In June, Google implemented a new algorithm on its search engine which has wiped out traffic at some of the top natural health websites all over the world. This is just the latest in a series of algorithm changes that, over the years, has seen the web giant trying to redefine ‘truth’ by limiting free access to information. Google is morphing from an ‘organic’ search engine to a tool of censorship – other web platforms may follow and we should all be concerned.

Over the years our site has been hit badly by these algorithm changes. Somehow we have always managed to recover. I put that down to the high quality of the information we publish and the loyalty of our readers.

Indeed, Google used to rank pages based on whether an author could prove their expertise, for instance based on how many people visited a page or the number of other ‘reputable’ sites that linked to the site. We have that on our side – our articles are fully referenced and we always link to original research not pop opinion. As Editor and the author of multiple books, I also have along pedigree in natural health.

Out of sight, out of mind?

So we have battled on and tried to keep on top of each change as it has been implemented. However, most of our traffic comes from searches – from people just like you from all over the world who are looking to manage uncomplicated health problems in a less invasive, more holistic and more natural way.

Those people can no longer find us. If you doubt me take a look at the screen shots below of the search results for what has, traditionally, been one of our most popular articles, The natural way to heal cuts and wounds. Since it was first published in 2012 this article has consistently topped search results for this topic. Now it is gone from the top of the Google search page while still topping the Bing search page (it also remains on the first page of Duck Duck Go and Yahoo!).

Click to enlarge

We are not the only losers in Google’s game. The June 2019 Google Broad Core Algorithm Update impacted sites like mercola.com, nuffieldhealth.com, draxe.com, mindbodygreen.com and prevention.com. Many noticed a dramatic drop – up to 99% of their usual traffic – from June 3, 2019.

The need to be well-informed has never been more acute. Nor has the need to feel confident in questioning the status quo, and in choosing a different path if you feel that status quo has let you down.

Sticking to our guns and our values

We remain committed to our core purpose and values.

Natural – Working with the grain of nature, not against it. Working with natural systems – from supporting an individual’s innate healing response to cleaning up our environments and supporting agro-ecological farming – to create health.

Holistic – Everything is interconnected. We can all benefit from thinking in terms of whole systems, not just component parts, from creating health and well-being, rather than just fighting disease processes and from concentrating more on prevention than cure.

Helpful – We are committed to helping improve confidence in prevention and self-care by providing a wide variety of information empower others to take good care of their own health.

Inclusive – Creating greater health for everyone requires multiple ways of being and doing which are still not well integrated in to mainstream thinking. Through holism we aim to cultivate respect for ourselves, our community, our culture and our place in nature.

These new changes are a slap in the face to anyone who shares those values. I think they are also a warning about the trajectory we are on as a society. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some things you can do:

• You can keep in touch with this site by subscribing to our occasional newsletter.  Please encourage your friends and family to subscribe as well.
• When you are ill or when friends and family are ill consider our site as a resource. Share relevant or interesting news articles with friends and family who might benefit from them.
• Use our bespoke remedy finder to quickly search for simple remedies and search our archive of thousands of articles for more in depth information.

You still have choices

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the digital world and as if we have no choices (inasmuch as that is true, it’s very like the medical world!).

But you do have choices. If you are ready to vote with your feet and boycott Google altogether you can find inspiration and motivation at sites like Goopocalypse and How to Boycott Google. Other things you can do include:

• Try alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo, Yahoo! and Startpage.
• Change your browser. Instead of Google Chrome try Opera which boasts a free VPN and a fast ad blocker.
• Choose an email account not associated with Google like ProtonMail, a free encrypted mail service.
• If you are looking for an alternative to Google Docs check out this article highlighting five free alternatives to try out.

As always, thank you for your continued support.

Pat Thomas, Editor

This editorial is from our occasional newsletter. You can read past editorials here. Or better yet sign up to receive your copy using the ‘Keep in Touch’ link on our home page.

These questions took centre stage over the last week as a new report, Food in the Anthropocene, was published.

