person, who by the way is more likely to eat and live well, take vitamins and so on, and so has better resistance to viruses anyway.

What Osterholm and colleagues concluded, citing a couple of Californian studies, is that flu vaccine reduced all-cause mortality in those over 65 by a mere 4.6%. Is that worth the risk of adverse effects? That’s the choice you have to make but now you can make it knowing these facts.

Tamiflu

What about Tamiflu (oseltamivir), is that any good? It’s always being touted “officially”. They claim it reduces the duration of flu symptoms by 1 to 1½ days but it can give you other unpleasant symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting, and serious brain-fog (“I couldn’t think past a comma”), even according to the official website.³ 

But the reality is worse: basically, the whole planet is starting to become resistant to it.⁴  Why? Well Tamiflu is excreted largely unchanged in the urine of patients, and is barely affected by sewage treatment. So the active drug enters the waterways, as was shown during a flu outbreak in Japan, where ducks, the natural reservoir for the virus, can pick it up. And when this happens, the virus can probably (which means that so far it has happened in a lab experiment) develop resistance to Tamiflu.

So Tamiflu, which governments hand out so readily is rapidly becoming obsolete, because of resistance. This is just the same situation as overuse of antibiotics leading to seriously resistant hospital bugs like MRSA. But that took decades. Tamiflu has gone from, well maybe (I’d never take it), to it’s no longer any use in lightning fast time.

Save your money

As Dr. Damien, retorts: “It shows that we live on a small planet – and there’s nowhere left to hide our waste.”⁵ 

What’s Better?

Well frankly, anything that’s natural, overwhelmingly safe and yet effective is to be referred to synthetic, patented drugs with side effects of any kind.

Good ways to beat flu (and ILI) include:

Vitamin D. Take 20,000 IU to 50,000 IU, just for 3-4 days. It’s very cheap and harmless at such low intake. Add to that:

Vitamin C. Top up with about 20 – 25 grams but with a caution. You need to sip it constantly during the day. So much all at once would results in stomach pains and diarrhea and would not benefit blood levels.

Hydrogen peroxide. Get a nebulizer, 3% food grade hydrogen peroxide, and breathe in the mist, 3 to 5 times daily. If you can’t afford a nebulizer, then dilute the hydrogen peroxide to 1% (2 parts water to 1 part of the store-bought strength) and GARGLE (don’t swallow!) It’s almost as good, in fact 100% effective at preventing COVID in a busy hospital situation.⁶ 

Antibiotics are worthless against flu and viruses. But if the coughing and sneezing persists to the point where you have yellow-greenish sputum or snot, then might be a time to ask for antibiotics. That’s because colored mucus or slime like that means that opportunistic bacteria have invaded.

Final Tips.

I say this most winters: DO NOT BLOW YOUR NOSE. Increased pressure in the nasal passages caused when you blow your nose will send infected snot sideways into your sinuses and the resulting sinusitis could take days (even weeks) to clear.

Instead SNIFF. That pulls the muck backwards and you can swallow it (for convenience) or spit it out (better for you).

Recovery

A final tip from the masters of holistic science (which includes me) is that sneezing and cough are DETOX mechanisms, to expel unwanted pathogens. So if you seem to be recovering and then, suddenly, your nose starts streaming or sneezing ramps up and gets nasty, just remember that is a good thing! It’s the excretion phase! Wipe your nose a lot; just don’t blow it.

The ultimate principle, for those who are curious, is that healing takes place from the inside out!

Stay well (it’s simpler)!
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor

References:

1. PMID: 22032844, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=22032844
2. PMID: 21568886, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=21568886
3. http://www.tamiflu.com/hcp/influenza-treatment.aspx
4. http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:453789
5. Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, January 14, 2012. Flu Vaccine: No Good Evidence, Damien Downing, M.D.
6. Amoah GB, Quakyi IA, Sagoe KW, et al. (2021) Re: Oral antiseptics against coronavirus: in-vitro and clinical evidence. J Hosp Infect. 118:108-109. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34487774

A few radicals and big names in the public space believe there is. Russell Blaylock comes to mind; Joe Mercola; Ryan Cole and William Makis. What exactly is meant by “turbo-cancers”? That’s quite a large part of the problem. There is no real definition and so no consensus. It’s more the sort of label that gets started by so-called influencers on the internet. They have no medical training and use such catchy terms to make a point, not a fact.

But generally what is meant by turbo is fast-growing cancers that are unusually aggressive and which tend, for some reason, to strike younger people.

This possibility is generally compounded by the suspicion/belief that a sudden rise in extra-deadly cancers has been caused by the mRNA vaccines developed for COVID. It’s plausible, certainly. mRNA vaccines have been a worldwide experiment in manipulating human genetic material, without any foreknowledge whatever of likely consequences (and seemingly no concern whatever, in the rush for profits, about possible unpleasant or deadly consequences).

Turbo cancer is now definitely a term linked with COVID vaccines. And sources are lumping the two together as one causing the other. You may have read widespread speculation that recent cancers in the British Royal family (viz. King Charles and Catherine, Princess of Wales) were brought on by their COVID vaccination.

Of course, once again, it’s plausible. But not proven.

Putting the pieces of the puzzle together has proved very difficult, since Big Pharma has been gaslighting us all, lying and obscuring poor outcomes. “There’s no link,” they scream, defensively. “Turbo cancer” is not real. “COVID-19 vaccines don’t cause cancer.”¹

How can they possibly know? It will take many years, possibly a decade or more, to establish causality. Even the layman knows that.

Any denial at this stage is just flim-flam from Pharma toadies. 

Dr. Paul Marik of high-dose-vitamin-C-saves-lives fame thinks there is definitely an issue. I quote:

“The incidence of cancers has increased exponentially worldwide since the universal COVID-19 vaccination program began at the end of 2020. These cancers tend to present at an advanced stage, progress rapidly, and occur in younger patients. Additionally, some patients previously in remission have been reported to develop uncontrolled cancer relapses shortly after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination (usually a booster). The temporal association between these cancers and COVID-19 vaccination is undeniable. These observations have given rise to the term “turbo-cancers.” 

“In addition, we propose that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein directly interferes with the fundamental pathways causing carcinogenesis, namely metabolic reprogramming, cancer stem cell propagation, apoptosis resistance, metastatic potential, and altered immune surveillance.”²

Trouble is, a person of scientific bent like myself, wants to see charts and I had a great deal of trouble finding the evidence of this recent “exponential” rise. I spent an hour combing the net and had ChatGPT looking too, for actual charts showing the supposed increase.

