Health is not created by eliminating every difficulty from life. The body is not a porcelain ornament that survives best when nothing disturbs it. It is an adaptive organism, designed to be challenged, to respond, to repair and—within limits—to return stronger.

This is the essence of hormesis: a stressor that is harmful in a large or prolonged dose can stimulate beneficial adaptation when delivered in a small, controlled, intermittent dose. The response is commonly represented by a J-shaped or inverted U-shaped curve. Too little challenge leads to stagnation; an appropriate amount encourages adaptation; too much causes injury.

The stressor is not necessarily “good” in itself. What is beneficial is the organism’s resistance response to it.

Exercise provides the clearest example. A hard walk or session with weights temporarily disturbs the body. Muscle fibers experience microscopic damage; ATP demand rises; reactive oxygen species increase; calcium balance changes; inflammatory signals are released. Yet those disturbances activate repair, mitochondrial biogenesis, antioxidant defenses, glucose transport, protein synthesis and tissue remodeling. Provided there is sufficient recovery, the person becomes better equipped to withstand the next challenge.

The exercise did not make the body stronger during the stressful part. The body became stronger while recovering from it.

This gives us the basic formula:

Challenge + adequate recovery = adaptation.
Challenge without recovery = breakdown.
Recovery without challenge = gradual decline.

So, What Is Hormesis?

I first wrote about this little-known effect in 1999 in my book VIRTUAL MEDICINE, which is now expanded and published as MEDICINE BEYOND.

Hormesis (from Greek hórm?sis, “rapid motion, eagerness,” from ancient Greek hormáein “to set in motion, impel, urge on”) is the term for generally favorable biological responses to very low-level exposures to toxins and other stressors. It’s a biological version of the old saw: That which does not kill me makes me stronger. See graph:

Increasing doses stimulate at first and then steadily suppress (inhibit)

Paracelsus was there first, working with micro-doses of noxious agents and obtaining significant therapeutic results.

One of the valuable areas where the concept of hormesis has been explored extensively with respect to its applicability is aging. Since the basic survival capacity of any biological system depends on its homeodynamic (homeostatic) ability, biogerontologists proposed that exposing cells and organisms to mild stress should result in the adaptive or hormetic response with various biological benefits. This idea has now gathered a large body of supportive evidence showing that repetitive mild stress exposure has anti-aging effects12.

In 1998, Edward J. Calabrese and Linda A. Baldwin at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Massachusetts, published a survey of publications, judging their worth and validity, and found over 4,000 relevant research papers. Their analysis suggests that hormesis is a reproducible and relatively common biological phenomenon, pertinent to many living species and a wide variety of tissue insults, including radiation, temperature extremes, and chemical toxins.

Strychnine And The Old-Fashioned Tonic

An example would be strychnine, a deadly poison, which was once used medicinally in minute doses as a stimulant and included in various “tonics.” It even appeared in early athletic performance experiments. Thomas Hicks, winner of the notorious 1904 Olympic marathon, was given strychnine and brandy during the race—a performance-enhancement program that makes modern sports nutrition look positively timid.

Strychnine blocks glycine receptors, particularly in the spinal cord and brainstem. Glycine normally restrains motor-neuron activity. Remove that inhibition and the nervous system becomes violently excitable, producing muscle spasms, convulsions, respiratory failure and potentially death. The difference between an apparently stimulating dose and a dangerous one is far too narrow to make strychnine a sensible modern hormetic. It is a fine historical illustration of dose-dependent effects, but a dreadful lifestyle recommendation. 

Hormesis does not give us license to consume tiny quantities of every poison. Some agents cause cumulative damage, mutations or cancer without any established beneficial range. There is no sound reason to seek hormesis from lead, mercury, asbestos, tobacco smoke or ionizing radiation. We already possess much safer ways of activating our cellular defence systems.

Why Stress Can Strengthen Us

Mild stress activates a network of ancient survival mechanisms. These include heat-shock proteins, antioxidant enzymes, DNA-repair systems, autophagy, mitochondrial renewal, immune surveillance and metabolic switching.

Autophagy is cellular housekeeping: damaged proteins and worn-out components are identified, dismantled and recycled. Exercise and temporary food deprivation can stimulate this process, although human autophagy is difficult to measure directly and extravagant claims about the exact hour when it “switches on” should be treated cautiously.

Another response is mitochondrial biogenesis—the production and improvement of the cellular machinery that generates energy. Cells exposed to manageable energy demands receive a message: We need more capacity. Muscle responds similarly to resistance. Bones respond to loading by retaining or building structure. The cardiovascular system responds to increased demand by improving delivery.

This is not confined to the body. The nervous system also needs appropriate challenge. Learning, novelty, coordination, social engagement and solving difficult problems encourage the brain to maintain its networks. A life in which nothing surprises, stretches or occasionally frustrates us may be psychologically comfortable but biologically impoverished.

The significant word is intermittent. A brief stress followed by safety and restoration can be strengthening. Continuous stress is something else. Chronic anxiety, sleep deprivation, loneliness, overwork, unremitting inflammation and relentless strenuous exercise do not reliably produce hormesis. They produce allostatic overload—the cost of having the emergency machinery switched on for too long.

The body needs punctuation. Stress is the exclamation mark; recovery is the full stop.

The Most Useful Hormetic Stressor: Muscular Work

Resistance training is probably the most valuable controlled stressor for an older adult. Muscles need to be given a reason to remain. If they are never required to push, pull, carry, rise, grip or stabilize, the body quite economically dismantles what it considers unnecessary tissue.

The exercise must be challenging enough that the final repetitions require genuine effort, while remaining technically safe. That might mean weights, resistance bands, machines, sit-to-stands, wall push-ups, stair climbing or carrying groceries. The ideal method is the one that can be progressively increased without provoking injury.

Large systematic reviews of trials in older adults show that resistance training improves strength, function and, to varying degrees, muscle mass. Even very elderly people can improve. 

Brief bursts of vigorous activity can add another useful challenge. These have acquired the rather charming name exercise snacks: perhaps 30–60 seconds of brisk stair climbing, fast walking uphill or rapid cycling, repeated a few times during the day. Observational evidence associates small amounts of vigorous intermittent lifestyle activity with lower cardiovascular and overall mortality, although association does not prove that the brief bursts alone caused the benefit. 

For an 81-year-old, “vigorous” should be defined personally. It means sufficiently demanding to produce heavier breathing, not an invitation to discover whether the paramedics are having a quiet afternoon. Anyone with unstable cardiovascular symptoms, unexplained breathlessness, fainting, serious arrhythmia or uncontrolled blood pressure should be assessed before experimenting with vigorous exertion.

Heat: An Ancient Stress Signal

Heat exposure is another plausible hormetic practice. Sauna temporarily raises skin and core temperature, increases heart rate and redistributes blood flow. Cells respond by increasing heat-shock proteins, which help stabilize and repair other proteins. Repeated exposure may also improve vascular function and heat tolerance.

Finnish observational studies have found that more frequent sauna use is associated with lower cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, and possibly lower dementia risk. These are impressive associations, but they do not prove that sauna alone caused the benefits. Sauna users may differ in exercise, income, social connection, diet and general health. Reviews nevertheless conclude that Finnish sauna bathing has one of the more substantial bodies of evidence among passive heat practices. 

A practical approach might be 10–20 minutes at a tolerable temperature, perhaps two or three times weekly, leaving immediately if dizziness, nausea, chest discomfort or unusual weakness develops. Hydration matters. Alcohol and sauna are an especially foolish partnership because of hypotension and arrhythmia risk. People with unstable heart disease, severe aortic stenosis, recurrent fainting or poorly controlled blood pressure need individual medical advice.

A hot bath may provide a gentler alternative. It does not reproduce every feature of sauna, but it can supply a modest thermal challenge and may benefit vascular function. Passive heat is especially interesting for people whose mobility limits vigorous exercise, although it should complement movement rather than replace it.

Cold can be a stressor too, however, the evidence is far less triumphant than the evangelists imply. One does not need to sit heroically in a dustbin full of ice! 

Finishing a normal shower with 20–30 seconds of cool water, gradually extended if enjoyable and well tolerated, can provide a mild challenge. Cold-water swimming should never be undertaken alone, and sudden immersion is particularly unsuitable for someone with significant heart disease, arrhythmia, uncontrolled hypertension or a history of fainting.

Cold immediately after resistance training may actually be counterproductive when muscle growth is the goal, because suppressing the acute inflammatory and signaling response may reduce part of the adaptation. 

Temporary Hunger Rather Than Constant Grazing

Food scarcity was intermittent throughout human evolution. Constant access to calories is comparatively new. Allowing a daily period without food may encourage metabolic flexibility—the ability to move between glucose and fat metabolism—and may improve insulin sensitivity or assist weight control in some people.

A moderate overnight fast of roughly 12 hours is a reasonable starting point: finish dinner at 7:30 p.m. and eat breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Some people may extend this to 13 or 14 hours, preferably by avoiding late-night food rather than sacrificing breakfast and then devouring the kitchen at noon.

Time-restricted eating studies show modest improvements in weight and some metabolic markers, but it is not magic and is not invariably superior to ordinary calorie control. In older adults, the chief concern is protecting muscle. Adequate total protein, resistance training and sufficiently substantial meals are more important than achieving an impressive fasting window. Trials suggest that time-restricted eating can preserve lean tissue when combined with resistance training and adequate nutrition, but frail or underweight people should not treat fasting as a longevity competition. 

People taking insulin or sulfonylureas, those with a history of eating disorders, pregnant women, and frail or undernourished individuals need particular caution.

A Hormetic Lifestyle

An excellent week might include two or three strength sessions, several brisk walks, one or two brief vigorous intervals where medically appropriate, and regular balance work. Add sauna or a hot bath a few times weekly, an occasional cool shower, and a consistent overnight period without eating. Include novelty: take a different route, learn something difficult, talk to someone outside your usual circle, lift something moderately heavy, spend time outdoors in imperfect weather.

Then recover deliberately. Eat adequate protein and nourishing food. Sleep deeply. Alternate demanding days with easier ones. Maintain companionship, pleasure and periods of genuine calm.