The report, compiled over 3 years by the EAT-Lancet Commission and involving an international panel of scientists and academics, is mostly an analysis of existing studies and its broad brush conclusion is that we need to change the way we eat for a variety of reasons, including better human health and addressing agriculture’s contribution to climate change.

From this data the authors have put together a ‘reference diet’, which attempts to show how we can all can get the nutrients we need from a mostly vegetarian, or preferably vegan, diet. The report also suggests we tackle food waste and water waste and preserve planetary biodiversity.

In short, it covers all the kumbaya concepts and as such it’s not really much to shout about – and yet from the moment the report was released the shouting began.

In truth there are multiple troubling aspects to the report (too many to cover here) which deserve further inspection.

Glaring omissions
In common with many similar reports, it paid only lip service to where food comes from and the need to localise diets according to geography and culture. Indeed many stats about livestock’s contribution to global warming come from American factory farms and don’t necessarily apply to countries where grazing is more common.

To ensure enough plant foods to feed a global population it recommends using nitrogen-based fertilisers. Nitrogen-based fertilisers are an environmental disaster and indeed the higher inputs needed to sustain a nearly all plant diet is an inconvenient issue which many reports of this ilk fail to address.

So, too, are the high amount of pesticides used in producing crops. A recent Europe-wide survey of soil, for instance, found pesticide residues in 83% agricultural soil samples, in 166 different pesticide combinations. This cocktail of pesticides is what we are currently growing our food in – and, the report notes, is likely an underestimation of the problem.

The EAT reference diet also contains more calories each day from unsustainable palm oil than from eggs or fish and excludes animal fats, unless there happen to be any in the 7g of beef or pork you are allowed daily. The report does not address fully the problem of processed foods, preservatives or added salt either.

It recommends that food be produced by a variety of methods “such as conservation agriculture, sustainable and ecological intensification, agroecological and diversified farming systems, precision agriculture, and organic farming”. Sounds good, but “sustainable intensification” and “precision farming” are the new shorthand for genetic engineering technology.

It also advises that vegans may require supplements, raising legitimate questions about whether this is really a complete, healthy diet.

A bigger agenda
The report was funded primarily by the UK’s Wellcome Trust. Wellcome partnered with Norwegian thinktank EAT, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Norway’s Stordalen Foundation (run by multibillionaire and radical vegan, Grunhild Stordalen) to produce the document. EAT, which led the group, has some very deep and worrying ties with conventional food companies looking to capitalise on the confusion over what we should all eat. It also has a strong vegan/vegetarian agenda.

Food in the Anthropocene is just a small refrain in the longer song of EAT’s activities.

One initiative, FReSH, works with companies like Bayer, Cargill, Syngenta, Unilever, DuPont, Nestle and PepsiCo, among, others to transform how we eat and ‘create’ better food. Another, FOLU (note the love of vague acronyms) aims to “go deep into the policy, regulatory environment, and businesses of individual countries” (starting with unstable countries – and therefore soft targets – like Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopia).

Desire + fear = marketing opportunities
We all want a sustainable world, and we all fear that we won’t get one. Where there is desire and fear there is always somebody willing to capitalise on it for profit. In a global economy too often that means trying to force global solutions and magic bullets – and singing the same old songs about how there are no limits to what we can do.

That is 100% sustaina-BULL. True sustainability is all about limits. It’s also about boundaries that can’t be crossed; it’s as much about what we can’t have as it is about what we can. It’s about working with local needs, culture and geography to find local sustainable solutions.

There are also uncomfortable parallels between the eat-to-save-the-world and shop-to-save-the-world mantras. While the food system contributes to several global problems, there is a limit to what it can do to ‘fix’ these problems and a limit, also, to how often we can keep putting the responsibility back on to consumers. The over-focus on food, for instance, lets the worst offender, the fossil fuel industry, completely off the hook.

If we allow the sustainability agenda to continue to be hijacked by vested interests, special interest groups, billionaire thinktanks and large corporations, true sustainability will never be within our grasp – and the consequences for us all will be devastating.

Pat Thomas, Editor

Dewayne Johnson was awarded $289 (3225) million in damages which was an extraordinary sum and not something anybody could have predicted. More predictable has been the fallout on both sides of the argument.