Rather what becomes obvious is that cancer incidence was beginning to soar long before the COVID vaccine was rolled out. For instance, a JAMA article published in 2023 but looking at the period 2010 – 2019 was already referring to the incidence rates of early-onset cancers (cancers under 50) increasing “substantially” over the study period. Gastrointestinal cancers had the fastest-growing incidence rates among all early-onset cancers.³

The best chart I could find was for the period up to 2018, where it is clear that the rise in cancers affecting the young was well under way by 2020.

But it’s nowhere near “exponential (steep). According to a publication by the American Cancer Society, the incidence rate among non-Alaskan younger people has increased by about 1% per year since the mid-2000s.⁴

What’s Really Going On

I think there is another explanation of the recent changes in cancer incidence and mortality. It’s due to the COVID “pandemic” but not necessarily anything to do with the mRNA vaccine.

At the height of pandemic hysteria in 2020 – 2021, almost all hospitals and health facilities ground to a halt. Cases were not being seen routinely, no screenings, far fewer treatments, no follow ups, just pandemonium on the wards, caused by the gross mismanagement of the situation.

People were afraid to go to hospital and did not come forward for diagnosis or treatment of a wide variety of conditions, including cancer.

As a result, cancer that should have been diagnosed during the pandemic would now be diagnosed later, and likely at a more advanced stage. This backlog could be expected to lead to an overall higher mortality rate from cancer since more advanced cancers are also harder to treat. They would seem extra-aggressive.

There is a rapidly growing corpus of data that gives weight to this point of view:

National Cancer Institute / U.S. data — delayed diagnoses in 2020

A 2024 U.S. study found that during 2020 the number of new cancer diagnoses dropped sharply — presumably as I said because people skipped or couldn’t access screening and diagnostic care.

The study notes that early-stage diagnoses (the easier ones to catch early) were especially reduced, resulting in fewer “early-catch” cancers.5

Because early detection is tightly linked to better outcomes, this underdiagnosis could lead to a later surge of more advanced cancers and worse prognoses.6

Thing is, this wasn’t just happening in the US or UK. It was a global phenomenon. A 2022 review covering 33 publications found that worldwide cancer-screening rates dropped sharply during COVID — across cancers, across all demographics. Cancer screening was suspended for at least 30 days in 13 countries (in some cases a lot more than 30 days). Many screening types were suspended or postponed, sometimes for months.7

This caused a backlog of “missed” screenings and diagnostics that — once services resumed — would surface as a wave of later-stage diagnoses.

And that seems to have been exactly what happened. I’m no apologist for the COVID mRNA experiment, as you know. But we need to keep our feet firmly on the ground. Numerous authors/influencers are reporting “turbo cancers” but I can find little evidence, at this stage, for such a concept. Instead, I find evidence for a couple years of strangled cancer screening and treatments, leading to missed diagnoses and lost treatments opportunities, in turn leading to a later outburst of more advanced (ie. more aggressive) cancers once everyone got back to normal work.

We won’t know the truth for a little time yet. Meantime I reaffirm the need to search for real causes. Crappy diets, toxic burdens, psychological stresses and the burgeoning tendency to use dangerous drugs as a “solution” to all of nature’s ills are where my money lies. These are the important current dangers. Let’s not get distracted by the Plandemic. That’s over and we are now back in the real world!

Stay healthy, enjoy the rewards of good health.

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. https://scienceupfirst.com/covid-19/turbo-cancer-is-not-real-covid-19-vaccines-dont-cause-cancer/
2. Paul Marik and Justus Hope. COVID-19 mRNA-Induced “Turbo Cancers”. J Indep Med. 2025. Vol. 1(3):185-194. DOI: 10.71189/JIM/2025/V01N03A02
3. JAMA Netw Open. Published Online: August 16, 2023. 2023;6;(8):e2328171. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.28171
4. https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cancer-facts-and-statistics/annual-cancer-facts-and-figures/2024/2024-cancer-facts-and-figures-acs.pdf
5. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/2815435
6. https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-releases/2024/covid-pandemic-impact-on-new-cancer-diagnoses
7. Impact of COVID-19 on cancer screening: a global perspective. Curr Opin Support Palliat Care. 2022 Sep 1;16(3):102-109. doi: 10.1097/SPC.0000000000000602. Epub 2022 Jul 18. PMID: 35862881; PMCID: PMC9451605.

There is one situation where hospitalization must be considered and that is giving birth. We have lost far too many young potential mums to avoidable disasters that can arise and arise suddenly at the point of birth. They were not close enough to help and didn’t survive.

And that’s the problem in a nutshell. Quite a lot can go wrong, giving birth. Some of it is just awkward but some happenings are instantly life threatening. The most deadly is hemorrhage. It can be sudden and torrential, killing the mother-to-be unless she gets an IMMEDIATE transfusion.

I know most of you are in the elders age group and will never see pregnancy again. But you have daughters and granddaughters. This understanding needs to be spread widely, not as fear but as a sensible, risk-related position.

It’s a little-known fact that pregnancy-related mortality in the US has been rising in recent years

Look, some of this is historic. You need to know just how dangerous giving birth is. In the old days up to one in ten women would die as a result of giving birth (I have seen some quotes as high as one in three but I doubt that was correct for women in what we now call developed countries).

Notwithstanding, birthing was a time of great fear for women. And rightly so. During the birth and the following few weeks a woman faced around six times her normal risk of death. 

Marble relief from Ostia Antica showing a childbirth scene.

But it’s worse. Not only was there a danger of death DUE to the pregnancy but also a major risk from CONCOMITANT infection… puerperal sepsis or so-called childbirth fever, which carried up to 50% mortality WELL INTO THE 20TH CENTURY. 

I know you are all experts now, because of “Call The Midwife”! But in the past it WAS grim. I witnessed the start of the changes as a med student, when the “Flying Squad” had just come into being. This refers to a specialized, rapid-response obstetric medical team (midwives, obstetricians, anesthetists), that traveled quickly to home or rural births with emergency equipment (blood, fluids, drugs) to stabilize critically ill mothers (e.g., severe hemorrhage, eclampsia) for safe transfer to hospital. 

Get that: emergencies were so sudden and severe, the hospital had to go to the home, there was never enough time to get mother and baby to the hospital!

