What Doctors Don’t Tell You. Lynne McTaggart

was given three months to live two years ago due to prostate cancer. By reading your newsletter and the information you provide, I contacted the right people and he started an alternative therapy. It succeeded and he was later told that he was clear of cancer. Thank you for being you.’ M. R., Dyfed

      

      ‘Two months ago I could barely walk more than 50 yards or stand in the queue at the Post Office. Chronic lower back pain was the problem … now thanks to WDDTY I ramble and cycle miles and miles without pain.’ R. P., Norfolk

      

      ‘I was told I had glaucoma and was going blind. I developed a diet and supplement programme based on your information, and two months later I had my eyes examined again, and there was no sign of glaucoma any more.’ G. R., Edinburgh

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Praise for What Doctors Don’t Tell You

Dedication

Introduction

Part I: medicine’s False Science

Chapter 1: The Un-science of Modern Medicine

Part II: Diagnosis

Chapter 2: Diagnostic Excess

Chapter 3: Prenatal Testing: Dead Certainty

Chapter 4: Catching It Early

       Part III: Prevention

       Chapter 5: Crazy about Cholesterol: Medicine’s Red Herring

       Chapter 6: Vaccination: Knee-jerk Jabs

       Chapter 7: Hormonal Mayhem

       Part IV: Treatment

       Chapter 8: Miracle Cures

       Chapter 9: Dental Medicine: Safe until Proven Dangerous

       Part V: Surgery

       Chapter 10: Standard Operating Procedure

       Chapter 11: Gee-whizz Technology: The Video-games Wizard and Blocked-drains Mechanic

       Part VI: Taking Control

       Chapter 12: Taking Control

       Keep Reading

       Index

       Further Resources

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Notes

       Also by the Author

       About the Publisher

       Dedication

       For Bryan

       Introduction

      This book was born from a grand passion I once had: a passion to get better.

      In the early eighties, after an extraordinary patch of bad choices, I underwent a prolonged bout of stress. In every profoundly important area of my life, green lights I’d always taken for granted suddenly began turning red. If I had taken one of those little tests you find in women’s magazines that add up your stress quotient – with death, marriage, divorce and moving the most stressful situations – my sums would have leapt off the chart.

      In rapid succession I’d struggled under an impossible book deadline, married Mr Wrong, divorced Mr Wrong, bought the wrong flat, accepted the wrong job, suffered the death of a close friend, incurred several large debts, and spent a prolonged period of intense isolation in a foreign country. I couldn’t, in those days, even get a good haircut.

      Shortly after emerging from the eye of this personal squall, I began to experience strange symptoms, at first your workaday ‘female problems’ – everything from ferocious premenstrual tension and irregular periods to cystitis and almost constant vaginal infections.

      As time wore on, my symptoms multiplied: eczema, hives and allergies to a load of food and chemicals; diarrhoea and an irritable bowel; insomnia and night sweats; and severe depression. I had felt powerless for so long that my body seemed to be reacting in parallel, caving in under any sort of microbial onslaught.

      For nearly all of the three years that I was ill, I made the rounds of medical circles – first the standard ones, then the periphery, with nutritionists and homoeopaths, and finally the very outer rim, from breathing specialists to Bioenergeticists. By the autumn of 1986 I was hacking my way though the dense thicket of New Age therapies. I tried breathing from the abdomen. I had the negative emotions Rolfed out of me. Somebody tried to diagnose me by subjecting my hair sample to radio waves. I ploughed through autogenic training, colonic irrigation and even a form of psychotherapy – a mixture of Wilhelm Reich and what felt like being tickled on the face. I learned something about my relationship with my mother. But I did not, at any point, get better.

      By the summer of 1987 a sense of hopelessness descended over me. The worst part of being chronically unwell without a diagnosis legitimatizing it is that a lot of people don’t believe you, or view your symptoms as imaginary