The goal is not to collect stressors as if competing in the Hormetic Olympics. Heat, cold, fasting and hard exercise all draw upon overlapping recovery resources. Combining a long fast, exhausting workout, ice bath and sauna in one heroic morning may create more strain than adaptation.

A useful stressor should meet three conditions: it is brief enough to end, strong enough to provoke adaptation and followed by enough recovery to rebuild. If sleep deteriorates, resting heart rate remains elevated, performance declines, mood becomes brittle or fatigue persists, the dose has probably crossed from hormesis into harm.

Optimum health is not permanent ease. Neither is it perpetual struggle. The body does not want to be abused. But neither does it want to be treated as an invalid. Your body wants to have fun and putting it under mild pressure does that very effectively!

A little adversity tells the organism to renew itself. Too much adversity damages it. No adversity gives it permission to retire.

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References

Keith Scott-Mumby MEDICINE BEYOND, Mother Whale, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2015, p. 161

Mattson, Mark P. “Hormesis Defined.” Ageing Research Reviews. 2008;7(1):1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2007.08.007. 

Radak, Zsolt; Chung, Hae Young; Koltai, Erika; Taylor, Albert W.; Goto, Sataro. “Exercise, Oxidative Stress and Hormesis.” Ageing Research Reviews. 2008;7(1):34–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2007.04.004. 

Laukkanen, Jari A.; Laukkanen, Tanjaniina; Kunutsor, Setor K. “Cardiovascular and Other Health Benefits of Sauna Bathing: A Review of the Evidence.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2018;93(8):1111–1121. 

Cain, Tara; Watters, David; Chalmers, Sarah; et al. “Effects of Cold-Water Immersion on Health and Wellbeing: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” PLOS ONE. 2025. 

Borde, Ron; Hortobágyi, Tibor; Granacher, Urs. “Dose–Response Relationships of Resistance Training in Healthy Old Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Sports Medicine. 2015;45(12):1693–1720. 

Stamatakis, Emmanuel; Ahmadi, Matthew N.; Gill, Jason M. R.; et al. “Association of Wearable Device-Measured Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity With Mortality.” Nature Medicine. 2022;28(12):2521–2529. 

I’ve said this often in my writings: that purpose (meaning) in life and belonging (social connection) are worth decades of extra living. In the reverse, if your life has no purpose or meaning, it’s not (or hardly) worth living anyway and people lacking these attributes do tend to die measurably sooner.

Now I don’t mean extension of life while troubled by sickness and disabilities. I’m talking about joyful, vibrant and zestful living, in vigorous full health, or close to full health.

That’s a standard not even acknowledged by modern industrial-scale medicine. Their self-serving definition of “health” is free of some symptom or other. What’s great for them is that you get tricked into accepting a symptom solution. But it never solves the cause, only masks the symptom. It’s a perfect business model for them because you go on paying for that masking effect for the rest of your life.

Now I’m very serious about this. Let’s take purpose first. Your purpose defines the meaning in your life; the WHY you are here and what it is you want to accomplish. Maybe you’ve never thought about this much but as the years lengthen, you need to focus more and more on what it is you should be doing.

The scientific facts are irrefutable: a recent (July 2026) huge meta-analytic study of nearly half a million subjects from the United States, Europe, and Asia, over a period of 32 years follow-up, showed those with a strong sense of purpose had around a 30% less mortality, that is death due to all causes.

[[Psychological Medicine , Volume 56 , 2026 , e214]

Now if that isn’t a new scripture, I don’t know what is! Forget obedience and reverence for the Old God; that’s not worth a nickel in terms of longevity and health. For real meaning, it comes down to your own values; not some clunky interpretations of how you are supposed to live by priests and gatekeepers, heavily enforced by threats of Hell and damnation.

So breathe easy!

My New God, as described in my bestselling book New God New World, blesses you with extra years of health and vitality, if you get it right. Much better than punishment for getting it wrong!

There is already substantial literature that links purpose in life to healthier behaviors and better health outcomes. Individuals higher in purpose in life, for example, tend to engage in more physical activity, are less likely to smoke or use other substances, and more likely to get preventative cancer screenings. Perhaps as a result, such individuals are also less likely to have chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, or dementia.

In a nutshell, individuals higher in purpose in life have longer health spans and lower risk of mortality. These days we like to keep these two measures as close as possible. Lifespan is how you long you live but “healthspan” is how many of those years are useful and disease-free!

My saying that: we Boomers want to party till our last day on earth sums it all up in a memorable trope. 100% healthspan!

So what about belonging? In fact what do we mean by “belonging”? It’s that sense of being surrounded by people like us, who process the world in the same way, and among whom we are valued as an individual. Usually we know each others names and live in the same neighborhood. We share values and calendar dates.

What is often studied is religious community and I don’t accept that as enough. It doesn’t tell us whether spiritual beliefs are important, or just the sense of belonging. But there are interesting facts to be gleaned.

Religious attendance is associated with U.S. adult mortality in a tiered fashion: People who never attend exhibit 1.87 times the risk of death in the follow-up period (nearly double) compared with people who attend more than once a week. This translates into a seven-year difference in life expectancy at age 20 between those who never attend and those who attend more than once a week.

Again, I emphasize that spirituality and religion are not the same thing. But I do recognize the shaky connection that most people hold: they think being religious is the same, or as good as, spirituality. Suffice it to say, it comprises the relationship with the sacred and the search for the transcendent, in addition to the personal search for existential issues related to the end of life, to its meaning, which may or may not lead to the development of religious practices or be linked to organized religion. 

[Koenig et al., 2012;Lucchetti et al., 2010]

But there’s something rather important hiding inside these statistics. What if the health benefits attributed to religion are not really about religion at all?

What if much of the benefit comes from belonging?

Think about the traditional church community. You don’t merely turn up to hear a sermon. People know your name. They notice when you aren’t there. They ask how you are. They know your husband, wife, children and grandchildren. They may visit you when you are sick. There are dinners, coffee mornings, choirs, charity events, celebrations, funerals and weddings. There is a rhythm of human connection.

You matter to somebody.

That last sentence is enormous.

One of the most damaging experiences a human being can have is the feeling that nobody would particularly notice if you disappeared. It doesn’t have to be dramatic loneliness. You can be surrounded by people and still feel profoundly disconnected. Conversely, you can live alone and yet feel wonderfully connected because you have friends, causes, groups, correspondence, projects and people who are delighted to hear from you.

Belonging is not the same thing as merely having people around.

It is the feeling that I have a place here.

I think this becomes increasingly important as we grow older because society has a nasty habit of gradually removing our roles. You retire and suddenly you are no longer the doctor, teacher, businessman, engineer, secretary or whatever identity carried you through much of adult life. Children grow up. They have their own families. You’re not quite the parent any more. Friends move away. Some die. The world begins, rather rudely, to suggest that perhaps your principal occupation now should be growing old.

Rubbish!

This is exactly when we should be constructing new roles.

We should be asking: Who needs me? What excites me? What am I learning? What am I contributing? Who are my people? What can I still create?

Especially that last one.

Human beings are creators. We make gardens, businesses, friendships, books, meals, jokes, families, music, inventions, communities and sometimes glorious trouble. Creation gives consciousness somewhere to go.

Retirement should never mean retirement from purpose.

Indeed, I think one of the greatest mistakes in our culture is the idea that the objective of working life is eventually to reach a point where we have nothing to do. People fantasize about endless leisure. But endless leisure can become remarkably empty. A holiday is wonderful partly because it is a holiday from something. Make the holiday permanent and by about Thursday afternoon you may begin wondering what you are supposed to do with yourself!

Purpose needn’t be grand. It doesn’t mean you need to save humanity, discover a new planet or write War and Peace.

Purpose can be wonderfully modest.

Growing the best tomatoes in Nevada can be purpose. Teaching your granddaughter to cook can be purpose. Caring for animals can be purpose. Joining a singing group can be purpose. Writing your memories can be purpose. Helping someone who is struggling can be purpose. Learning Italian at 82 can certainly be purpose, especially if you have the additional incentive of planning to flirt outrageously in Rome!

The scale doesn’t matter. The aliveness does.

Purpose means tomorrow contains something that matters.

And this is where purpose and belonging join hands. Very often our strongest purposes involve other people. We teach, help, encourage, build, entertain, comfort, organize, share and love. Purpose draws us outward and connection feeds something back.

That reciprocal flow may be one of the most powerful health tonics available to us.

We already know that social isolation and loneliness are associated with increased risks of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, depression and premature mortality. The magnitude is large enough that loneliness is no longer something medicine can dismiss as merely an unfortunate emotional state. Social connection belongs in the health conversation alongside exercise, nutrition, sleep and the rest.

But I want to go further than simply saying, “Don’t be lonely.” We need to create belonging deliberately.

That may mean joining something. Better still, it may mean starting something.

If you cannot find your tribe, build one!

Invite six interesting people to supper once a month. Start a walking group. Form a discussion circle. Volunteer somewhere. Join a choir. Start painting with others. Find people who share your spiritual interests. Teach something you know. Learn something you don’t know.

And please don’t make the mistake of thinking friendship is something that just happens spontaneously when we are young and therefore cannot be created later in life. Friendship is partly an activity, not a passive happening. It needs tending. Somebody has to make the phone call. Somebody has to suggest lunch. Somebody has to say, “Come over Thursday.”

Why shouldn’t that somebody be you?

You don’t need identical beliefs to belong. You need mutual recognition and connecting values. Is all!

And I suspect this brings us close to the real reason that purpose and belonging affect longevity. They tell the organism that life is still happening.

There are people to love. There are things to do. There are surprises still waiting. There is something worth getting up for tomorrow morning.

The body hears that message.

I don’t mean this merely as a metaphor. Psychology and physiology are not two entirely separate kingdoms. Our emotional lives influence sleep, inflammation, hormonal signaling, immune function, cardiovascular physiology, health behaviors and innumerable other processes. A life of engagement produces a very different biological environment from a life of chronic isolation, helplessness and despair.

So perhaps we have been looking at longevity from the wrong end.

We obsess about what we should remove. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink too much. Don’t eat this. Don’t eat that. Reduce your cholesterol. Reduce your blood pressure. Reduce your weight.

Medicine loves subtraction. But perhaps longevity also requires addition.

• Add friendship.