And that’s always been the problem. Lack of time. So when the OBGyn finds sufficient cause for concern and recommends coming into hospital at the onset, it may be wise to do so. Sure, I know American medicine is ridden with greed and unnecessary treatments. But remember I trained into the finest health system in the world: the British National Health Service (NHS), which was not driven by profits at all, just public service.

Times have changed and it’s all run by the suits now (accountants), who have no medical training or knowledge but presume to tell trained doctors what to do, based on the profit motive. And the outcomes can be variable, to say the least.

The Home Birthing Cult

The home-birth revival began in the late 1960s, along with the natural childbirth movement (Lamaze, Grantly Dick-Read).

Feminism’s second wave saw obstetrics as paternalistic and sometimes outright abusive. Women wanted their bodies back. It was a revolution: science on one side, mysticism returning on the other, and rebellion in the middle.

Meanwhile, midwifery—nearly exterminated in the mid-20th century—began to re-emerge.

By the late 1970s, tens of thousands of women in the U.S., U.K., Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand were choosing home birth not because they lacked access to hospitals, but because they wanted a different kind of birth—intimate, gentle, spiritually charged, or simply intervention-free.

Outcomes research began trickling in: under certain conditions (low-risk pregnancies, trained midwives, proper transfer systems), home birth outcomes looked surprisingly safe FOR THE MOTHER (but see below).

Home birth today is less fringe and more “intentional alternative lifestyle choice.”

Some do it for empowerment. Others for spirituality. Others simply because they don’t want fluorescent lights, beeping monitors, or a stranger telling them when to push.

Birth centers appeared. Midwifery licensing expanded. Hospitals softened at the edges—birthing tubs, dim lights, partners present, fewer routine interventions, etc. The “craze” has matured into a structured subculture.

The 2020 pandemic gave another sudden nudge—fear of hospitals drove a new wave of home births, echoing that earlier distrust of medical institutions.

A water birth at home (that’s the placenta, not jello in the dish!)

There are no studies or statistics I could find, to prove home births are dangerous FOR THE MOTHER. The real problem is that it is clearly dangerous FOR THE BABY! In the clamor for women’s rights over their bodies, this often gets dropped from the arguments.

A landmark 2010 review by John R. Wax et al., comparing “planned home birth” vs “planned hospital birth,” found neonatal death rates nearly doubled in the home-birth group and for “offspring without congenital defects,” the risk was almost tripled.²

A more recent 2020 U.S. study by Amos Grünebaum and colleagues found that planned home births had a neonatal mortality of 13.66 per 10,000 live births, compared to 3.27 per 10,000 for hospital births attended by certified nurse-midwives — a nearly four-fold increased risk.³ 

And Now We Have The “Freebirth” Movement.

Capitalizing on medical distrust, some internet influencers are selling guides to “freebirths” (medically unassisted births) and “wild pregnancies” (pregnancies without prenatal care).

It is madness. Criminal madness.

“You are powerful — birth like it,” the group’s website says. Memberships and courses to be part of the community run to hundreds of dollars.

One of the Free Birth Society’s mantras is that women’s “bodies do not grow babies that we cannot birth.” That’s absolute bullshit (and there, you see: I’m so angry, I don’t even want to abbreviate the cussing). There are fit, healthy girls that just cannot get the baby out, even after 24 hours or more of intense labor. What does the Free Birth Society have to say about those? Pull yourself together? Try harder? Caesarians may be overused but there are times when it HAS TO BE used, otherwise death results.

So while Free Birth Society leaders raked in millions and grew their platforms, moms across the globe lost their babies and suffered often preventable and treatable complications, an investigation found.

For instance, Gabrielle Lopez, a mother who followed Free Birth Society protocol, managed to birth her son despite shoulder dystocia (shoulder getting jammed in the vagina). She ended up having to take her newborn son to the hospital because he wasn’t breathing. He was asphyxiated for 17 minutes, suffered hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, and had to stay in the hospital for 21 days. Now 3 years old, her son is disabled and fed through a tube.

Look, I understand women’s concerns about the standard of medical care in the US (or should I say concerns about medical caring?) It’s proverbial that OBGyns want to bring on a woman’s labor with a drip, or schedule a caesar that may not even be called for, just to get the delivery done before golf time or an anniversary weekend.

As Nikki Zite, MD, MPH, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine in Knoxville states, “I understand and respect that many people are drawn to alternatives to hospital-based obstetric care after experiences of trauma, disrespect, or perceived loss of autonomy in the healthcare system.”

But to ignore the powerful impact of preparatory care on maternal and fetal mortality is beyond silly. The best way of guiding women safely through their pregnancy is frequent monitoring and being aware what may arise that could affect the safety of mother and child. Pre-eclampsia, for example is a dangerous condition that doesn’t usually show itself till about 20 weeks, and could even lead to deadly eclampsia (soaring blood pressure, often leading to convulsions, stroke and organ damage), which carried off a great many women in the past.

David Hackney, MD, a maternal-fetal medicine physician at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, noted that for many patients drawn to the freebirth movement, “the root causes are their genuine adverse medical experiences: poor communication, insufficient respect for autonomy, undesired outcomes.”

“Misinformation often starts with some kernel of truth, a genuine problem facing our patients, which is then twisted in unsubstantiated, dangerous directions,” Hackney added. 

And I like what he said next: “While it is important to combat harmful misinformation, it is also important that medicine strives to be better.”

Melissa Simon, MD, MPH, an ob/gyn at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago and director of the university’s Elevate Lab, told MedPage Today that the freebirth movement “is actually scary.”

“It saddens me that people have lost trust and faith in healthcare providers and in our healthcare system,” she said, noting that given the high maternal mortality rate in the U.S., pregnant people should be able to “receive care in places and spaces in which they feel welcomed, valued, heard, and supported.”

Clearly the failing is partly from the medical side and I can say we don’t meet the same degree of disrespect towards women in Europe. But caution must come from the family side, with due care and reverence for the fact that the woman is producing an absolute miracle. Birth is not a game, or a women’s rights crusade. It’s an act of creation that is so amazing, it has numerous ways of going wrong.

Be wise.

And it just remains to finish on a personal note. I LOVED delivering babies; so much so, I delivered twice my student quota. I’ve delivered (by hand, not scalpel) over 50 babies in my time, including my own son!

It’s messy, with pee, shit and blood and baby treacle poop (meconium)… but it’s GLORIOUS when that little creature draws it’s first breath!