Campaigners are of course overjoyed. Wins like this are few and far between and this case was hard fought by all the scientists, campaigners and attorneys who worked to craft it.

The response from farmers has been mixed. Many still believe that they cannot farm without glyphosate – to kill weeds but also to desiccate crops like wheat and barley before harvest.

The response from media outlets has been interesting inasmuch as some appear to be acting as if they had never heard of glyphosate before this moment. The Wall Street Journal said the verdict was based on ‘junk science‘. One Conservative UK MP responded by posting a picture of the Roundup she was planning to ‘deploy’ in her garden. The BBC News Online feigned ignorance and asked “what do we know about glyphosate?” and provided a basic primer for readers – but then gave the last word to sceptics who doubted ‘lay’ people’s ability to understand the science and equated this with the public’s inability to understand climate change and vaccines.

Let’s be clear. The jury was presented with the scientific evidence, including from respected organisations such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer which has declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen. They saw data from other important research studies and heard incredible testimony from expert scientific witnesses.

“Zombies” and “morons”

The jury also heard testimony about and saw some – though not all – of the internal emails and papers which the court ordered to be made public during the trial, which included internal Monsanto emails detailing how the corporation was ghost-writing scientific studies and paying outside scientists to publish the articles in their name – all to help them get and keep glyphosate on the market.

Monsanto like the BBC showed extraordinary disdain for the general public. In one document, which referred to the California decision to label glyphosate as carcinogenic the company referred to Californian campaigners and lawmakers as “liberals and morons,” overwhelming Monsanto like a “zombie movie”. The email noted that the company needed to “take them out” out one at a time, starting with the 2016 presidential election.

More damning documents uncovered in this trial are now in the public domain and juries in future trials will be able to see the full extent of the glyphosate cover-up.

Too dumb to understand?

I find the disdain for public opinion – and I see it everywhere with increasing frequency – to be one of the most toxic aspects in the fight for a healthier, less environmentally damaging food system.

The underlying assumption is always that issues like pesticides, genetic engineering, chemical contamination and environmental pollution are too ‘technical’ for anyone but a ‘scientist’ to understand. In other words you and I are too dumb to have an opinion and we should just shut up and let our ‘betters’ take care of things.

What could possible go wrong with that plan?!

Members of the general public may not always be able to quote scientific chapter and verse – and indeed that is not our job. But the public does, in my experience, have a good grasp of what is at stake and a natural and understandable revulsion towards the idea of pesticide contaminated food and towards the way that these powerful chemicals damage our natural environment.

The animosity that chemical companies, regulators and lout mouthed pundits have towards the public should be challenged in the strongest possible terms by NGOs – though in my experience many are mealy mouthed when it comes to defending their supporters. Whatismore, as pesticides campaigner Georgina Downs noted, those receiving funding from UK government – whose regulators, in turn, receive funding from agrochemical companies – were also fairly quick to dumb down their own responses to calls to take glyphosate off the shelves.

We don’t know what the fallout from this trial will be. There are more trials ahead where other US citizens are alleging that glyphosate caused their cancer. It is a certainty that Monsanto, no stranger to legal action, will appeal any judgement against it and use the full force of the law to tie plaintiffs up in court for years or even decades. Some may never see any money, some may die before they are paid.

The courage that it takes to go on this journey, to stand up to a big corporation, to willingly step onto a huge learning curve in order to try and make the world a better place, should never be underestimated.

Respect to everyone whose feet are on that path and who are able to stand their ground – and please let’s make sure that all who want to join us are made welcome.

Pat Thomas, Editor

As we have written extensively over the years, neonicotinoids, or neonics, have been implicated in the widespread death of bees around the world, including the UK’s population of wild bees.

The ban has not come out of the blue. In 2013 The European Commission voted to suspend the use of three neonicotinoid insecticides: clothianidin, thiametoxam and imidacloprid, pending more data on their toxicity to bees.