• Add laughter.

• Add curiosity.

• Add usefulness.

• Add something you are looking forward to.

• Add people who are pleased when you walk through the door.

• Add a reason to get out of bed.

• And above all, add love.

This fits perfectly with my conception of the New God. I don’t see the Divine as some celestial accountant awarding bonus years because we have behaved ourselves. That takes us straight back to the old reward-and-punishment religious model that has failed dismally.

I see it much more naturally. Life flourishes when we participate in it. Consciousness seems to expand through relationship, creation, curiosity, service, pleasure, affection and meaning. We become more alive by being more alive.

We should probably stop using the expression “anti-aging.” Why should we be anti anything? Let’s just be pro-living! If that happens to produce extra years, excellent. I’ll take them!

Just been experimenting with some new portraits!

So Ask Yourself

What am I here for now? and Who are my people? If you have good answers to both, treasure them.

If you don’t, then perhaps you have just discovered your next great adventure. Because purpose is not something you have to find buried somewhere inside yourself, like a lost set of car keys. You can choose it. And belonging is not merely somewhere you arrive. You can create it.

Do those two things and you are no longer merely attempting to live longer. You are giving Mother Nature a very good reason to keep you around. And THAT is my kind of longevity medicine.

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

Of course there were exceptions and that shortfall didn’t apply to the Okinawans, Ikarians, Hunzas or other isolated groups. But nobody counted them and their ways, until starting around maybe the 80s. Interest in natural longevity gradually expanded over the years to become the “blue zones” concept, popularized by Daniel Buettner, a National Geographic Explorer and Fellow, and Emmy-Award winning journalist. A blue zone is a territory with an extraordinary high concentration of healthy old people, notably centenarians.

A healthy Ikarian (Blue Zones) Diet

Note that I said healthy: a large population of doddery dotards would mean nothing. Just some trick of the light perhaps! But if they live far longer than most AND keep their health faculties in good working order, that’s the start of a path to discovery, surely?

Up until the twenty first century the perception of aging was that it was inevitable. We had no control over it. Attitude of mind was irrelevant. Sooner or later you began to crumble and descend into a miserable dotage of frailty, cognitive impairment, aches and pains and severe limitation of movement.

Some years ago I wrote a piece titled Do You Want To Be An Old Crock Or A Classic Car? The difference between a rust-bucket old banger that has to be sent to the crushers and a decades-older beautiful smooth-running classic car is simple and obvious: the classic car has been properly looked after. We should treat our bodies in the same way and take care of them; otherwise you will become an old crock. The conclusion is still valid and the piece continues to change reader’s perceptions.

A lot of people I talked to at the time had a blunt-force thinking attitude of “I don’t care. I don’t want to grow old and suffer. I’d rather die.” This was very unfortunate because, like it or not, people were starting to live longer and longer, but not necessarily healthily. By the time you reach 80-some and are suffering from stooped posture, aches and pains, limitation of movement, difficulty remembering, incontinence and other indignities of old age, it’s too late to have a change of heart. You have ruined your prospects of a zestful old age and must pay the price.

[Of course it’s never too late to make wise and health-giving changes and derive at least some benefit]

The point is that people get what they expect to get. If you are sold into the story that old age is an infirmity, you can expect a fairly unpleasant ride through your dotage.

And don’t listen to dismissive doctors. Most of them go on with the same old line, “Aging is inevitable. There’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to put up with it.” It’s errant nonsense. Any doctor who utters those words is criminally bad, or just plain ignorant. You want to work with a doctor who offers detailed advice about diet and nutrition, staying active, keeping inflammation at an absolute minimum and, above all, setting the right positive mental attitude. “You are what you eat” is an old, old trope in medicine but there is also a twin phrase, equally valid: you are what you think you are!

Now we Boomers (and the up-and-coming Gen-X, Millennials and Gen-Z) are well served by a positive and fun-loving approach to life. It’s been my slogan for decades that we Boomers want to go on partying till our last day on earth. That brings up an important health definition: it is to distinguish between lifespan and so-called “healthspan.” Lifespan is how long we remain alive; healthspan means how many of those years are healthy, enjoyable and trouble-free.

Ideally we want the two measures to be very close. Get rid of the idea of your “final years”, meaning the difficult troubled times as you struggle to cope. If you wake up one morning, healthy and zestful, have a great day and then go to sleep, never to wake up, that’s a great ways for it all to end, you’ll agree.

That’s the benchmark to aim for. It’s the exit I preach!

Brain Health

Now, let’s separate out the issue of brain health and talk about that. We are not a brain, there is abundant evidence for that statement but it is completely ignored by the establishment. There are individuals walking around with next to no brain (less than 1%) and yet no-one can tell there is anything amiss; memory is excellent. One case known to me went to college, got a degree and began to practice accountancy.

But our brain is still important. It’s the main biological organ for connectivity with the outside world. So we should rightly look after it and be concerned for its effective functioning. Not surprisingly, brain health is now the number one concern for elders, ahead of cardiovascular health and cancer prevention (AARP 2025 Health Priorities Survey).

Yet decades of obsession with low-fat diets has done much damage. It’s a misguided obsession with the supposed harms of saturated fat, built on false science perpetrated by Ancel Keys in the 1970s (he was being paid by the sugar industry to distract attention from the damage cause by high sugar intake). He simply faked or distorted his findings by omitting countries with a high fat intake and good health and omitting countries with a low fat intake that were overall unhealthy.

Here are 2 graphs, the first that Ancel Keys published (which looks convincing) and the second is with all the countries he studied included, which shows virtually no connection between heart disease and fat intake:

It took nearly fifty years for the facts to emerge and there are still die-hards who won’t give up their pet hypothesis that fats are bad for us. Unfortunately, our brains are around 60% fat. So for decades we have been starving our brains and the result is an epidemic of dementias. Moreover heart disease, which was supposed to be being solved by Ancel Keys’ research, has continued to rise, relentlessly. So he was well wide of the truth – but that was his aim.

The story of cholesterol runs along similar tracks. Cholesterol has been demonized to the extent that people fear it as deadly and take complex drugs, with dangerous side effects, to combat it. The aim is to get your cholesterol levels as low as is possible. Yet our brains hold 20% of the total cholesterol in your body! Fighting against cholesterol is to deprive and damage your brain!

Science gets very muddled when big business dollars get into the mix and distort the truth. Ain’t that so!

To your health,

She always looked so vibrant and healthy, though I did read reports recently of her having to cancel or pull back on public performances, due to health issues.

When the C word was finally used, it became more understandable. Poor old Dolly had such faith in the medical profession (to the point of donating $1million to Moderna’s Fauci scam). But I doubt the doctors did her any good, for all her wealth.

Anyway, I don’t want to discuss Dolly’s health beyond that. Not relevant or none of our business!

But the issue was raised (by her) that the years of looking after her beloved husband Carl Thomas Dean, as a caregiver, took its toll. She admitted to rather letting her own health decline, though neglect, while looking after him. That’s something we can’t afford to do, at any age.

It made me think a good deal on one of my walks. It could be a maxim, that we MUST look after ourselves, well into old age, so we do not become a burden on our spouse or relatives. It’s not fair to take the view “I don’t care about preserving health.” It’s just passing the buck and means someone else will get all the dirty work that you are laying up.

And it doesn’t work to just say, “I’ll go into hospital or a home.” Unless you are VERY rich, that will soon burn through all your capital. Besides, your family may not want that for you and will sacrifice themselves to keep you outside the system and in their loving care.

No, it really comes down to a DUTY, that we must take care of ourselves as fully as possible, for as long as possible.

In a lively video titled “I ain’t dead yet!”, Dolly explained: “Back when my husband Carl was sick, that was a long time, and then he passed, I didn’t take care of myself, so I let a lot of things go that I should have been taking care of.”

Parton’s husband, Carl Dean, died in March 2025. While the couple never disclosed what disease he had, Parton shared that he was “ill for quite a while.”  We don’t know how she didn’t take care of herself, but her few words speak volumes given that she had been taking such extensive care of her husband.

When you care for someone else, it is all too easy to neglect to care for yourself.

63 Million in The USA Alone

There are 63 million caregivers in the USA, a nearly 50% increase since 2015.

Demographics: One in every four adults is a caregiver. Of these, 94% care for adults, and one in three is under age 50. Caregivers are increasingly diverse across race, income, and generation. 29% are sandwich generation caregivers, supporting both children and adults. 

Intensity and Complexity: Over 40% of caregivers now provide high-intensity care. Many perform complex medical tasks like administering injections or managing equipment, yet only 22% receive training. 

Health and Financial Strain: One in five caregivers report poor health; a quarter are taking on debt due to caregiving. Half report negative financial impact due to caregiving, and one in five cannot afford basic needs like food. 

Workplace Impact: Seven in ten family caregivers are employed, but many face disruptions and lack access to supportive benefits.

In fact only 11 million of the 63 million caregivers receive any compensation, through Medicaid, VA, or other state programs. These caregivers are more likely to be younger, lower-income, and from diverse backgrounds. 

Caregiving Comes With A Serious Health Risk

Some 23% of caregivers report that they find it difficult to pay attention to their own health while caring for another, according to a report from the National Alliance for Caregiving and the AARP. 

Carers often neglect routine health visits and screening, which might detect problems before they get started proper. Also, when people are spending much of their days dealing with hospitals or at doctor’s offices with those they care for, they just don’t want to spend any precious free time in a medical setting for themselves.

Moreover, when a caregiver takes their care partner to a doctor’s appointment, hospital or treatment, they are rarely asked how they, the caregiver, are doing, or if they need support.

There is a huge emotional toll, including anxiety, guilt and depression. On top of that there is a limitation of capacity to socialize or do things like attend shows, or literary meetings and gatherings.

Even those who do long-distance caregiving can experience burnout and self-neglect. The average family caregiver spends 27 hours a week on care and many put in 40 hours or more. There is an intensity that comes with caring for someone with a serious illness, which doesn’t leave much room for self-care.

Close to two-thirds of caregivers report emotional stress, and 45% report physical strain. There is the additional burden of loneliness, experienced by nearly a quarter of all caregivers who may be missing opportunities to socialize and connect outside their homes, away from the family members and friends they care for.