To your health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

SOURCE: https://www.medpagetoday.com/obgyn/pregnancy/118843

REFERENCES:

1. https://www.jameslindlibrary.org/articles/an-early-medical-research-council-controlled-trial-of-vitamins-for-preventing-infection/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK78791/
3. J Obstet Gynecol. 2020 Aug;223(2):254.e1-254.e8.  doi: 10.1016/j.ajog.2020.01.045. Epub 2020 Feb 7

Dyslexia isn’t a glitch; it’s a variation. A natural cognitive style shaped by genetics, neurodevelopment, and the brain’s bias toward certain kinds of processing. The common assumption is that dyslexia is a “reading disorder,” but reading is where the problem lies, not the origin of it. 

To understand dyslexia, we have to step back from letters and look at the architecture of the brain itself — how it forms, how it connects, how it distributes workload, and what kinds of tasks it prefers to excel at.

Credit to Brunel University

At its core, dyslexia emerges from differences in neural organization, especially in the systems that handle language, sound structure, and the conversion of symbols into meaning. Let’s look at the major causative factors,  one by one.

1.Genetic Foundations

Dyslexia is highly heritable. It runs in families. Researchers have identified several genes associated with dyslexia — DCDC2, KIAA0319, ROBO1, DYX1C1, among others — and they’re not “reading genes.” They’re involved in:

• how neurons migrate during fetal development

• how brain circuits connect

• how auditory and visual information is integrated

• how the cortex lays out its specialized regions

These genes influence how the brain organizes itself before a child is even born. They shape the micro-architecture that later supports language, attention, rhythm, and symbolic processing. A different layout means a different set of strengths — and different challenges.

Genetics doesn’t “cause” dyslexia so much as it sets the blueprint for a brain that will approach the world in a nonlinear way.

2. Differences in Brain Connectivity

Brains are not collections of “centers” — they’re networks. And in dyslexic individuals, the networks involved in reading are wired differently.

Reading requires three main systems:

The phonological system. How we decode sound, break words into phonemes (sound bytes), and match letters to sounds.

The orthographic system. How we visually recognize written words and letter patterns.

The rapid integration system. How the phonological and visual systems connect quickly and smoothly.

But in dyslexia:

• the phonological circuits often activate less efficiently

• the visual-word circuits activate later or in different locations

• the integration pathways between sound and symbol are slower or take alternate routes

This is why reading feels laborious: it’s literally more work, more steps, more detours.

But here’s the twist — many of the “detour circuits” are extremely good for other things:

• 3D visualization

• spatial mapping

• creative association

• big-picture synthesis

• connecting distant ideas

• pattern-spotting in chaos

Dyslexic brains tend to rely more heavily on the brain’s default-mode network, visual-spatial networks, and right-hemisphere creative circuits, which is why so many dyslexic people excel in entrepreneurship, engineering, art, design, storytelling, architecture, physics, music, and systems thinking.

My wife Vivien, who is dyslexic, was a brilliant fashion designer of her era. As I have written elsewhere, her high street designs outsold Stella McCartney, 10 to 1 or more. She was even exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (and their call!)

3. Phonological and Auditory Processing Differences

One of the most consistent findings in dyslexia is a difference in phonological processing — the ability to hear, separate, and manipulate the smallest sound units of language (the so-called phonemes). This isn’t a hearing issue; it’s about how the brain interprets sound.

Dyslexic children often:

• mix up similar phonemes (b/p, d/t). Or B and bee (insect), I and eye. 

• have difficulty breaking words into sound chunks

• find it harder to match letters to corresponding sounds

• struggle with rhyming or rapid naming tasks

These aren’t signs of laziness or low intelligence — they’re indicators of how differently the auditory system is tuned.

Some researchers propose that dyslexic brains are optimized more for global auditory processing (big-picture sound, music, intonation) rather than local, analytic processing (breaking speech into microscopic units).

In other words: the brain is tuned to ideas, not syllables.

4. Magnocellular Pathway Variations

Research in visual neuroscience shows that many dyslexic individuals have differences in  what is called the magnocellular pathway— the system that handles motion detection, big-picture visual patterns, and rapid visual shifts.

This pathway helps with:

• tracking letters as eyes move across the page

• stabilizing visual focus

• processing rapid sequences of visual information

If this system is less efficient or has a slightly altered developmental pattern, letters and words begin to dance or jazz on the page. As a result, reading becomes visually unstable or tiring.

But the same magnocellular differences that make reading harder can enhance abilities in:

• 3D visualization

• design

• engineering

• movement-based skills

• artistic composition

• spatial creativity

Again, a trade-off, not a flaw.

5. Cross-modal Integration: The “Timing” Challenge

Reading is a timed process:

• eyes take in letters

• ears interpret internal sound-maps

• motor systems prepare speech

• meaning circuits light up

• everything syncs within milliseconds

Dyslexia often involves subtle differences in timing across these systems.

It’s not that one system is “broken” — it’s that they don’t lock together at the same rhythm as a neurotypical reading brain. This explains slow reading, inconsistent spelling and moments of “I know this word but I can’t retrieve it right now”

But outside of reading, this same timing difference can create ease in:

• improvisation

• creative leaps

• spatial reasoning

• thinking in images

• nonlinear problem solving

The mind is less bound to sequential steps.

6. Developmental Factors

Other elements shape dyslexia in early development:

Prenatal factors. Variations in hormone exposure, nutrient levels, and neural migration patterns can influence the developing language circuits.

Language environment. Children raised in language-rich environments sometimes compensate faster, but dyslexia appears across every culture and language group on Earth.

Brain lateralization. Dyslexic individuals often have less rigid left-hemisphere dominance, creating a more balanced brain — something extremely useful for creativity but trickier for symbol decoding.

7. Dyslexia as an Evolutionary Variation

One emerging view: dyslexia may be an evolutionary specialization, not a malfunction.

Human groups benefit from members who:

• see the world differently

• spot patterns others miss

• envision solutions out of sequence

• imagine alternative structures

• think spatially and abstractly

• explore, invent, build, create

• challenge conventions

• hold nonlinear intelligence

In evolutionary psychology, this is called cognitive diversification — not everyone is optimized for the same tasks. Linear readers and nonlinear spatial thinkers complement each other, as do Vivien and I.