Since then, evidence showed that even application of neonicotinoids on non-bee-attractive crops led to exposure of bees, since these substances are highly persistent in the environment. In the meantime, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a series of reports highlighting that there is no safe use for bees for these three insecticides

By the end of this year, all three will be banned from use outdoors. They will, however, still be allowed in enclosed permanent greenhouses where exposure of bees is not expected.

Since their approval at EU-level in the 90’s, neonicotinoids have been increasingly shown to harm honey bees, other pollinators and the environment as a whole. Several studies also indicate toxicity to human health.

More work to do

The ban is to be welcomed and it is a rare victory for campaigners who seek a more ecological way of producing food. But we still have a long way to go. The EU has recently extended the licence for glyphosate, the toxic herbicide which was recently declared a “probable human carcinogen”. Glyphosate is also harmful to bees.

While glyphosate and neonics are the poster children for pesticides use, in fact many more toxic pesticides are used in agriculture, in gardening and for pest and weed control in parks, playgrounds and on city streets.

There is no doubt that pesticides make our world more toxic. Their use props up an industrial model of farming which harms the environment, contaminates our food and ultimately threatens our health.

Children at risk

Of all of us children are impacted the most by this toxic environment, which is why I was so pleased to come across a interesting new book: What’s Making Our Children Sick? How Industrial Food Is Causing an Epidemic of Chronic Illness, and What Parents (and their Doctors) Can Do About It (Chelsea Green, 2018).

The authors, paediatrician Dr Michelle Perro and medical anthropologist Dr Vincanne Adams present a convincing argument for how industrial food production – including pesticides and GMOs – are combining with other environmental factors to create a ‘perfect storm’ of health problems in kids.

Industrial food
Using patient accounts from their clinical experiences, and new medical insights about the origins of chronic paediatric disorders – and in particular looking at gut dysfunction – the fully-referenced book connects the dots and shows how dietary changes can help address some of the most hard-to-treat disorders that our children suffer from.

Their data on rising levels of ill health amongst US children makes stark reading, and it would be comforting to think that this problem of industrial food is not something we don’t have to worry about in the UK.

However, as this leaflet, Kids in the UK – A Picture of Health? – produced by UK group Beyond GM for the UK launch of Drs Perro and Adams’ book – shows British children are not thriving either. Their diets, half of which consist of “ultra-processed” foods, and much of which contains multiple pesticides residues, may be a contributing factor.

London event:  Meet the authors

The book is a must read for all parents and a wake-up call for doctors, who often have no idea about – or training in – environmental medicine. You can read more about it in a just published interview on our site.

Our UK readers and supporters will also be given a chance to listen to Drs Perro and Adams at a special launch event for their book in London on May 24th (see also the link opposite). The evening event, kindly supported by the Sheepdrove Trust, will include ample time for Q&A, organic refreshments will be served and there will be plenty of information and other ‘food for thought’ to take away. Places are limited so if you are interested please book now.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Pat Thomas, Editor

This fact was highlighted recently when scientists at the New York University School of Medicine discovered a potential new ‘organ’ – possibly the largest in the body and one whose influence we can only guess at.

What was once thought simply to be a web of dense, collagen and elastin connective tissue, has been shown to be a series of connected fluid-filled compartments which researchers have termed the “interstitium”.

The spaces in-between
These in-between spaces which serve as a “highway of moving fluid” are found all over the body, in under and around the skin, the digestive and urinary tracts, the lungs, blood vessels and muscles.

The analysis published in the journal Scientific Reports is the first to identify this network of in-between spaces, to propose a name for it – the interstitium – and to propose that it functions in much the same way as an organ , and indeed may actually be an organ.

How did we miss this? The presence of interstitial fluid-filled spaces has long been known, though not well understood. According to the researchers, traditional methods for examining body tissues use a “fixing” method for assembling medical microscope slides that involves draining away fluid, basically destroying its structure.

This meant that the nature of interstitium, as a possible body-wide and connected ‘organ’, has been overlooked.

There are, of course, dissenting voices who believe that the interstitium is not an organ. Even so I find discussions like this both fascinating and moving.