Love Becomes Captivity

One of the cruellest aspects of family caregiving is that love can quietly turn into captivity. The caregiver begins by helping someone they love, and months or years later discovers that almost every hour, decision and emotion revolves around somebody else’s needs.

Here’s are some strategies which will act as ways of giving the caregiver at least some of their life back.

1. Stop believing that love requires unlimited availability

This may be the most important one. A caregiver can love someone profoundly without being available every minute of every day. Yet guilt creates the feeling that going shopping, meeting a friend, taking an afternoon off—or simply closing the bedroom door and reading a book—is somehow abandonment.

It isn’t.

The caregiver needs protected periods in which they are off duty. Not “off duty unless something happens.” Properly off duty. Someone else takes responsibility, the phone can be ignored, and for two or three hours they become themselves again.

That psychological separation can be enormously restorative.

2. Build a team—even a tiny one

Caregiving becomes particularly destructive when one person becomes the indispensable person. Everything comes through them: medication, meals, appointments, washing, transport, emotional reassurance, emergencies.

Instead of vaguely telling relatives, “I could use some help,” give people ownership of specific jobs.

One person does Tuesday shopping. Someone else takes the patient to appointments. A neighbor sits with them Thursday afternoon. Another relative makes three freezer meals. Somebody else handles insurance paperwork.

People are often surprisingly willing to help but remarkably bad at inventing ways of doing so.

The caregiver should become the coordinator of care, not necessarily the provider of every piece of care.

3. Create one sacred piece of the day

Even where respite care is impossible, reclaim something small that belongs absolutely to the caregiver.

Perhaps 7:00–7:30 every morning is coffee in the garden. Perhaps there is an evening walk. An hour of painting. Music through headphones. Meditation. Gardening. A long bath. Twenty minutes sitting in sunlight doing absolutely nothing useful.

The activity matters less than the principle:

“This piece of my life still belongs to me.”

That is sovereignty in miniature—and sometimes miniature sovereignty is where recovery begins.

4. Put pleasure on the schedule

Caregivers become terribly efficient. Meals, medications, laundry, doctors, cleaning, appointments, prescriptions. Life turns into one enormous checklist.

Pleasure gets postponed until “things settle down.”

They may never settle down.

So pleasure has to become an appointment too. Lunch with a friend next Wednesday. A movie Saturday afternoon. A massage. A concert next month. Sunday breakfast somewhere beautiful.

There is something psychologically powerful about having a pleasurable event ahead of you. A caregiver needs things on the calendar that are not connected with illness.

5. Refuse unnecessary perfection

This is a huge thief of caregiver energy.

The house doesn’t have to be immaculate. Every meal doesn’t have to be freshly cooked. Every visitor doesn’t need entertaining. Every minor discomfort doesn’t require immediate intervention. And sometimes frozen lasagna is not evidence of moral collapse.

Ask repeatedly:

“Does this actually need doing?”

Then:

“Does it need doing by me?”

Those two questions can liberate hours.

Caregiving should operate on the principle of “good enough”, not domestic sainthood!

6. Protect the relationship from becoming purely clinical

This is especially important when caring for a spouse.

Gradually the relationship can become nurse and patient rather than husband and wife, partners, lovers, siblings or friends. Every conversation becomes: Did you take your tablets? Have you eaten? How is the pain? When did you last go to the bathroom?

Illness takes over the relationship.

Deliberately create moments in which illness is banned from the conversation. Watch an old comedy together. Look through photographs. Gossip outrageously. Play cards. Listen to music from when you were young. Talk about people you both knew.

Try occasionally to meet person to person rather than caregiver to patient.

Both people need that.

7. Maintain a life outside the illness

Caregiving shrinks one’s world. Friends disappear—not necessarily through indifference, but because invitations repeatedly get declined. Hobbies disappear. Travel disappears. Eventually the caregiver can lose contact with the person they were before the illness arrived.

Fight that contraction deliberately.

Keep friendships alive. Keep one hobby going. Keep learning something. Go somewhere new occasionally. Maintain conversations with people who don’t begin by asking, “How is he?” or “How is she?”

And when somebody asks the caregiver how they are, they should be allowed to answer truthfully.

The patient has an illness. The caregiver does not have to become part of the illness.

8. Give yourself permission to enjoy being alive

This may be the deepest one.

Caregivers sometimes experience a peculiar guilt when they enjoy themselves. How can I be laughing when she is suffering? How can I go out to dinner when he cannot? How can I possibly take a holiday?

But, honestly, the suffering of one person is not reduced by requiring another person to suffer alongside them.

In fact, quite the reverse. A caregiver who sleeps, laughs, socializes, exercises, sees daylight, experiences affection and occasionally has a thoroughly wonderful time comes back with more emotional resources to give.

Joy is not a betrayal of the person you care for. Joy is part of what keeps you capable of caring.

That might actually be the central thought of this piece. We speak endlessly about care for the patient, but perhaps we need to enlarge the concept. The caregiver is part of the care system too. If that person becomes exhausted, anxious, resentful, isolated and joyless, the entire system begins to fail.

The goal therefore isn’t merely to help caregivers “cope.”

It’s to make sure that, while looking after somebody else’s life, they don’t accidentally surrender their own.

God bless you, Dolly! You were a blazing light!

To Your Good Health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

Data Source:

AARP and National Alliance for Caregiving. Caregiving in the US 2025. Washington, DC: AARP. July 24, 2025. https://doi.org/10.26419/ppi.00373.001

A particularly telling case was published in 2009 because the victim happened to be wearing a continuous heart-rate monitor, giving the investigators unusually good timing data.

A healthy 48-year-old Norwegian man capsized while kayaking in 3.5°C seawater. He remained conscious for some time as he cooled. Eventually he became unconscious, submerged completely and went into cardiac arrest. His personal heart monitor enabled the physicians to reconstruct the sequence unusually accurately.

Their estimate was: about 31 minutes from cardiac arrest/head submersion until CPR began.

During that interval there was therefore no effective circulation and, to all practical purposes, no breathing or ventilation whatsoever. 

And it gets stranger. He then remained in cardiac arrest while being resuscitated for hours. Cardiopulmonary bypass was established 121 minutes after cardiac arrest, and sustained spontaneous circulation was not restored until 207 minutes — 3 hours 27 minutes — after arrest. 

Yet his neurological examination eventually showed no focal brain damage. Formal neuropsychological testing one year later showed cognitive function at or above population averages, and he returned to his work as an engineer and resumed kayaking.¹

They think that one case which follows their pattern “proves” their story. I say JUST ONE case the contradicts orthodox beliefs proves there is much to learn about the process of physical death.

Then there is an astonishing 83-minute case.

In 2015, Romlin and colleagues reported a 7-year-old girl submerged in icy seawater for an estimated at least 83 minutes.

When recovered she was in cardiac arrest, with ice actually present in her upper airway. Yikes! Her first documented nasopharyngeal temperature was only 13.8°C (normal is 37°C). She was rewarmed and made what the authors explicitly called an “excellent” and “exceptional” recovery, although treatment and rehabilitation were prolonged. 

This case is important because 83 minutes is a documented submersion duration, unable to breathe atmospheric air, not 83 minutes of CPR.

Here’s another…

In 1986, 2½-year-old Michelle Funk was completely submerged in an icy Utah stream for at least 66 minutes. When recovered she was without breath and pulseless. Her core temperature eventually measured about 19°C.

After prolonged CPR and extracorporeal rewarming she appeared to make an extraordinary neurological recovery. The original JAMA report described it as a “good neurologic recovery.”²

And Now The New World Record: At Least 147 Minutes!

This one is extraordinary and was only published in 2025.

An 8-year-old boy in Pennsylvania fell through pond ice and remained submerged for at least 147 minutes; the estimated range was approximately 147–177 minutes. His peripheral temperature on recovery was measured at an extraordinary 7°C (45°F). He had no heartbeat (asystolic). CPR was continued during transport and he was placed on VA-ECMO (an intensive, temporary life-support system that takes over the functions of both the heart and the lungs) and rewarmed. 

The authors explicitly describe this as the longest documented submersion survival in the medical literature.³

But — and this is a large BUT — he did not recover totally without adverse effects.

MRI showed early hypoxic-ischaemic changes. At six months he could stand unsupported, ride a tricycle, eat soft foods and obey simple commands, but he was still relearning basic tasks and recovering from neuromuscular weakness. The paper authors used the expression “meaningful neurological recovery”.

So we can say this: There is no precise instant at which cessation of breathing becomes death. Breathing can cease, circulation can cease and every ordinary outward sign of life can disappear, yet under exceptional conditions the process may still be reversible. Documented cases include apparently complete neurological recovery after more than half an hour without spontaneous respiration or circulation, and exceptional neurological recovery after more than 80 minutes of cold-water submersion. Human beings have survived documented submersion for at least 147 minutes, although the most extreme survivor sustained some neurological injury and had to re-learn basic tasks.

Medicine is incautious by pronouncing that circulation has “permanently” ceased or that the brain has “permanently” lost its capacity to function. It cannot point to cessation of breathing or even the first flat ECG and say, in every circumstance, “There. That was the moment the person ceased to exist.”

Indeed, these cases rather demolish that idea.

Many of these recovery cases have no “memory” of what took place while they were deeply unconscious. But some do.

The largest prospective study is the AWARE Study, led by Sam Parnia, with Peter Fenwick. Among more than 2,000 cardiac arrests, survivors reported a spectrum of experiences. About 9% described experiences meeting accepted criteria for a near-death experience, while about 2% reported explicit awareness of actual events occurring during resuscitation. One patient gave a verifiable account of events, meaning he was aware of what was happening around him, during a period when cerebral function would not normally have been expected to support conscious awareness.⁴

There are also numerous other published case reports.

One review from India described three patients surviving severe illness or trauma. All three reported classic features:

• an out-of-body experience,

• heightened awareness,

• vivid perception,

• and lasting psychological change after recovery. 

Interestingly, the authors noted that some details faded with time, suggesting that these memories may behave differently from ordinary autobiographical memories.⁵

From the medical literature over the past 40 years, certain features recur with surprising consistency:

• a sense of leaving the body,

• unusually clear or “more real than real” consciousness,

• encounters with deceased relatives or beings,

• overwhelming peace or unconditional love,

• panoramic life review,

• reluctance to return,

• profound and lasting changes in personality and values.