A linear (me) and a non-linear spatial thinker (Viv). Temple of Delphi, Greece

For an experiment, I asked ChatGPT to write me 300 words on dyslexia, as a gift to Vivien. This is what it said:

Dyslexia isn’t a defect; it’s a different rhythm of mind. It’s a brain that reads the world with a sideways shimmer, a brain that refuses to march in straight lines and instead loops, leaps, tilts, rearranges. People imagine dyslexia as “trouble reading,” but that’s like saying jazz is “trouble sticking to the notes.” Dyslexia is a cognitive style with its own signature: nonlinear, associative, inventive, spatial, intuitive.

Neurologically, dyslexia comes from the way certain brain networks communicate. Instead of funneling everything through the phonological pathways that process letter-sound mapping, dyslexic brains distribute the load across wider networks — visual, spatial, emotional, big-picture systems. It’s like running a city not from a single control tower, but from an entire constellation of lights. That makes reading tricky, yes, but it also gives dyslexic thinkers an uncanny ability to see patterns, metaphors, relationships, and possibilities that more linear minds miss.

Many dyslexic people read slowly but think quickly. They’re often strong in reasoning, creativity, problem-solving, and three-dimensional imagination. They design things. They invent things. They make connections that shouldn’t exist and then somehow do. Their thoughts arrive in images, impressions, structures, and stories rather than tidy rows of syllables.

And here’s the beautiful part: dyslexia doesn’t limit intelligence — it reshapes it. It widens the frame. You get mindmaps instead of bullet points, leaps instead of steps, intuition instead of rote memory. It’s sometimes frustrating, yes. Systems weren’t built for nonlinear thinkers. But nothing about dyslexia is about lack. It’s difference, not deficit. A neurological accent, not an impairment.

When dyslexic people are given the right tools — time, audio, visuals, rhythm, context, movement — something stunning happens: their gifts come forward. Because behind the reading hurdle is a mind tuned to a bigger, more dimensional kind of understanding. A mind built for insight, imagination, and the long-view vision the world absolutely needs.

Rather sweet, don’t you think?

To your good health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The clunky linear one…

It’s crazy to die at average age today. We know SO MUCH about the factors that postpone aging. All you have to do it get smart and LEARN these factors.

This is me, at 80, feeling 45 and lovin’ it!

So many people now enjoy what’s called the “Third Age”, meaning the whole new life after retirement, that Mankind is clearly evolving and morphing.

You want to be part of this amazing renewal process. Get healthy and be ready for your next 100 years!

Who knows what’s just around the corner? There have been so many new discoveries. Wouldn’t it be sad to die just before a big breakthrough that could fix all your ailments and give you an extra 20, 30, 50 years of great living?

Want an example of a medical breakthrough that enabled millions to live decades longer? Antisepsis in surgery. Want another? Hundreds of millions died of chills, fevers and pneumonia etc. Then along came penicillin and gave probably BILLIONS of people many more years.

Thing is, we just don’t know what’s out there in the future.

But what I do know is you need to face up to successful aging. Statistics say that if you’re 60 years old already, you have about a 50/50 chance of making it to 100 years (ref: American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine).

You’d be NUTS to not take care of yourself and end up with 30 – 40 years of misery and ill health!

It’s all so avoidable. There is no excuse for the diseases of aging and no excuse for dying early: none!

Fill your gas tank with powerful healing knowledge that I will share with you in my latest book “Aging Without Growing Old“. It’s been universally acclaimed as my best book to date. It is packed with the information you about health and successful aging.

Get your copy here.

Aging Stops… Eventually

Science is moving so fast, in the next decade or two we might see aging done with altogether. Gone!

Yes, there is MORE good news…

When I first wrote this, I was reading a very telling article in New Scientist by top aging scientist Michael R. Rose, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine. His title was also “The End Of Aging: Why Life Begins at 90”.¹

It’s interesting to note that prof. Rose is saying exactly what I have said in all my writings for the last 50 years: that eating the hunter-gatherer style dramatically slows down aging. Modern foods, and what I have called “farmer foods” (like dairy and grains), are literally killing us.

Putting people on exclusion diets and finding their toxic (allergy) foods, I had thousands of happy patients walking into my clinic, saying “I feel ten/fifteen years younger!” They looked great; glowing with health; and apparently friends and family were all asking, “What are you on?” Really, it was what they were OFF! (toxic foods, or what I call BANDIT FOODS). 

But prof. Rose went further and introduced the work of British statisticians Major Greenwood and J. O. Irwin, who published a little-noticed article in the journal Human Biology. Not only was 1939 a bad year for making scientific history, their article contained some fearsome mathematics, guaranteed to scare away most biologists and doctors.

But apparently Greenwood and Irwin had come up with the fact that after the age of 90, aging slows down dramatically and eventually stops.

A person aged 99 is no more likely to die than someone aged 93! In fact, if you look at these graphs, a person aged 102 years is far less likely to die than a 93 year old!

Look at these two images: the first shows that aging slowdown for flies in the lab; the second shows it for humans, based on 1939 data. They are both quite startling.

Note that the lines do not represent deaths. They show the PROBABILITY of dying

The researchers of the day had no real explanation for what they observed and this little-known work was largely forgotten. Until now.

Modern researchers have looked into it, not with human research (takes too long), but hundreds of generations of flies. They found the same thing: after a certain point, the aging process stops, or even goes into reverse. Once death rates leveled off, there were months of stable or even declining death rates. It looked as if a relatively brief period of ageing was followed by a long plateau when ageing stopped.

And then, just for good measure, in recent years all that I wrote about above has been re-discovered!

In this study, Italian researchers estimated hazard rates from data on all inhabitants of Italy aged 105 and older between 2009 and 2015 (born 1896-1910), a total of 3836 documented cases. They observed what are called hazard level curves, which were essentially constant beyond age 105.²

Why Is Nobody Circulating This Important Knowledge?

The idea that aging eventually ceases doesn’t seem to make sense, naturally. Since time immemorial, we have always thought of the body as running down and growing “old”. Aristotle wrote a good book on the topic more than 2300 years ago. Like pretty much every biologist since then, he thought of ageing as a remorseless process of falling apart, until death finally puts us out of our misery.

Present theories of ageing still assume that ageing is a physiological process involving some type of cumulative decay, damage, disrepair or disharmony. The theories differ only over which specific kind of cumulative breakdown happens: for example telomeres, antioxidant damage, mitochondrial aging, cortisol and so forth.

Now, it seems that most and maybe all of these models are flawed or even downright WRONG! So Rose was looking for an explanation and came up with a genetic one.

It goes back to a guy called William Hamilton. You’ve probably heard some version of his reasoning, which is that if a gene tends to kill early, it will die out, because it selectively removes people from the reproductive pool. But genes that kill after the reproductive period will persist.