So much to learn
We have an understanding of the mechanics of the body, how the kidney serves as a filter, how the heart serves as a pump, what lungs do and how they do it. But even now we can’t say for sure why we have an appendix, or fingerprints or different blood types. We have only scratched the surface of the ecosystem of the microbiome, and really still have no deep insight into how the brain operates as an information processing organ.

For me the prospect of an interstitium has echoes of dark matter, also found in the space between things.

Dark matter makes up around 80% of the universe and its discovery helped us fill in the gaps between what we thought we understood about gravity and all the phenomena we’ve observed that don’t quite fit in with our understanding. We can’t see it, we can’t hold it and yet scientists believe it has strongly influenced the structure and evolution of the universe.

Back at body level, the scientists say that, in addition to the interstitium’s ability to cushion a healthy body’s organs and protect them from harm, it is possible that this fluid could be used to diagnose certain illnesses and that cancer cells may use this liquid ‘highway’ to travel throughout the body.

It’s interesting that the first thought of science is to discover how this new organ feeds disease. That, of course, is where the research money is. But let’s also take a moment to be humbled by how little we still know about ourselves; and, in our ignorance, at how much of what we call healthcare is often guesswork.

New connections
It’s also worth taking a moment to ponder yet another potential ‘communications network’ inside of us.
The human body is 60% water and if, in some quantum way, water can hold memory what role might the interstitium play in physiological or neurological memory?

Certainly the interstitial tissues are a source of lymph, a fluid that moves through the body’s lymphatic system and supports immune function. Likewise, discussion is ongoing in neuroscience about interstitial fluid and its link to memory. Its contribution may simply be chemical – but could it be something more?

It will be fascinating to see research in this field diversify and progresses. But while they work it out, take a moment to appreciate – and celebrate – just how amazing our bodies are and how much we have yet to learn.

Pat Thomas, Editor

In week-long hearings, US District Judge Vince Chhabria has been listening to experts on both sides about whether there is scientific evidence to support the claims of more than 300 lawsuits that exposure to Roundup can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The lawsuits by cancer victims and their families allege that the company knew about the product’s cancer risk but did not warn consumers.

We’ve written a lot about glyphosate over the years. In particular, in 2015, the chemical was deemed a ‘probable human carcinogen’ by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization. This finding opened the door to the more than 3000 pending lawsuits across the US in the states of California, Nebraska, Delaware, and Missouri.

The pre-trial deliberations in San Francisco are the first to come to court and the outcome will have implications for other pending cases.

This is a David and Goliath battle that has many holding their breath – not just for our future health, but for the future of honest science.

On the surface, the case is a welcome response to an increasingly toxic society. Figures suggest that one in two men and one in three women are now expected to develop cancer in their lifetimes. In adults, pesticides are linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukaemia, brain, prostate and other cancers.

Childhood cancers are on the rise as well. In children, pesticide exposure is linked not just to paediatric cancers, but also to decreased cognitive function and behavioural problems.

Many victims are counting on the judge to sort rationally through the huge amount of data and make a fair decision. But this isn’t an entirely fair fight.

Monsanto, naturally, claims that its product is safe and that there are hundreds of studies which show this. But since the beginning of the litigation process the law firm of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, alongside other firms leading the litigation, have fought to declassify court documents that consist of internal Monsanto studies, company reports, emails, text messages, and other memoranda. Indeed, risking censure for “bad faith”, Baum Hedlund took the initiative and released the some of the emails to The New York Times and the advocacy group US Right to Know.

These documents, known as The Monsanto Papers, have now been made fully public and they include information that Monsanto hoped would not see the light of day. This includes evidence of how the company engaged in ghost-writing, scientific manipulation and collusion with regulatory agencies (including the EPA). The document cache also includes previously undisclosed information about how the body absorbs glyphosate and the dangers associated with the other ingredients that make up the Roundup formulated product.

Perhaps aware of the serious issue around lack of transparency, the judge has ruled that hearing be video-recorded and shared publicly over the internet (US Right to Know, research director Carey Gillam is also posting live updates from the trial).