Whether these experiences arise entirely from brain physiology or represent consciousness continuing under extraordinary conditions remains an open question. The experiences themselves are well documented; the interpretation remains debated.

No matter: very often what happens is the person have a vivid and typically joyful experience which seems to liberate him or her. After “dying” and then coming back the individual seems develop a powerful sense of personal existence that cannot be shaken by mere death.

Some survivors begin preaching, others running courses, some write a book, on what it really means to be alive.

Meantime let me remind you of the words of that beautiful song “The Rose” (verse 2):

It’s the heart, afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
It’s the dream, afraid of waking
That never takes the chance

It’s the one who won’t be taking
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul, afraid of dying
That never learns to live

We all get nearer the final exit, every day a step nearer. But it is nothing to fear. Remember, we cannot UN-be. That just can’t happen.

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor

References:

1. Heart rate monitored hypothermia and drowning in a 48-year-old man. survival without sequelae: a case report. Cases J. 2009 Aug 18;2:6204. doi: 10.4076/1757-1626-2-6204
2. Bolte, Robert G.; Black, Philip G.; Bowers, Robert S.; Thorne, J. Kent; Corneli, Howard M. “The Use of Extracorporeal Rewarming in a Child Submerged for 66 Minutes.” JAMA. 1988;260(3):377–379. doi:10.1001/jama.1988.03410030093036
3. Bartoli, Carlo R.; Wong, Ronald; Mazandi, Vanessa M.; Fairman, Alexander S.; Maffei, Frank A. “Ice Water Drowning Survival After 147-Minute Submersion and 7 °C Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest.” JACC: Case Reports. 2025;30(25):104885. doi:10.1016/j.jaccas.2025.104885
4. Near death experiences, cognitive function and psychological outcomes of surviving cardiac arrest. Resuscitation. Volume 74, Issue 2, August 2007, Pages 215-221
5. Purkayastha M, Mukherjee KK. Three cases of near death experience: Is it physiology, physics or philosophy? Ann Neurosci. 2012 Jul;19(3):104-6. doi: 10.5214/ans.0972.7531.190303. PMID: 25205979; PMCID: PMC4117086

For this newsletter I’m side-stepping eliminating the bad (avoiding what I call “Bandit Foods”), which are inflammatory, and just looking at the positive qualities of a range of foods which help protect against cancer—or which will help fight it, if you have already been unlucky enough to contract cancer.

Don’t forget my “3 Pillars of Healing” in this context:

1. Good nutrition, including avoidance what your body doesn’t tolerate

2. Chemical clean up of your personal environment

3. Psychological detox (this is the one which is usually omitted, often with disastrous consequences)

As for cancer-beating foods, remember the FDA, CDC, ACS and AMA do not admit such a concept. But then, their management of cancer is a disaster in the extreme.

Instead, we can turn to Loma Linda University, in California, for direct information concerning which foods might keep you safe. 

Loma Linda University, if you don’t know, is a Seventh Day Adventists institution. These are the people who live exceptionally long and healthy lives, which they attribute to vegetarianism and alcohol avoidance. Great for some but certainly not for everyone.

Research shows certain plant foods contain powerful compounds — called phytochemicals — that can help fight cancer and reduce the risk of its development. These specific foods may hold a key to prevent the growth of cancer cells in the body, writes Andrew Woodward, an oncology nutritionist at Loma Linda University Cancer Center. 

[https://news.llu.edu/patient-care/7-foods-fight-cancer-heart-disease-and-enhance-health]

Thing is, it’s now well-known that inflammation has been shown to promote cancer cells to grow and spread. It so happens that foods are the worst and commonest sources of inflammation within the body, particularly manufactured foods, vitiated grains and processed seed oils.

But it gets tricky because few “experts” seem to know what I learned 40 years ago: every individual is different and everyone has their own inflammatory or “Bandit Foods.” You can’t generalize and say “these foods are good,” although you can say certain foods are “bad” but some good foods are bad for certain individuals. (my mother and sister, for example, get really sick if they accidentally eat anything from the lily family (onions, garlic, leeks, etc.)

But there is some common ground. Just don’t go supposing that one overall rule applies to everyone; for every “healthy” food you can name, I had dozens or scores of individuals who were made ill by it (Yes, even different spring waters)!

The Linda Loma University website focuses on certain food groups and calls them all functional, although I do not, for reasons just explained. But they are well worth including in your diet, if you fully tolerate them.

So much so that I have put a selection of these foods in my “Liquid Gold” reborn mix! (not that I am suggesting this is the same as eating a proper portion of each of the foods).

These are:

Berries — including acai, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, chokeberry, mangosteen, blackcurrant (packed with vitamin C), bilberries and lots of pomegranate. They taste sweet but technically are low in sugar (low glycemic index).

The darker berries (blueberry and blackberry, for example) contain blue-purple antioxidants called anthocyanins, that reduce inflammation and protect the brain from oxidation. These are king among antioxidants.

Berries also contain ellagic acid, which neutralizes carcinogens and has anti-tumor benefits. Blueberries contain pterostilbene — a powerful antioxidant and can reduce inflammation. 

Cruciferous vegetables — Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, cabbage, cauliflower, collard greens and kale are all considered cruciferous vegetables. These vegetables contain indole-3 carbinol (I3C), which reduces hormone-sensitive cancers; sulforaphane, which deactivates carcinogens; and fiber, which is a humble cancer preventive. 

Garlic and onions — The National Cancer Institute suggests garlic and onions may reduce the risk of stomach, colon, esophageal and breast cancer. Garlic is famous, of course, for its measurable anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory benefits, as well as cancer-fighting properties. Cancer prevention comes from many sulfur-containing substances, including allicin and diallyl sulfide (DAS), which appear to deactivate carcinogens and prevent DNA mutations. Onions offer many of the same benefits, providing quercetin and sulfur-containing molecules that block some carcinogens and induce apoptosis, a process that kills cancer-trending cells.

Hericium erinaceous (lion’s mane mushroom) is delicious, eaten raw!

Turmeric — Turmeric (active ingredient curcumin) is a golden-yellow colored seasoning used in many Indian dishes, curries and mustards. There have been more than 6,000 studies of Turmeric. Its anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antioxidant properties help fight cancer. Curcumin appears to reduce tumor reproduction, reduce blood vessel formation, reduce invasion and induce tumor cell death.

It’s not very bioavailable but, hey, just eat LOTS of it!

Spinach and other green leafy vegetables — Spinach is a powerhouse of nutrients whether eating raw, juiced or lightly cooked. Spinach is loaded with: vitamin K, which promotes blood clotting; carotenoids, which supports eye health and antioxidants; fiber; folate, which aids DNA formation and repair; and other phytochemicals. Several studies suggest that phytochemicals glycoglycerolipids and carotenoids fight cancer; especially prostate, breast and stomach types. 

You’ll read “Google experts” whining about oxalates in spinach, as if that was going to kill you! Baby spinach has less oxalate, so the absorption of calcium and iron is greater. Spinach and arugula also contain plant nitrates that produce nitric oxide and nourish the endothelium (inner lining) of blood vessels.

Ginger and other seasonings — Certain compounds found in ginger make it a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant food to reduce oxidative stress that your body has to fight on a daily basis. Ginger is also useful to calm the stomach and reduce nausea. Other seasonings such as basil, oregano, dill, cinnamon, clove and many others to flavor foods may well reduce inflammation. Using these in their dry form maintains their shelf life for about two years, while also preserving them in a concentrated form. Adding seasonings to recipes also reduces the need for excess salt, adding more antioxidants and add flavor.

Woodward also commends mushrooms, as I do. But there are none in my multi-formula. Mushrooms, in addition to adding flavor to foods, have an assortment of immune modulation substances called betaglucans. Other noteworthy benefits include antioxidants, reducing hormone-related tumors and reducing excess inflammation. These benefits can have the most impact when eating mushrooms that are fresh, cooked, powdered or dried.

Many other plant foods have cancer-fighting properties and health-enhancing benefits. “Add variety to a healthy diet with beets, carrots, chili peppers, citrus fruits, seaweed, tomatoes, etc,” Andrew Woodward says. “The more colors on your plate, the better.” I second that.

However, other factors are also important for cancer-prevention, such as exercising, avoiding toxin exposure, not smoking or consuming too much alcohol, sleeping well and controlling stress.

Talk with your healthcare provider if you have questions about cancer. 

For a simple nutrient-dense formula for health and longevity, take my Liquid Gold vitamin and minerals formula. It tastes delicious (fruity with jut a whiff of passion fruit (maracuja) and provides abundant quantities of key nutrients. I completely reworked it recently, from a white-label version to my own unique and brilliant—much needed—all in one!

One shot glass a day is all it takes to be safe from deficiencies (see why it is called Liquid Gold!)

Learn more here.

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

But in my unique position I know of lots of individuals who should have been OK (all the positive lifestyle factors in place) yet were not. It means there is still a lot to be learned.

Now, couple that with recent studies which purportedly showed that getting a shingles vaccination was partially protective against Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Do we care? What is it telling us? Are we impressed even?

Shingles you probably know is an extension of childhood chickenpox, caused by the varicella-zoster virus (aka. Herpes zoster). It becomes re-activated in later life as a burning, itchy sometimes painful, rash, which can usually be seen lying along the pathway of nerves. Not surprising, since the virus hangs out for years in the peripheral nerves.

One very painful outcome is a condition called post-herpetic neuralgia. Treatment for that has at times reached desperate measures, including repeatedly hitting the painful part with mallets when I was at med school! Personally, I always found that homeopathic Ranunculus did the job of clearing it very well.

Obviously then, because it’s unpleasant, shingles became a natural target for a vaccine. Eventually in 2017 we got Shingrix, from Glaxo-Smith-Kline. It is claimed to reduce the incidence of shingles in adults by over 90%.¹

So far, so good. Lots of profits for us and less pain and trouble for the patients!

Understand, these reductions are not massive (2-5% range) but it does indicate something is going on. But what?