By this reasoning, the later-life genes would supposedly surface and lead to decay. They could be the real cause of aging. But eventually, that gene-selection based process would bottom out and aging cease. The theory fits the facts.

To test it out, Rose had a colleague run some computer models and, surprisingly, every single run showed that aging would stop! It looked like Hamilton’s conclusion that evolutionary theory required continuous aging was wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact!³

Rose and colleague pushed the model further and found they could predict the time at which aging would slow or stop, by referring to when the reproductive cycle ceased.

The results were striking. Exactly as the models predicted, populations with an earlier last age of reproduction stopped aging earlier and lived longer, and vice versa (Evolution, vol 56, p 1982).

Not so good for humans, because we go on reproducing for a relatively long time.

But then the final conclusion from this man’s reasoning is that we are better adapted (more helpful genes), to our ancestral environment. In other words: to improve the course of our aging, and to stop it earlier, we need to pay close attention to our evolutionary history. That means we should go back to being hunter-gatherers and get out of what I call the “chemical blizzard”. Farmer foods definitely violated Nature’s nice sweet plan for us. And the storm of xenobiotic (alien) chemicals and electromagnetic fields to which we are being subjected are NOT natural!

Well, that brings us round in a circle because I know for a fact that following the “Stone Age Diet” helps people look and feel much young and that’s not some geeky “biohacker” trick. It’s my clinical experience over some 45 years. It’s the NUMBER ONE ANTI-AGING HACK I give in my book “Aging Without Growing Old” (suddenly that title doesn’t sound too ambitious, does it?)

Of course, it’s not just about survival. It’s about wellness too. We can talk about “healthspan” as well as lifespan.

If you want to learn how to draw out your healthy vibrant years, waiting till we get or science sorted out, you could be rewarded by never growing old. You would CHOOSE when you went for the exit door; not being killed off by some unpleasant and debilitating disease process.

It can be done. We are on the brink of a MASSIVE extension of lifespan. I’m calling it the Third Age. For some people it can and will be longer than their life up till retirement.

Don’t get left out in the cold in this amazing health revolution.

You me and an army of others, we’re Boomers and we can change the world!

Just keep dancing until your very last day… Promise? Just watch this couple GO!

AND PLEASE… Invite me to your 120th birthday party: I’ll be ready and still dancing.

To your good health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128241-900-the-end-of-ageing-why-life-begins-at-90/
2. Science. 2018 Jun 29;360(6396):1459-1461. doi: 10.1126/science.aat3119
3. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 93, p 15294

We’ve all said it: “Let’s sleep on it.” Often when something troubling feels overwhelming today, it seems more manageable after a good night’s sleep. Why? Because sleep — especially REM-sleep (dream-sleep) — is healing. It helps process psychological stress, integrate difficult experiences into our mental framework, and reduce the sharp edges of what otherwise would feel unbearable.

Walker’s point: it isn’t time alone that heals all wounds. It’s time in sleep, and especially dream cycles (REM), that provide emotional convalescence. Research supports this: sleeping on things allows emotional memory processing and diminishes the raw intensity of trauma.

Beyond mental healing, the scope of sleep’s importance spans every major physiological system — neurological, lymphatic, immune, hormonal, cardiovascular, metabolic. Chronic sleep deprivation appears to be associated with myriad poor health outcomes including poorer cognitive function, impaired immunological responses (such as reduced efficacy of vaccines) and an increased risk of diabetes and obesity, to name but a few. 

Indeed lack of adequate quality sleep can kill! It has been shown experimentally in rats that total sleep deprivation is rapidly fatal in a comparable time frame to total food starvation, on average 15 days. 

Absence of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep was similarly fatal in about 15 days whilst selective suppression of non-REM sleep was also fatal but in a longer time frame (around 45 days).¹ 

So this is important” take notice!

Immune system vulnerability

Your immune system strongly depends on healthy sleep. In one experiment, healthy subjects restricted to four hours of sleep for one night experienced a 70 % drop in key cancer-fighting immune cells (natural killer cells). This shows just how quickly sleep deprivation can meaningfully impair immune defense. ² 

Hormonal ageing and male health

Sleep restriction also profoundly affects hormonal systems. In a study on healthy males restricted to just four or five hours of sleep per night for a week, testosterone levels dropped to the equivalent of a man ten years older. In other words: chronic short sleep pushes physiological ageing forward.³ 

Summary: Sleep as system-wide reset

Sleep isn’t something you get after life’s work is done; sleep is the foundation layer of life’s work. Without it: immune fragility, hormonal inversion, cardiovascular stress, impaired cognition, emotional dysregulation — all climb quickly. The data support Walker’s statement that sleep is not optional. ⁴ 

Get your sleep, for sure, and then fit in life and duties around that, without disturbing your sleep routine.

Here are evidence-based, medically-grounded tips to improve sleep quality — particularly useful for those of you with demanding schedules, irregular nights, or intermittent insomnia.

1. Prioritize regularity

Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day(yes, weekends too). Consistency anchors your brain’s 24-hour clock (the circadian pacemaker) and strengthens sleep quality. ⁵ 

Instead of just setting your wake-up alarm, consider a “time-for-bed alarm”. That’s your cue to wind down behaviorally, reducing the “lying awake wondering if I’ll sleep” trap.

2. Create darkness in the last hour

Light at night suppresses melatonin release — melatonin signals the body that it’s night and time for sleep. So: in the final hour before you plan to sleep:

• Dim the lights by about half.

• Turn off screens (computers, tablets, phones). Blue-light plus cognitive/emotional arousal from scrolling kills sleep quality. Consider blackout curtains or reducing ambient light from devices/chargers.⁶ 

3. Keep your bedroom cool

Your body temperature needs to drop by about 1 °C (or 2–3 °F) for optimal sleep onset and maintenance. That is why you may have trouble falling asleep in a “stuffy” room. A room that’s too cold is better than one that’s too hot. Aim for ~18 °C (?65 °F). Layering (hot water bottle, socks) is fine — just the ambient room should be cool.

4. Don’t linger in bed awake

If you’re in bed for more than ~25–30 minutes and you’re still awake, get up. Lie-waiting teaches your brain that “bed = being awake”, which undermines sleep associations. Instead: get out of bed, go to another room, do something quiet and relaxing (not screen-heavy), and return when sleepy.

This may feel counter-intuitive, especially when you’re exhausted, but it resets the bed-sleep connection.