In light of the startling content of The Monsanto Papers, he has also granted permission for plaintiffs to explore, in open court, such topics as the ghost-writing of supposedly independent scientific papers as well as a controversial 1983 study that EPA scientists at the time said showed evidence of glyphosate’s cancer-causing potential.

What the court will make of this evidence is anybody’s guess. Two weeks ago a US judge issued a temporary injunction blocking California from requiring that Roundup carry a label stating that it is known to cause cancer, saying the warning is misleading because almost all regulators have concluded there is no evidence that glyphosate is a carcinogen.

It is ironic that, as the UK media is gripped by the revelation that former Russian spy has been deliberately poisoned by a toxic nerve gas, the intrigue behind the widespread poisoning of average people with highly toxic pesticides – the ingredients of which have long been proven to be neurotoxic, carcinogenic and teratogenic (causing damage to a developing fetus) – remains mostly a side issue.

Those who have had the courage to bring their cases against Monsanto and glyphosate to court should be commended for pushing this issue a little closer to the centre.

Pat Thomas, Editor

• Our monthly newsletter features commentary on current events and a roundup of recent news. You can sign up to receive it on our website home page.

For me it’s likely to be the science of the small; the subtle parts of life that can’t be seen with the naked eye but which nevertheless have a deep impact on our wellbeing.

For instance, scientists are now recognizing the deep connection between the body’s microbiome – not just bacteria in the gut, but in the mouth and on the skin – and its connection to our health. The more we learn about the bacteria we play host to the more we realise how little we know and how little respect we have shown our microscopic companions.

There will be continuing efforts to deal with microplastics in our waterways – and the health and environmental fallout from these.

UK and European groups are also fighting hard to see that there is adequate regulation for new genetic engineering techniques. Biotech companies argue that advances like CRISPR and synthetic biology are now more precise than ever and produce plants – and therefore foods – which are indistinguishable from non-GMO plants. But independent scientists argue that what something looks like and what it is can be two different things.

Genetic modification –  any genetic modification – can produce ‘off target effects’ that could be a risk to health and the environment and all new techniques need to be regulated with the Precautionary Principle in mind.

Hormone disruption

There is also a renewed effort to deal with particularly insidious and largely unseen toxins in the form of endocrine disruptors in our air and water and in our food and the products we use every day. This is a topic close to my heart and indeed providing a public platform for it was one of the reasons this website was started in the first place.

The issue of hormone disruptors has pitted the industrial world against consumer and environmental groups for many years. First there was denial that they existed, then denial that they had any effect, then denial that they had any significant effect. There has been resistance to regulating these chemicals both in the EU and in the US and confusion about how to regulate them. There’s also been frustration that regulators especially don’t know how regulate for mixtures of chemicals – or the ‘cocktail ‘ effect’ – which can be more powerfully disruptive than exposure to a single chemical.

A need for better regulation

There is now acceptance that many of the chemicals that we are exposed to every day have hormone-like action in the body that can disrupt these critical functions. Hormone disruptors get stored in body fat and levels can quickly build up.

With this come an urgent need for coherent regulation. But progress is slow because no single piece of regulation deals with all the hormone disruptors we are exposed to. Thus separate legislation/regulation exists for those from agricultural sources, those in consumer products, and those from other industrial sources such as pollution from factories.

Just before the close of 2017 the European Member States endorsed a proposal from the European Commission, the EU executive, that revises criteria to identify endocrine disruptors in agricultural pesticides.

A step backward?

The proposal by the EC’s Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed sounded like a step forward, but most environmental groups agree it is at best a compromise.

The EDC-Free Europe coalition repeatedly warned that criteria were not sufficient to protect human health and the environment. Activist group Health and Environment Alliance said the new criteria fall short, and are concerned about the “very high burden of proof required” to identify chemicals of concern.  Pesticide Action Network Europe agreed saying that the new criteria “will fail to meet the adequate level of protection foreseen by the European regulator”, adding that it was “doomed to fail” and reflecting that, once again, regulators are more interested in protecting big corporations than human health and the environment.

The science of the small is hard work, but we must keep moving forward because it’s often the small things that trip us up in such a big way.