Certainly the focus is on brain tissue. The varicella-zoster virus hangs out in the nervous system, as I said. Logically if there is a commotion of inflammation due to a latent virus, brain harm becomes a very real possibility. Blocking that virus from causing inflammation, as with a vaccine, makes sense.

Thus a study published June 16, 2026 in the Annals of Internal Medicine indicates 1 in 17 dementia cases could possibly be prevented by shingles vaccination. Patients in nursing facilities who had received at least one dose of the shingles vaccine within a year of admission had a 5.8% lower risk of developing dementia over the next four years, according to health records of more than 509,000 people, ages 66 and older, who had been admitted to U.S. nursing facilities from 2017 through 2022.²

A study of more than 282,000 older adults in Wales, published in Nature in 2025, found shingles vaccination was associated with a 3.5% reduction in dementia risk.³

Other studies have yielded comparable results. 

In reverse, a study published last year in the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease found that older adults in Italy, hospitalized with severe shingles, had a 13% higher risk of dementia compared to the general population!

Any Old Vaccine?

But here’s the thing. It doesn’t need to be a Herpes zoster vaccine. A startling recent study showed that having the BCG (anti-TB) vaccine also gave some protection against dementia!

It is known that BCG (and probably other vaccines) bolster what is known as “innate” immunity, that is the body’s anti-infection protection measures that do not depend on an antibody response. This very important mechanism is, of course, ignored by Big Pharma and vaccine manufacturers. It doesn’t fit their profit model.

They apply for approval based on tests which show that their vaccine induces antibodies. They don’t have to show it protects against any disease, as indeed is the case with measles, only that it produces antibodies. It’s a joke really. We can’t say how much good antibodies do but we can say YOU DON’T NEED THEM! Individuals with a condition called agammaglobulinemia, who are essentially void of B cells and so cannot produce any antibodies, nevertheless acquire normal antigen-specific memory T-cell responses, proving  that antibodies are not the sole basis of long-term immune memory.⁴

This demonstrates conclusively to me that innate or cellular immunity is far more powerful than “acquired” or antibody-based immunity. Yet doctors continually play down innate immunity.

BCG is known to induce “trained immunity,” a form of long-lasting reprogramming of innate immune responses of the non-antibody type. That’s slightly different from the memory of acquired immunity, as I say.

A pilot study provided evidence that BCG vaccination can alter immune activity not only in the blood, but also in immune cells found in the cerebrospinal fluid, the fluid which surrounds and bathes the brain and spinal cord.

“This study was not designed to show that BCG prevents or treats Alzheimer’s disease,” the lead author pointed out. “It was small, open-label, and designed to look at safety and biological mechanisms. But it gives us a biologically grounded rationale for testing whether immune training with BCG could be useful as an early prevention strategy for Alzheimer’s disease.”⁵

Beyond Plaques and Tau Proteins

The media—and you would think 90% of the medical profession—appear to be fixated on amyloid plaque and tau proteins as the “cause” of Alzheimer’s, which is nonsense.

In fact the abnormalities are likely the body’s own fight-back response and are therefore a good thing.

Alzheimer’s research suggests that the disease is really about immune aging, impaired clearance mechanisms, and chronic neuroinflammatory dysfunction. The role vaccines play in these processes is unclear, but a growing body of literature supports protective associations between vaccines targeting pathogens like influenza, pneumonia, or herpes zoster (shingles) and Alzheimer’s risk.

Yes, to cap it all, it is now emerging that the flu vaccine may give some protection against AD. One wonders where this is going to end!

In one particular study, they chose 65+ years individuals from 2009 to 2019 with a median follow up of 46 months. There were 935,887 matched pairs; 47,889 in the vaccinated group and 79,630 in the unvaccinated group. 5.1% of the vaccinated group developed AD and 8.5% in the unvaccinated group, showing a clear benefit for flu vaccination.

You could argue that was a 40% reduction of risk, which drug companies usually do. But really it is only a reduction of 3.4% overall.

It means we’d have to vaccinate 29 people to save one patient. Not so impressive.

But I’m bringing all this up about vaccines for a reason. A few years ago I raised the question: Is dementia something you “catch”; like a viral illness maybe? 

In 2016 I wrote about a series of fascinating studies highly suggestive of the fact that Herpes simplex #1 (HSV1) virus might be a contagious cause of AD. The work was done by Ruth Itzhaki, professor emeritus of molecular neurobiology at Britain’s University of Manchester (where I qualified in medicine!), and her figures were pretty persuasive. 

In March 2016, Itzhaki and a world-wide group of researchers published an editorial in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, asking the scientific community to consider a proposed link between Alzheimer’s and certain microbes, notably herpes simplex virus Type 1 (HSV-1), Chlamydia pneumoniae and spirochetes.⁶

Big Pharma wanted the research stifled because it was contrary to their amyloid plaque reduction drugs approach and resultant enormous profits.

Prof. Ruth Itzhaki made it to the prestigious Status List of leaders for 2025. I’ve been championing her work for over a decade. 

So although Itzhaki and her lab published their first paper in 1991 finding a clear HSV-1 link to Alzheimer’s and there have been over 100 published studies since then, from her lab and elsewhere, the research has gone nowhere.

Out of the $589 million allocated to Alzheimer’s research by the National Institutes of Health in 2015, exactly zero appeared to be spent on studying the proposed HSV-1 connection.

So they can go on saying “there’s no scientific proof” because there isn’t any; they are making sure of that.

Nearly all of us carry the Herpes simplex virus 1 or HSV-1 (the one that causes cold sores), our peripheral nervous system serves as its dormant nesting ground. From there, HSV-1 can reactivate and occasionally cause mild flare-ups of disease, typically when our immune system is overwhelmed due to stress or other infections. Itzhaki’s lab, however, found that by the time we reach our golden years, the virus often migrates to the brain, where it remains capable of resurrecting itself and wreaking a new sort of havoc when opportunity presents, such as when our immune system wavers in old age.

Itzhaki’s team has discovered the presence of HSV-1 in the telltale amyloid plaques used to diagnose Alzheimer’s, so I think she’s onto something here. 

It’s probably not a case of a straightforward viral presenting symptom but rather that viral and/or bacterial infections are just one ingredient in a soup of risk factors. But for Alzheimer’s, HSV-1 could be especially significant. Itzhaki has found that elderly people who carried both HSV-1 in the brain and the e-4 subtype of the APOE gene (responsible for creating a protein that helps transport cholesterol throughout the body) were 12 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than people without either. 

In a 1997 paper in The Lancet, Itzhaki’s group concluded that HSV-1 infection, in conjunction with APOE-e4, could account for about 60 percent of the Alzheimer’s cases they studied. Due to limited funds, however, her group was able to study only a relatively low number of cases.⁷

“If more funding had been available, more information would probably have been obtained, providing even more supportive data,” she says.

So, circling back to the vaccine benefit issue, I ask: is it possible that the vaccine brings on a more general immune response which leads to a reduction or slowing inflammation caused by other viruses, such as HSV-1?

In the case of the shingles vaccine, and if Itzhaki is right, then would it not make sense that giving an anti-Herpes shot could maybe calm or hold back inflammation due to a latent colony of the same family? And that vaccines aimed at other organisms, if they were effective via the cellular memory mechanism, could also, logically, bring about a certain degree of relief!

I think so. I hope so because, for all their clumsiness and stupid man-made additional dangers, vaccines essentially play to nature’s own skills!

Stay sharp!

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. https://www.cdc.gov/shingles/vaccines/index.html
2. dos Reis S, et al “Reduced risk of dementia with recombinant zoster vaccine in US adults age 65 or older” Alzheimer’s Dement 2026; DOI: 10.1002/alz.71407. Please note this study was financed by GSK and had their people in key positions in the study.
3. Nature 641, 438–446 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08800-x
4. Plebani A, et al. (1997). T cell activity and cytokine production in X-linked agammaglobulinemia. Clinical and Experimental Immunology. 109(2): 234–238
5. Weinberg MS, et al. “Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) immunotherapy reprograms CNS immunity and alters Alzheimer’s biomarkers: results from two open-label clinical trials” Commun Med 2026; DOI: 10.1038/s43856-026-01691-7
6. Microbes and Alzheimer’s Disease. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 51(4), 979–984. https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-160152
7. The Lancet, 349(9047), 241–244. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(96)10149-5

Get your flu shot.

The reasoning sounds straightforward enough. Influenza can be unpleasant, sometimes dangerous, and vaccination is presented as the best available protection. But what if the story is not quite that simple? What if, in some circumstances, repeated vaccination could actually make you more vulnerable to future influenza infections?

That possibility has a name that sounds almost biblical: original antigenic sin.

The term was coined by American virologist and immunologist Thomas Francis Jr. in the 1960s.¹

It describes the tendency of your immune system to become “imprinted” by its first encounters with a virus. Instead of responding flexibly to new viral variants, the immune system may continue to rely on old immunological memories, even when they are no longer the best match for the threat at hand.

In other words, your immune system can become stuck in the past and therefore of less use to you in the present! (you won’t read this in press releases).

Scientists today often use the gentler term immune imprinting, but the principle remains the same. Repeated exposure to similar vaccine antigens may sometimes narrow the range of immune responses available when a genuinely different influenza strain appears.

This is no longer merely a theoretical concern.

A major prospective study conducted by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic during the 2024–2025 influenza season followed 53,402 healthcare employees over 25 weeks. More than 82% of participants received the seasonal flu vaccine. Using sophisticated statistical analysis, the investigators found something unexpected: vaccinated employees experienced a significantly higher rate of influenza infection than their unvaccinated colleagues.

The calculated vaccine effectiveness was minus 26.9%.

Put simply, those who received the vaccine had a 27% higher risk of contracting influenza during the study period than those who did not receive it. The difference was statistically significant and persisted throughout the observation period.² 

The authors themselves suggested immune imprinting and repeated annual vaccination as possible explanations.

This was not the first warning signal.

During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, Canadian researchers reported that individuals who had received the seasonal influenza vaccine appeared to have an increased risk of infection with the novel pandemic strain. The findings generated considerable debate but have remained an important part of the scientific discussion surrounding immune imprinting and vaccine-induced susceptibility.³ 

None of this means influenza vaccines never work. In some years and for some populations they may offer meaningful protection. But it does challenge the simplistic assumption that more vaccination automatically equals more immunity.