5. Moderation of caffeine & alcohol

• Caffeine: Blocks adenosine, the chemical that builds “sleep pressure” while awake. Caffeine late in the day undermines sleep onset and depth. 

• Alcohol: While it may sedate you initially, it suppresses REM sleep and causes frequent awakenings. That compromises the essential emotional-processing phase of sleep.⁶ 

After a bad night: don’t over-compensate

If you had a terrible night, resist the impulse to: wake up later, nap longer, or go to bed earlier. These all disrupt your schedule and can lead into a cycle of poor sleep. Instead: get up at your usual time, avoid long naps, wake gently, go about your day. Your brain will rebuild healthy sleep momentum.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

In today’s hyper-connected, 24/7 culture, sleep is undervalued. We mistakenly treat it as “lost productive time,” when in fact it is the time our brain and body use to restore, repair, and integrate. According to Walker, “[Sleep] is the single most effective thing that we can do each and every day to reset our brain and body health.” ⁷ 

Ignoring sleep is not just sub-optimal; data show it increases risk for serious disease: obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular events, impaired immunity, accelerated aging, cognitive decline. 

There is compelling epidemiological data around daylight saving time changes. When we lose one hour of sleep in the spring, there is a ~24 % relative increase in heart attacks the next day. Conversely, when we gain an hour in the fall, heart attack rates drop by about 21 %. These shifts underscore how finely tuned our cardiovascular system is to sleep adequacy.

Other correlations: road traffic accidents spike, suicide rates shift, even judge sentencing shows variation with less sleep. The less you sleep, the worse the decision-making, the poorer the self-regulation.

One study even saw a drop in quality foods chosen by participants who were sleep deprived. Subjects had a significantly greater desire for high-calorie, weight-gain-promoting foods.⁸ 

Sleep needs to be addressed with the same urgency as diet, exercise, medication. Often times sleep is the hidden variable.

Final Summary & Patient Message

Sleep is not optional. It’s a non-negotiable component of health. Treat it as your life-support system.

For patients: frame sleep as the foundation of your prescription: fix the sleep schedule, advance the dark-cool environment, reduce screen/blue-light exposure before bed, moderate caffeine and alcohol, and rescue the behavioral association between bed and sleep.

Summary Of Healthy Sleep Habits

Bedtime Routine

Set regular hours. Go to bed and wake up at the same time daily (weekends included).

Use a “to-bed alarm.” Set a reminder 30–60 min before target bedtime.

No screens 1 hour before bed. Dim all lights by half.

Keep bedroom dark, cool, and quiet. Ideal room temp ? 65 °F (18 °C).

During the Night

If you can’t fall asleep after ~25 min:  Leave bed, go to another dimly lit room, do something calm (reading, breathing, quiet music).

Return to bed only when genuinely sleepy.

Avoid heavy meals, alcohol, and caffeine within 3 hours of bedtime.

Daytime Habits

Get morning light exposure (10–20 min) to anchor circadian rhythm.

Exercise regularly, but finish intense workouts ? 3 hours before bed.

Caffeine cut-off: No caffeine after 2 p.m. (earlier for sensitive patients).

Skip long naps. If necessary, keep naps < 30 minutes before 3 p.m.

If You Had a Bad Night

Do nothing extreme…

? Don’t sleep in late, to try and catch up.

? Don’t nap long hours, to try and catch up.

? Don’t go to bed early, to try and catch up.

? Don’t overload on caffeine, to stay awake!

Just resume your regular schedule; your sleep drive will self-correct the next night.

When to Seek Further Evaluation

Persistent insomnia > 3 months.

Loud snoring, choking, or witnessed apneas (stopping breathing).

Excessive daytime sleepiness.

Restless legs, parasomnias, so-called narcolepsy (falling asleep without choice during the day) or shift-work insomnia.

Ask your doctor a referral for sleep study (polysomnography) or CBT-I (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia).

Finally, One Last Resource!

This one is massive. Falling asleep means dropping from beta-frequency brainwaves to alpha (12 Hz), to theta (4 -6 Hz) and then delta (0.5 – 4 Hz), which is deep sleep. So what if you could hum to the brain and persuade it to drop gently from beta, to alpha, theta and then into delta. You would fall asleep (couldn’t help yourself, actually)!

Well, it can be done. I am associated with a device which can deliver these soporific brain frequencies. It’s called the Kasina and it wraps 4 different sleep aids into one pleasant “mind walk.” I have had patients say they could not stay awake till the end!

The 4 modalities are:

1. Binaural beats

2. Photic driving (flashing lights)

3. Slow relaxing music, integrated with the sounds

4. A calm, relaxing voice giving you instructions to travel in your mind in creative ways.

Go here to learn more.

To your good health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

SOURCES:

1. Brain, Volume 141, Issue 6, June 2018, Pages 1884–1886, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awy115
2. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/27/what-an-insomniac-knows
3. https://time.com/7160802/sleep-longevity-live-longer-health/
4. Br J Gen Pract. 2018 Apr;68(669):193. doi: 10.3399/bjgp18X695609
5. https://news.berkeley.edu/2017/10/17/whywesleep/
6. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/matthew-walker-on-improving-sleep-quality
7. https://www.cogneurosociety.org/going-deep-sleep-matthew-walker/
8. Nat Commun. 2013;4:2259. doi: 10.1038/ncomms3259

This phrase inspired the title of a book which TOTALLY transformed my life. It was written by Dr. Richard Mackarness (a British psychiatrist) and published in 1976 (Pan). In the USA it rejoiced under the title Eating Dangerously.

His message was that allergies to food could cause a vast array of symptoms, from asthma, eczema, migraine, arthritis, colitis, to depression, anxiety, disordered behavior and even schizophrenic symptoms. I tried everything he said and it work fully and consistently. I became a born-again food allergist (and saved or changed hundreds of thousands of lives, through clinical work and my books).

Eventually, years later, as a celebrity doctor, I was asked to write a foreword for a reprinting of Mackarness’ book. A rare privilege and a full-circle!

[Mackarness enjoys even greater fame today for his earlier book Eat Fat and Grow Slim, published in 1958 and long predating the low-carb high-fat keto craze]

I myself began publishing books in the genre: The Food Allergy Plan (today published as One Diet For Life), Allergies: What Everyone Should Know (1986) and The Allergy Handbook (1988), to name just a few.