On another note, most of you will have noticed by now that our website has now switched over to its new name, Natural Health News, and new ownership. We have been overwhelmed by the positivity and support of our visitors and social media followers and look forward to moving forward with you all. As always if you wish to unsubscribe from our occasional newsletter you can do so at the bottom of this form. However, we hope you will stay and show support for continued access to accurate and well-balanced information on health alternatives – and on environmental influences on health which often do not make it into the mainstream media.

Pat Thomas, Editor

The website debuted quietly but has grown quickly to become an impressive archive of more than 2000 news stories, articles and campaigns. Over the years millions of people have visited us and we also have a lively social media presence.

This website sits within the education department of the company and is a dynamic expression of our particular passion for natural health and healing and a holistic view of life.

Now the growth and evolution of the website is continuing. As of December 1 2017 it is no longer part of the Neal’s Yard Remedies enterprise but an independent entity, Natural Health News. You may already have seen our social media pages change and our website will follow in the next day or so.

The name is the only thing that will change. I will continue to edit the site and we will continue to provide accurate and well-balanced information on health alternatives.

Subscribers will continue to receive the regular newsletter with the assurance that our strong privacy policy, which will be carried over to the new site, ensures your private data remains private. As always, if you’d rather not receive our newsletters, you can click unsubscribe at the bottom of this email.

My hope, however, is that all of you will continue the journey with me, and will visit and support the site, encourage your friends and family to become part of our growing online community and use the information here to stay healthy and well.

Pat Thomas, Editor

The research, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found that nearly two thirds (57%) of cancer drugs authorised by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) between 2009 and 2013 were approved without any clear evidence they improved the quality or quantity of patients’ lives.

Worse, after following patients for up to five years – a standard measure of time in cancer treatment follow-up – almost half of the drugs (49%) still showed no quality or quantity of life benefit and of those that did, these benefits were judged to be clinically insignificant around 50% of the time.

We can all probably tell stories of conventional treatment that has helped for a time or even saved people we know. But these statistics suggest that individual personal experience may not be the most accurate guide to how well we really are doing in the war on cancer.

The drugs aren’t working

This week on our site we feature a stark analysis of the BMJ study by award winning journalist Jerome Burne, from Health Insight UK. He quotes, among other sources, a news story by Kings College London, where the analysis was conducted, which notes that a significant number of cancer drugs available on the European market, and often promoted as ‘breakthrough therapies’, may actually lead to “false hope”.

For those who are interested in integrated or even alternative approaches to cancer the accusation of false hope has an ironic ring to it. This is what we are so often accused of pedalling.

Cancer continues to present us with conundrums. Clearly there are issues with cancer drugs but equally, not all cancers play out in the same way. Five and 10 year survival rates for some cancers have improved but the numbers can vary wildly – from 98% for testicular cancer to just 1% for pancreatic cancer.

Still not enough focus on causes…

In addition, research into causes and prevention – arguably the best ‘treatment’ – is still far too sparse.

We recently reported on new research into the bacterial link with breast cancer. For as long as I have been writing about health issues researchers have trying to get to the bottom of this link.

What the study showed was that healthy breast tissue contains more of a ‘good’ bacteria called Methylobacterium.

Previous studies have examined the link between gut microbiota and the development of breast cancer. These have suggested that the microbes in the gut may regulate estrogen levels, leading to estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer.

But less attention has been paid to the microbiome residing in the breast tissue, which the researchers suggest is unique and somehow becomes altered in women who have breast cancer.

The findings of this study open up new possibilities for prevention, for instance with probiotics. But more importantly they underscore that there is more we can do – much of which is not toxic to the body – to prevent and help treat cancer.

…or prevention

A couple of years ago a study in Nature found that environmental exposures, lifestyle choices and other factors that we have some measure of control of account for between 70% and 90% of the gene mutations that cause cancerous tumours progress, that only 10-30% of cancers were down to something going wrong at the cellulite level in the body.