Reality is often more complicated.

Safety concerns also deserve honest discussion. A wide range of adverse effects have been documented in the medical literature, including neurological, autoimmune, inflammatory, and hematological reactions. Most are uncommon, but they are real and should be part of any balanced risk-benefit assessment.

Yet while public health authorities devote enormous attention to vaccines, remarkably little attention is paid to alternatives that work through entirely different biological pathways.

One of the most intriguing is bovine colostrum.

Moo!

Colostrum is the first milk produced by mammals after giving birth. Rich in antibodies, immune factors, growth factors, lactoferrin, and signaling molecules, it serves as nature’s original immune support system.

For decades, researchers have investigated whether bovine colostrum could strengthen human immunity.

The results have been surprisingly impressive.

In 2007, researchers led by Gianni Cesarone studied high-risk cardiovascular patients and compared bovine colostrum supplementation with influenza vaccination. The findings were remarkable.

The colostrum group experienced significantly fewer episodes of influenza and respiratory illness. Overall protection appeared to be approximately three times greater than that achieved by vaccination. Even more striking, there were no hospital admissions in the colostrum group, while the vaccinated group experienced several hospitalizations and one death. Total healthcare costs associated with influenza and respiratory illness were reduced by approximately 70% among those taking colostrum.⁴ 

These are not trivial outcomes.

A follow-up investigation by Belcaro and colleagues in 2010 confirmed many of these benefits, again demonstrating substantial reductions in respiratory infections among individuals taking bovine colostrum.⁵ 

Why might colostrum work so well?

The answer lies in its fundamentally different mode of action.

Vaccines are highly specific. They attempt to train your immune system against predicted viral strains. If those predictions are accurate, protection may follow. If the virus changes substantially, effectiveness may fall.

Colostrum operates according to a different philosophy.

Rather than targeting a specific virus, it appears to strengthen the body’s overall immune competence.

It contains secretory immunoglobulins, especially IgA, which help defend mucosal surfaces such as the nose, throat, lungs, and digestive tract. It contains lactoferrin, a powerful iron-binding protein with antimicrobial and antiviral properties. It contains cytokines and growth factors that help regulate immune responses. 

It also supports the gut microbiome, increasingly recognized as a central player in immune resilience.

In effect, colostrum helps strengthen the terrain rather than chasing individual pathogens.

That distinction may be especially important in a world where viruses constantly mutate.

The obvious question is this: if the evidence is so promising, why don’t we hear more about it?

Think dollars. The global flu vaccine market was valued at nearly $8 billion in 2023 and is projected to exceed $17 billion within the next decade.

Bovine colostrum is a natural substance. The cost is for pennies. It cannot easily be patented. Without patent protection, there is little incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invest tens of millions of dollars in the large-scale clinical trials typically required for official policy endorsement.

That economic reality does not prove crooked dealings, but it certainly helps explain why some interventions receive enormous attention while others remain largely invisible.

The same pattern can be seen elsewhere.

Vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of influenza A by 59% in Japanese schoolchildren receiving 1,200 IU daily in a randomized controlled trial but you never hear about such science!⁶  Published studies have also reported benefits from probiotics, elderberry, echinacea, ginseng, and green tea extracts in supporting resistance to respiratory infections.

Yet these approaches rarely occupy center stage in public health messaging.

The lesson here is not that vaccines are always bad and natural remedies are always good.

The lesson is that you deserve the whole picture and you are never going to get it from dyed-in-the-wool doctors who listen only to Pharma science.

When evidence suggests that repeated vaccination may sometimes produce immune imprinting and even negative effectiveness, that evidence deserves attention, not being buried.

When a natural intervention such as bovine colostrum demonstrates superior outcomes in published clinical studies, that evidence deserves attention too.

Your immune system is not a machine waiting for annual software updates.

It is a dynamic, adaptive, extraordinarily sophisticated living self-regulating system that’s been in place of millions of years (long before Big Pharma and its profit takeover of “science”.

Perhaps the future of influenza prevention lies not in endlessly trying to outguess mutating viruses, but in learning how to strengthen the remarkable immune intelligence you already possess?

In other words, enhancing the terrain!

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References

1. Francis T Jr. On the doctrine of original antigenic sin. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 1960;104(6):572-578.
2. Shrestha NK, et al. Effectiveness of the Influenza Vaccine During the 2024–2025 Respiratory Viral Season. Cleveland Clinic cohort study, 2025.
3. Skowronski DM, De Serres G, Crowcroft NS, et al. Association between the 2008–09 seasonal influenza vaccine and pandemic H1N1 illness during spring–summer 2009: four observational studies from Canada. PLoS Medicine. 2010;7(4).
4. Cesarone MR, Belcaro G, Di Renzo A, et al. Prevention of influenza episodes with colostrum compared with vaccination in healthy and high-risk cardiovascular subjects. Clinical and Applied Thrombosis/Hemostasis. 2007;13(2):130-136.
5. Belcaro G, Cesarone MR, Dugall M, et al. Prevention of flu episodes with colostrum compared with vaccination in healthy and high-risk cardiovascular subjects. Clinical and Applied Thrombosis/Hemostasis. 2010;16(5):530-534.
6. Urashima M, Segawa T, Okazaki M, Kurihara M, Wada Y, Ida H. Randomized trial of vitamin D supplementation to prevent seasonal influenza A in schoolchildren. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2010;91(5):1255-1260.

The idea originates with the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann (1745  – 1853, who after decades of clinical observation became troubled by a recurring phenomenon: patients improved beautifully under carefully selected remedies, only to relapse months or years later, often into entirely different forms of illness. It seemed as if some deeper layer beneath the visible symptoms remained untouched.

This led Hahnemann into one of the boldest conceptual leaps in medical history. He proposed that beneath chronic disease lay fundamental constitutional taints or inherited energetic dysregulations—miasms—which shaped how disease expressed itself.

I think of these as disease “shadows” that color the patient’s life, bringing darkness from the past, carrying it forward through families and generations.

In his great work, The Chronic Diseases (1828), Hahnemann proposed three primary miasms: psora, sycosis, and syphilis. Later generations of homeopaths added others, particularly the tuberculosis (I agree there) and cancerinic (carcinominum) patterns. I’m not quite so sure about that one.

Candida and sugar miasm I have also heard suggested, which borders on silly!

Psora was regarded by Hahnemann as the primordial disturbance, the mother of chronic disease. Not simply “itch” in the literal dermatological sense, though he traced it historically through suppressed skin eruptions, psora represented insufficiency, striving, hypersensitivity, insecurity, lack, and chronic vulnerability. The psoric individual often feels incomplete, anxious about survival, fearful of failure, or driven by perpetual striving. Physically, psora manifests through functional disturbances more than destructive pathology: allergies, itching conditions, digestive irregularities, fatigue, nervousness, hypersensitivity, and fluctuating symptoms.

Many great homeopaths came to view psora almost philosophically—as humanity’s estrangement from natural harmony.

The great American homeopath James Tyler Kent described psora as “the beginning of all sickness,” linking it not merely to skin conditions but to disturbed vitality itself.

Then comes sycosis, classically associated with suppression and excess. Historically linked to gonorrheal infection and its suppression, the sycotic miasm is characterised by overgrowth, concealment, accumulation, and rigidity. Warts, cysts, fibroids, polyps, thickened tissues, oedema, obesity, rheumatism, and secretiveness all fit within the sycotic sphere.

Sycosis miasm is often conflated with medorrhinum, a remedy derived from gonorrhea.

Psychologically, sycosis often expresses itself through hidden shame, guardedness, fixed ideas, compulsions, or the sense of carrying a secret burden. The sycotic patient may compensate excessively—becoming flamboyant, exaggerated, overbuilt, or defensive.

One of the great insights of miasmatic thinking is that symptoms are symbolic as well as physical. The body speaks in metaphor. The sycotic organism “covers,” “thickens,” “stores,” and “conceals.”

The syphilitic miasm is different again. Here we enter the realm of destruction, degeneration, breakdown, nihilism, and collapse. Associated historically with syphilis, but extending far beyond the infection itself, the syphilitic current expresses as ulceration, deformity, tissue destruction, violence, congenital malformation, suicidal despair, psychosis, and self-annihilation.

Where psora struggles and sycosis defends, syphilis destroys.

In emotional terms, syphilitic states may manifest as hopelessness, obsession with death, profound self-loathing, or destructive impulses turned inward or outward. Physically one sees degeneration: aneurysms, ulceration, bone destruction, severe neurological pathology, and congenital defects.

Yet homeopaths never viewed these as merely “bad” categories. They are patterns of imbalance, yes—but also maps of human struggle.

Later practitioners elaborated these themes enormously. J. H. Allen expanded the miasmatic concept in The Chronic Miasms, exploring inherited tendencies across generations. John Henry Clarke linked miasms with constitutional prescribing and chronic susceptibility.

Then came the tubercular miasm, perhaps one of the most poetically tragic of all. Tuberculosis haunted the nineteenth century like a ghostly fire. Homeopaths perceived in tubercular patients a profound restlessness: longing for change, dissatisfaction with confinement, romantic idealism, burning vitality alternating with exhaustion.

The tubercular type wants freedom above all.

There is intensity, creativity, travel hunger, sensitivity to beauty, rapid burnout, and continual dissatisfaction with limitation. Physically this pattern may include recurrent respiratory infections, allergies, fine-boned physiques, night sweats, fluctuating energy, and rapid metabolism.

It is almost the miasm of the wandering soul.

Then there is the possible cancerinic miasm, articulated most fully in the twentieth century. This pattern often develops in individuals exposed to extreme pressure, domination, perfectionism, emotional suppression, or impossible expectations. Cancerinic constitutions frequently appear conscientious, refined, overly responsible, dutiful, self-controlled, and eager to please.

The keynote is control.

Everything must be held together. Chaos is intolerable. Emotion is restrained. The individual may live under immense internal pressure for years before collapse occurs.

Physically, cancerinic patterns are linked not only with malignancy but with chronic fatigue, insomnia, hormonal disorders, autoimmune tendencies, eating disorders, and nervous exhaustion.