I began getting radio and TV interviews and one of my messages was that “over 70% of the population is allergic to wheat”. That was considered nonsense by orthodox doctors and maybe just a bit intemperate to my colleagues. But over the years, I watched the figure creep up and up. It’s another of those “I told ‘em,” claims, of which I have scores!

Now everyone is jumping on the wagon and we have “Grain Brain” and “Wheat Brain” titles. And lots of books by people who are not doctors and never saw a patient, with titles like: Gluten Intolerance: When Wheat Is The Enemy and Wheat Free, Worry Free: The Art of Happy, Healthy, Gluten-Free Living.

Dr. Stephen Wenger wrote a book Healthier Without Wheat: A New Understanding of Wheat Allergies, Celiac Disease, and Non-Celiac Gluten Intolerance.

Only new to him of course; I was writing about it 40 years ago, but that’s internet publishing for you.

The thing is, I realized early on (1980s), that a lot of people were allergic to wheat but not gluten. How did I know? Simple detective work (I was the world’s “Number One Allergy Detective”, remember). If a person can tolerate rye and barley but not wheat, they are NOT sensitive to gluten!

Moreover, quite a few people are sensitive to gluten but do not get celiac disease. So while doctors go banging on about gluten and claiming that only about 1% of the population are sensitive to gluten, they are failing to help the vast majority of people who are in trouble with grains, notably (but not exclusively) wheat.

Now in case you are wondering what got me started on this, it’s an article in the doctors’ press [MedPage Today. October 28, 2025]. It stated:

Self-reported symptoms from eating gluten or wheat were reported by 10% of individuals without celiac disease or wheat allergy in a meta-analysis.

This sensitivity was significantly more common in women and was associated with anxiety, depression, and irritable bowel syndrome.

The findings suggested that psychological factors and the gut-brain axis play the central role in the pathophysiology rather than being related to the immune system, as in celiac disease. Self-reported symptoms from eating gluten or wheat are common around the world in individuals without celiac disease or wheat allergy, a meta-analysis showed.

The pooled prevalence of self-reported non-celiac gluten/wheat sensitivity (NCGWS) in the general population was 10.3% (95% CI 7.0-14.0), with a wide range in prevalence across countries, from 0.7% in Chile to 23% in the U.K. and 36% in Saudi Arabia. 

U.S. prevalence came in at about 5.0% (all this reported in a journal called, appropriately Gut).

Notably, NCGWS was significantly more common in women and was associated with anxiety, depression, and irritable bowel syndrome… wait for it: “suggesting that psychological factors and the gut-brain axis play the central role in the pathophysiology of NCGWS,” the researchers wrote.

So… back to square one. Patients who are not gluten sensitive or wheat allergic are not permitted to have symptoms. They are WRONG and so must be psychologically disturbed. So say the quacks.

What’s a stylish word meaning the opposite of erudite? Let me see… Not like me to run out of words! Oh well, just bone-deep stupid will suffice.

Sounds good though: Rigorous double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover gluten challenge has turned up a strong nocebo effect. “Although self-reported NCGWS may not always represent true sensitivity to gluten or wheat, it reflects the burden of symptoms attributed to these dietary components in the general population,” the researchers noted.

Nocebo means “belief in harm”, whereas placebo means “belief in good,” or pleasing (from the words noxious and placere, Latin: to please).

The study re-evaluated 25 studies published between 2014 and 2024 with a total of 49,476 participants from 16 countries who were assessed with self-administered, postal, or online questionnaires in community-based settings. 

The most common symptoms self-reported were bloating (71.0%), abdominal discomfort (46.0%), abdominal pain (36.0%), and fatigue (32.1%). And folks: THOSE ARE PROBABLY THE TOP 4 SYMPTOMS OF AN ALLERGY TO FOOD(S), in terms of frequency.

It doesn’t need to be wheat, or a grain, by the way. ANY food allergy or intolerance can mess up your gut and if you think about it, these are just the most likely reactions. I discovered for myself that I was allergic to wheat around 1983. If I ate wheat I felt frequently tired, like I’m working too hard, I need a holiday, etc. But if I stayed off wheat, my energies surged, I felt 10 – 15 years younger and people would comment and ask me what I was on! They still do, at age 80!!

And it doesn’t need to be allergy or sensitivity. Rather, many patients’ symptoms attributed to gluten could actually be triggered by fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols (FODMAPs), particularly fructans, which are commonly found in wheat-based foods like bread.

Maltose

Let me share something else I learned over the years (I learned most from patients, not from doctors and scientists!) I got some of the details from my friend Prof. Amy MacGrath (see her book One Man’s Poison) and lots of insights from my wonderful patients in Dublin, who make THE BEST bread: 

I’m talking about proper time to allow fermentation and leavening in bread making. It’s CRUCIAL and almost nobody seems to understand.

Long dough methods involve extended fermentation, often lasting many hours (e.g., 12 to 24 hours or more) at cool temperatures, typically using a minimal amount of commercial yeast or a natural sourdough starter. In contrast, short dough methods, common in modern industrial baking, use a larger quantity of yeast to achieve a rapid rise, with fermentation times often as short as 1.5 to 2 hours.

The key difference for digestion lies in the extended time the dough’s enzymes and microorganisms (like yeast and lactic acid bacteria) have to work. During fermentation, the flour’s amylase enzymes break down complex starches into simpler sugars, including maltose. Amy MacGrath found maltose a big no-no for her and her family (hence her book, published 1992. I have no idea if it’s available today)

These sugars are then further consumed by the yeast and bacteria to produce carbon dioxide (for leavening) and various organic compounds that enhance flavor and break down potentially irritating components.

Many people who consider themselves intolerant of bread find they can take it, if it’s produced by the long dough method.

And here’s another tip: don’t say I don’t lay it on some weeks! Haha!

You can get a similar effect by soaking grain flours overnight. It starts the fermentation process and then you can cook with it next day. I learned to really LOVE Irish soda bread (made fresh daily, without yeast, using baking soda as a raising agent).

Anyway, back to the dodos (briefly)…

“Following a gluten-free diet without medical or dietetic oversight is associated with an increased risk of nutritional deficiencies, psychological burden, and unnecessary economic cost,” said the article. Yeah, yeah…

“A detailed assessment of both physical and psychological factors… is therefore essential to avoid unnecessary dietary restrictions.” Notice it in there again: psychological factors. Chances are the patient is a kook, type of medicine, isn’t it?

To your good health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor

SOURCE: 

1. https://www.medpagetoday.com/allergyimmunology/allergy/118183