The researchers illustrated their point about the cancers cause arise naturally versus the ones that don’t this way:

• Lung cancer: 14% naturally – 86% smoking
• Colorectal cancer: 25% naturally – 75% poor diet
• Skin cancer: 14% naturally – 86% ultraviolet radiation from the sun
• Cervical cancer: 10% naturally – 90% human papilloma virus
• Oesophageal cancer: 25% naturally – 75% tobacco and alcohol
• Liver cancer: 20% naturally – 80% Hepatitis B and C, alcohol
• Anal cancer: 10% naturally – 90% human papilloma virus

Along with the hopelessness of studies like the one in the BMJ, and the anger and frustration that they provoke, there is also hope that we simply don’t have to wait around to be victims of cancer.

We can as ‘consumers – for want of a better word – demand better regulators; but we can also help ourselves through lifestyle changes that are within everyone’s grasp.

Pat Thomas, Editor

We ignore them at our peril.

In the early days of our awareness of climate change I can recall some scientists saying, flippantly, that global warming and more CO2 in the atmosphere would be a boon for agriculture because it would result more plants growing in more places and growing bigger.

The ‘more and bigger’ blah blah mantra irked me then, and today even more so.

More and bigger blah blah

An excellent feature in Politico magazine, ominously titled The Great Nutrient Collapse, has this week documented the way serious scientists have struggled with the issue of how rising CO2 levels might change our food supply. Specifically how it might alter nutrient content.

US scientist and mathematician Irakli Loladze has been studying the effects of climate change on the quality of our food for decades.

His early work with algae showed that simulating warmer, high-CO2 environments certainly stimulated the algae to grow. But it also changed its nutrient content entirely making it much higher in sugar and much lower in nutrients.

Thus, even in environment where the animals that relied on algae for food had plenty to eat, some were struggling to survive.

Historical nutrient declines

We’ve previously looked at historical nutrient declines in our food on this site – and it’s not a pretty picture.

Industrial farming has destroyed our soils, limited the variety of crops we plant and most certainly bred plants for size and yield rather than nutrition (there’s that more and bigger mantra again). Industrial agriculture is also a major contributor to climate change.

In 2014 we reported on the findings from scientists from the University of California Davis who demonstrated that elevated levels of carbon dioxide restrict plants’ ability to transform nitrate into proteins.

Work by Loladze and colleagues has further shown that, with increasing climate change, the crops we rely on for food are undergoing a fundamental change, as nutrient levels drop and carbohydrate levels rise.

What the effect of these kinds of changes will be is uncertain – and too few people are looking at the issue.

In a recent study, however, a higher fat diet did not lead to a higher risk of early death from heart disease. But a diet higher carbohydrates did. In fact the risk was 60% greater with such a diet.

Signs of hope

But also this week there were signs of hope.

A major new study found that soils on organic farms store appreciably larger amounts of carbon – and for longer periods – than typical agricultural soils.

The scientists collected organic soil samples from throughout the US to compare with the conventional soil samples already in the National Soil Project’s data set.

One of the most compelling findings was that, on average, organic farms have 44% higher levels of humic acid – the component of soil that sequesters carbon over the long term – than soils not managed organically.

Healthy soils are essential for robust and resilient crop production, and the level of soil organic matter is one of the most critical components of a healthy soil.

Organic matter is all the living and dead plant and animal material in our dirt that makes it more than dirt – earthworms and insects and microorganisms, plant and animal residues, fermented compost, decomposed leaves and plant roots.

Organic is the answer

Soils high in organic matter support healthy crops, are less susceptible to drought, and foster a diversity of organisms vital to soil health. Soils rich in organic matter can also maintain carbon for long periods of time, and help reduce the causes of climate change.

But healthy soils are also the foundation of nutritious plants, and nutritious plants are the very bedrock of human health.

Again and again we have seen studies showing that that organic farming builds and protects biodiversity, produces food with more key nutrients in it and that it can be scaled up to feed the world.

Yet too often, as with climate change, the voices a few powerful sceptics have shaped the debate – and put up a road block against real progress.

It’s time to turn down the volume on those with a vested interest in maintaining a destructive status quo, and turn up the volume on those who can light a path to a better future.

Pat Thomas, Editor