Some modern homeopaths have proposed additional miasms linked with newer disease states—malarial, ringworm, leprosy, AIDS-related patterns, and more. Rajan Sankaran notably developed an expanded miasmatic framework integrating mental and behavioural themes with remedy states. His work helped bring miasmatic understanding into a more contemporary psychological language.

What makes miasmatic theory so enduring is that it attempts to explain why people react differently to the same circumstances. Why does one individual develop eczema while another develops arthritis? Why does grief destroy one person physically yet deepen another spiritually? Why do certain family lines repeat the same illnesses, fears, addictions, or emotional dramas generation after generation?

Miasms propose that beneath the visible disease lies a terrain of susceptibility.

In this sense, the theory parallels ancient ideas from many cultures. Ayurveda speaks of constitutional imbalance through doshas. Traditional Chinese medicine describes inherited weakness through organ systems and jing essence. Even modern epigenetics, though operating in entirely different language, acknowledges that trauma, stress, toxins, and environment may influence inherited biological expression across generations; an effect we call epigenetics.

Homeopathy approaches this terrain symbolically, energetically, and constitutionally.

Importantly, miasms are not viewed as fixed mandates. They are tendencies. Patterns. Like weather systems within consciousness and biology. A skilled constitutional prescription seeks not merely to palliate symptoms but to untangle these deep inherited knots.

Clinically, many experienced homeopaths report that true cure often involves layers of miasmatic unfolding. A patient may move from destructive pathology toward superficial skin eruptions; from despair toward anxiety; from rigidity toward emotional fluidity. Old symptoms may briefly reappear in reverse order before resolving. Hahnemann himself considered this movement outward—from deeper organs toward the skin and periphery—as a sign of genuine healing.

Miasmatic analysis also transformed remedy understanding. Remedies themselves came to be associated with dominant miasmatic tendencies. For example:

Psoric remedies: Sulphur, Psorinum, Lycopodium
Sycotic remedies: Thuja, Medorrhinum, Natrum sulphuricum
Syphilitic remedies: Mercurius, Syphilinum, Aurum metallicum
Tubercular remedies: Tuberculinum, Phosphorus, Calcarea phos.

Yet great practitioners of homeopathy caution against simplistic categorization. Human beings are rarely pure expressions of one miasm. Most people contain blended currents, shifting throughout life according to stress, trauma, relationships, nutrition, environment, and spiritual development.

Generalizations are always a bit dangerous but it can be suggested in outline that someone with 4 or 5 full-on miasms will likely die by the age of twenty. With just 3, he or she will pass in their thirties or forties. With just 2, he or she should make it to the 50s and 60s and with just one miasm, good chance of breaking the eighty years barrier!

Generalizations are tricky but the essential notion was that the greater the miasmatic complexity or layering within an individual, the shorter and more burdened the lifespan was likely to be. In other words, the organism could only compensate for so many deep chronic taints before vitality collapsed.

Older homeopaths often spoke of “mixed miasms” with a kind of grave respect. A person carrying strong psoric instability combined with destructive syphilitic tendencies, sycotic overgrowth, tubercular dissipation, and later perhaps cancerinic suppression, was thought to possess a profoundly conflicted vital force.

Interestingly, some contemporary longevity science ends up circling similar territory from another direction. Multiple overlapping systems in chronic dysregulation—immune, mitochondrial, inflammatory, neurological—do indeed correlate with earlier morbidity and mortality. The old homeopaths expressed this symbolically through miasms rather than biomarkers.

There was also a deeper philosophical idea underneath it all: that vitality is finite unless renewed. The more fragmented the vital force becomes, the harder it is for the organism to maintain coherent order.

Seen this way, miasms become more than medical categories. They become lenses through which to understand culture, psychology, and collective evolution.

Sources and classic texts worth revisiting:

George Vithoulkas. The Science of Homeopathy. New York: Grove Press; 1980.
Ortega PS. Notes on the Miasms. Mexico City: Homeopathic Medical Publishing.

And there is a great section on miasms in my own masterpiece Medicine Beyond.

Truly, miasms are one of those strange crossroads where medicine, mythology, inheritance, psychology, and spiritual pattern-recognition all sit around the same fire drinking strong coffee and arguing about destiny!

Go learn more…

To your good health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor

We are creatures of earth, sunlight, wind, water, movement, and seasons. Every cell in the body was shaped under open skies. Human physiology evolved not in sealed rooms under artificial light, but outdoors—walking uneven ground, breathing living air, rising with dawn, resting with darkness, touched daily by sunlight, weather, plants, soil, and the countless subtle biological exchanges that happen between body and environment. The modern world has brought extraordinary convenience, but convenience often comes with invisible biological costs.

Many people now wake indoors, work indoors, travel enclosed in vehicles, exercise indoors, shop indoors, and spend evening hours bathed in blue light from screens before sleeping in air-conditioned rooms cut off from the rhythms of the natural world. The body, ancient in design though modern in setting, quietly pays attention to all of this. It registers light, darkness, temperature, movement, microbial exposure, air quality, and environmental texture in ways both conscious and unconscious. When these inputs become artificial, limited, or absent, health can begin to drift.

Sunlight is perhaps one of the clearest examples of “nature deficiency”. It has emerged as an important, if not THE most important nourishment. Natural sunlight helps regulate circadian rhythms—the internal biological clock that governs sleep, hormones, metabolism, immune function, and mood. Morning light exposure helps anchor healthy cortisol release, supports melatonin production later in the day, and improves sleep quality at night. Sunlight also stimulates vitamin D production, which influences bone health, immune resilience, inflammation control, muscle function, and even mental wellbeing. 

Yet modern life has turned many people into near-permanent indoor dwellers, living under electric light while becoming starved of one of biology’s oldest medicines.

Fresh air is another forgotten nutrient. Outdoor air, especially in natural environments, often contains compounds released by trees and plants, beneficial airborne microbes, richer oxygen dynamics, and far fewer indoor pollutants than many homes and offices. 

Research on forest exposure—sometimes called forest bathing (Japanese shinrin-yoku) —has shown reductions in stress hormones, improvements in mood, enhanced immune activity, and measurable calming effects on the nervous system. Time among trees appears to do more than relax the mind; it nourishes physiology itself.

Then there is movement—not exercise in the narrow modern sense of gym sessions and fitness routines, burpees and the like, but natural movement woven throughout daily life. Walking, stretching, bending, carrying, climbing, balancing, and simply being physically engaged with the world are profoundly regulating to metabolism, circulation, joints, muscles, lymphatic flow, and brain health. Human bodies were built for regular, varied movement, not prolonged sitting interrupted by brief bursts of exercise. Sedentary indoor life creates stagnation that the body interprets as dysfunction.

You may have heard the phrase: sitting is the new smoking.

Contact with nature also shapes the immune system in remarkable ways. Soil microbes, plant compounds, diverse environmental bacteria, and exposure to biodiverse outdoor ecosystems help educate and regulate immune responses. Some researchers believe the explosion in allergies, autoimmune disorders, and inflammatory illness may partly reflect immune systems raised in overly sanitized, biologically narrow environments. We have reduced our contact with the microbial richness that helped shape healthy immunity across human history. [The so-called Hygiene Hypothesis, which I utterly believe in).

Our bodies are an entire ecosystem and our obsession with sanitizing it leads to a collapse of a healthy system. I’m not advocating you turn up to the table with dirty hands and fingernails… well, maybe! (depends what you’ve been handling). But I remember as a kid on the farm; we’d wipe the cow shit off our hands just by rubbing them against our pants and ate our sandwiches with greenish fingers! (much to mother’s dismay) But I was never sick, except for the usual (measles, chicken pox, etc.)

Nature also heals something less measurable but equally important—the mind’s burden. The modern nervous system is overstimulated by noise, screens, speed, social pressure, information overload, and relentless artificial input. Nature offers something radically different: complexity without demand. A forest, coastline, meadow, or garden engages the senses gently rather than aggressively. The nervous system softens. Attention broadens. Thought slows. The body receives cues of safety. Blood pressure drops. Muscles unclench. Breathing deepens. The mind remembers another pace of being.

This is not romantic nostalgia. Actually it is biology.

What Can You Do?

The remedy does not require abandoning modern life or moving to a mountain cabin—though a cabin by a lake has undeniable charm. Healing can begin with small, deliberate acts of rewilding daily life. Step outside early and let morning light touch your eyes. Walk among trees. Open windows. Grow plants indoors and outdoors. Put bare feet on grass or sand if you enjoy it. 

My advice? Eat food that comes from living soil rather than industrial chemistry. Spend time where birdsong replaces traffic noise. Let your skin feel weather. Watch a sunrise. Sit beneath a tree with no agenda. Allow yourself moments not optimized for productivity.

These are not luxuries. They are forms of nourishment. We really are suffering from a “nature deficiency.”

Modern health conversations often revolve around supplements, medications, lab tests, and complex interventions. Some are valuable. But alongside them sits a simpler truth: many people are deficient not only in nutrients, but in sunlight, fresh air, natural movement, microbial diversity, quiet, beauty, and contact with the living world.

Perhaps one of the great health frontiers of our time is not discovering something entirely new but remembering something very old—that human beings are not separate from nature. We are expressions of it. 

And when we return, even briefly, to the rhythms and textures that shaped us, the body often responds with a quiet sigh of recognition, as if saying, Yes… this is what I remember.

What can I do during the workday to offset sitting all day? 

Andrew Dorsey, MS, an Exercise Physiologist at The Mount Sinai Physiolab and  Clinical Research Coordinator at Mount Sinai’s Department of Environmental Medicine, recommends to have about 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week.¹ That may seem like a lot, but it is manageable when you break it down. If you took three, five-minute breaks during a workday, five days a week, that’s 75 minutes. That’s already half of what you’re aiming for. 

You can incorporate movement in short, simple ways:  

• Get up from your desk, walk around, stretch, even walk in place. Just standing while you read something or take a phone call can help. It adds up over time. 

• Hold a conversation or meeting standing up!

• Make the conscious decision to take the stairs, rather than the elevator, can make a difference. If you take the stairs once a week, that is a meaningful change. You don’t have to do it daily to see benefits. 

Live better. Live longer!

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. https://health.mountsinai.org/blog/why-sitting-is-the-new-smoking-how-to-combat-the-health-effects-of-sitting-all-day/