There was a time when most of us assumed that if something went wrong with our health, we simply went to the doctor.
You made an appointment. Someone listened. You got tests. Then a diagnosis. Then the treatment.
Those days seem long gone now. Not because doctors are uncaring. Not because medicine doesn’t work. It’s because the system is increasingly hard to use.
The size of general practice consultations is reduced. Waiting lists lengthen. Preventive medicine is abandoned. Doctors are squeezed for time.
The number of people living with chronic complex health problems is rising. In some areas, patients are being treated in corridors, in cupboards (you read that right!) and lying for days in corridors under artificial light.
Some patients have died in hospital corridors as NHS staff do their utmost, expressing significant concerns over the lack of safety and dignity.
This is not an argument against medicine. It can be amazing. When you need to be treated for an acute problem. When you need the emergency department. When you need a surgeon. We need to take a difficult decision because the system is under pressure and something has to give.
The question we need to be asking is what happens between the doctor’s appointments?
The answer is perhaps that families could become a little more accomplished at looking after themselves. Not in diagnosing cancer via a YouTube video. Not in believing every health tip that turns up in an Instagram reel.
A simple idea: Stop making the medical system your first line of defence.
Get yourself better equipped. Know more. Measure more.
Over the years, I’ve come across many gadgets posing as ‘must-have wonders’ that turned out to be no better than toys. During that same period, however I’ve used several units of equipment that have surpassed all my expectations.
So much so that the last appointment I made to see a doctor was in 1992.
(I have seen a doctor since then for an appointment made by the NHS for a general age-related checkup. Despite passing all the tests with flying colours, the inevitable prescription for statins was rolled out. Flatly refused!)
Make yourself more capable. Learn more. Measure more. Notice more.
Start building your own health toolkit. It’s a level up from a first aid kit.
You want a quality blood pressure monitor to see what it might be telling you.
You want a quality thermometer so you can tell the difference between having a cold and actually having a fever.
You want a pulse oximeter – which measures blood oxygen levels and pulse rate..
You want a good set of scales so you can observe small changes in your weight that you probably wouldn’t notice otherwise.
You want a blood glucose monitor, so you can help your family know how their bodies are reacting to food, exercise and all the other things that impact health.
There are advanced consumer health technologies out there that are becoming more and more accessible.
All of these technologies are not a replacement for the doctor, but they help you maintain good health and avoid having to book an appointment to see one.
Make it a family effort. Choose a device that’s useful to you and become familiar with it.
Over time you build something of real value – your health literacy.
Make sure your kids know what high blood pressure means. Your partner knows how to take a temperature. You know when a reading is high and you genuinely need to seek advice.
The future will call for more people with this understanding. Healthcare is not disappearing and doctors are not becoming irrelevant, just pressurised by wholly unnecessary appointments such as broken acrylic nails, wet or tight shoes, facial hair complaints, dry razor burn, coughing after inhaling shower mist, and bizarre internet home remedies, such as putting honey directly into the eyes or applying yogurt vaginally to treat a yeast infection (all genuine examples).
Consider the following:
1. Vielight: light as a health technology
What if you could treat your brain without swallowing a single pill?
This Vielight device uses light instead of drugs.
Not regular light – specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared light aimed at your brain.
The science is called photobiomodulation, and researchers are showing how light can influence and benefit brain function.
Here’s what nobody talks about: we’ve been conditioned to think healthcare only comes in three forms – pills, procedures, or prescriptions.
But what if we’re asking the wrong question?
Instead of “what chemical can we add to the body,” what if we asked “what can we activate that’s already there?”
I’m not suggesting that this is a miracle cure for Alzheimer’s or anything like that – the research in that field remains ongoing. But I am saying the question itself is worth asking.
Because the future of healthcare might not look like another prescription.
It might look like light.
The first signs of Alzheimer’s Disease in my wife Phylipa became evident two years before we learned about the Vielight. It has undoubtedly been instrumental in slowing down her deterioration. I wish we’d learned about this approach earlier, although Alzheimers can begin its invasion anything up to 10+ years before the first signs of memory loss show.
Click here for details. (Use the code RFLBIO and save yourself 10%)
These days I use the VIelight Neuro myself twice a week on the basis that prevention is easier than cure.
The video above also applies to the MIP (below).
2. MIP
Can you put your hand on your heart and swear that the blood coursing through your veins is in tip-top condition?
Probably not. Most of us give blood about as much thought as we give the plumbing behind the bathroom wall. We assume it’s there, doing its job, until something goes wrong.
But blood is rather more important than the stuff coming out of the kitchen tap.
It carries oxygen, nutrients, hormones and other essential cargo around the body, while collecting the rubbish on the way back. If circulation becomes sluggish, those jobs become harder to perform efficiently.
And by sluggish, I don’t mean blood literally travelling at the speed of treacle. I mean impaired circulation and changes in blood flow that may affect how efficiently blood does what it is supposed to do.
So, if you’d like to explore a simple approach that may support healthy circulation and blood flow, read on. .
Click here for details. (Use the code RFLBIO and save yourself 10%.)
3. Avazzia: electricity instead of chemistry
Men and women over 40 living with chronic pain have typically tried the obvious route: pain medication, physiotherapy, steroid injections, perhaps surgery, certainly an internet’s worth of advice.
Most of these have delivered partial or temporary relief at best. The pain returns. The body that once felt reliable now feels like an adversary.
