Editor’s note –
July 2025

Can you believe this drivel?

“It’s no great surprise to any of us that with ageing comes the UNAVOIDABLE DETERIORATION of our bodies” [emphasis added]..

“As the years notch up, we tend to lose muscle mass, vital organs decline, we become slower, weaker and less mentally focused. So it’s inevitable that the stairs seem steeper, the shopping feels heavier, our breath is more sluggish, and a favourite glass and the top shelf of the cupboard becomes frustratingly out of reach. Then there’s the thing we fear more than anything: becoming ‘frail'”.

I have to tell Jenny Tucker of The Daily Telegraph that this rubbish she’s spouted about ageing DOES come as a surprise. There’s this thing called “use it or lose it”. Most “older” people (let’s rock it back to over-50), DON’T use it and DO lose it. But that doesn’t make it “unavoidable”.  

Her Telegraph piece “Why over-60s should have four coffees a day” reports “A new study has examined the link between coffee consumption and a reduced risk of frailty. Can a few daily cups really make us stronger?”

So there you go oldies – big effort now – drink more coffee.

I might have let this go but for the news from Queen’s University, Canada, that exercise is now a proven TREATMENT for colon cancer (page 6) .

It’s a sign of just how far orthodox medicine has fallen into the clutches of Big Pharma that it has taken a 17-YEAR study for doctors to show that a structured exercise program improves survival, reducing recurrence and new primary cancers. Exercise delivered after surgery and chemotherapy was as good as many standard drug treatments. But what struck me was the undemanding scale of the “intervention”. Roughly 20 minutes of moderate-intensity a day.

OK, this is recovering cancer patients we’re talking about, but they would not do the 20 minutes without intensive “support” (aka cajoling) from personal trainers and health coaches. “We can’t just tell people to exercise”, said Prof Chris Booth. They won’t do it, even when they know it’s going to stop their cancer coming back.

There seems to be a point in the average person’s lifespan where they just abandon all hope. Aided and abetted by our ageist culture’s incitement to stick with the sofa and tv “at your age”.  Because, after all, deterioration is “unavoidable”…right?

A spectacular mess

30-40 years to get a diagnosis of lupus? Yes, research from Swansea University and the University of Cambridge has revealed just how bad medicine’s diagnostic ability can be (page 60). Patients are being told they have a “mystery illness” and/or they’re imagiming things. “GPs from 2003 to 2018 diagnosed stress, anxiety, post-natal depression, menopause and ‘overdoing it’”, said one 50-year-old woman.

Alastair Jessel of the pioneering Battersea Park Clinic (page 46) tells how it took eight years for doctors to figure out he was coeliac. Now he follows the lead of many functional medicine medics: tell every client to start with avoiding gluten, dairy and sugar…