The emotional reality. They are not merely in pain. They are exhausted by pain. They feel frustration at limitations, hopelessness when treatments fail, and a quiet anger – at their body, at the medical system, at the people around them who don’t understand why they cancelled again.
Critically, they feel shame: a creeping sense that they must be doing something wrong, that they are “the problem,” that everyone else manages to get better except them.We know that chronic pain creates stigma and social withdrawal – people in pain stop going to things, stop admitting how bad it is, start performing “fine.”
What they want right now is to feel like themselves again. Not “cured” – that’s too far away to be believable. They want a Tuesday that doesn’t involve managing pain before they’ve done a single useful thing. They want to sleep without waking in the night. They want to not think about their back (or knee, or shoulder) every time they sit down. They want control returned to them, which is exactly why the Avazzia’s “hospital in your hand” positioning resonates so deeply. It gives them agency.
They are not hopeful searchers. They are cautious, sceptical reactivators. They have been burned enough times that they approach new options with a mixture of desperate hope and pre-loaded cynicism. They don’t want a miracle claim. They want something that sounds honest and specific – something that respects their intelligence while also speaking directly to their exact situation.
The phrase “I’ve tried everything” is their identity. They need to feel that this is different in a way they can rationalise, not just believe.
Microcurrent technology. Most won’t know what microcurrent is. Some will have seen TENS machines and assume it’s similar. Some will be mildly sceptical of “gadget” solutions. The FDA clearance and the cellular science angle (ATP, not just masking pain but working at the source) matters deeply to this audience as they want to know why it works, not just that it does.
They also care about ease, because they’ve already spent years doing hard things that didn’t work.
Think about it.
Your nerves communicate electrically. Your muscles contract from electrical signals. Your heart beats because of electrical activity.
We’ve been conditioned to think the body is just a machine that needs the right pill inserted into it.
But this approach ignores half the equation,
The future of wellness isn’t just about what we put IN our bodies – it’s about what we activate that’s already there.
In 2015 Scientific American – not a newsletter peddled at the checkout line alongside horoscopes and diet tips – declared microcurrent as the medicine of tomorrow .
There are several Avazzia models to choose from. Click here to access their website.
Please contact me if you need guidance.
4. Q Energy Spa: change the environment
Let’s be honest. You’re probably not quite the energetic creature you once were.
You know what to eat. You know you should exercise. You know sleep is important. You’ve read enough about wellness to qualify for a small laminated certificate.
And yet the energy has quietly disappeared.
Getting out of bed can feel like a negotiation. By evening, you’ve got just enough left in the tank to stare blankly at the television. Being loving, attentive and interested in your family has become something you schedule mentally for another day.
Perhaps someone has called it chronic fatigue. Perhaps you’ve been handed another label. Or perhaps you’ve simply noticed that you’re tired, rather a lot, and nobody has bothered to give it a name.
The more troubling part is the feeling that comes with it.
That nagging suspicion that you’re living a smaller version of the life you could be living.
Because energy isn’t some optional extra, like heated seats or a second bathroom. It is the machinery behind almost everything: your relationships, your work, your mood, your curiosity, your ambitions and your capacity to enjoy being alive.
When energy falls, the rest of life tends to follow it downstairs.
And no, I’m not talking about another miraculous powder, potion or brightly coloured bottle promising to turn you into a human Duracell battery.
Nor caffeine. Nor sugar. Nor energy drinks. Nor the familiar modern trick of borrowing energy from tomorrow and pretending it came for free.
That little jolt is not energy. It is an overdraft.
What interests me is something rather more fundamental: the science of building energy rather than merely stimulating it.
The idea that your body isn’t necessarily supposed to stagger through the day, propped up by coffee and determination, but is capable of producing considerably more of the thing we casually call vitality.
Imagine waking up with something approaching enthusiasm for the day.
Having enough energy left at six o’clock to actually talk to the people you love.
Having the physical and mental reserves to pursue the things you keep telling yourself you’ll get around to “when you have more energy”.
Perhaps the first question isn’t How can I push myself harder?
Perhaps it’s Why am I running on empty in the first place?
If you’re tired of being tired – and rather bored with treating exhaustion as an inevitable feature of modern life – then I think you’re going to find what comes next rather interesting.
That’s why I use the Q Energy Spa.
Rather than putting something into your body, the concept is about reactivating energy that is already within you, but dormant.
We increasingly understand that health isn’t simply something that happens inside a doctor’s surgery.
It happens everywhere.
Start building
I’m not suggesting you rush out and spend thousands of pounds.
Quite the opposite.
Start with one thing.
Buy something useful.
Learn how it works.
Understand what it can and cannot tell you.
Look at the evidence.
Keep records.
Notice what changes.
Then decide whether it deserves a permanent place in your toolkit.
Because the real investment isn’t the equipment.
It’s becoming harder to fool yourself about your own health.
And that may become one of the most valuable skills a family can possess.
The medical system isn’t going away.
But it may become increasingly difficult to rely upon for every question, every symptom and every problem.
So perhaps the new model is this:
Don’t abandon medicine. Become less dependent on it.
Know your numbers.
Understand your body.
Explore the technology.
Question the claims.
Keep an open mind, and a sceptical one.
And start building your own health arsenal.
Because when the healthcare system is stretched, the person sitting at the kitchen table may be the first person who notices that something isn’t right.
That person should be you.
Your future self, and perhaps someone you love, may be very glad you did.
If you’d like any more information on the above, please email me,
Graeme Dinnen
