Perhaps Johnno and I can agree

Could it be that the NHS is being shown to be in the hands of big business again? Like so many other parts of our daily life?

My amazingly quick recovery from an outbreak of severe Arthritis on Wednesday night when I was immobilised by pain in my bed, to someone who could dance a full hour at Friday lunch time, with no remaining symptoms, by a change in diet, makes me sit up and question "What's going on?"

Could it not be that the effect of diet is not scientifically researched and that the NHS acts along very narrow lines of reasoning: treat illnesses either by drugs (with research carried by the drug companies anxious to sell them) or by surgery (with surgeons anxious to develop their skills of manipulating the human body)?

My recent experience suggests that I never needed a hip replacement in the first place: diet may have been an alternative method of treatment - very successful alternative.

In 2002 onwards, whilst living in London having just retired from a stressful carrier in teaching, Arthritis in my left hip became a major problem. We moved back to Ulverston in 2004 with the pain increasing rapidly. In May 2005 I had the hip replacement with a dramatic improvement but not a full recovery in that the weakened muscle coping with lack of use because of the pain now had to cope with the scar tissue resulting from the operation. Sadly physiotherapy to get this muscle back in good running order was never suggested and that muscle is causing considerable problems now.

At the same time in January 2005 the X-Rays of both hips not only revealed a problem in my left hip but the prediction that I would shortly need a hip replacement in my second hip. This week, 9 years later, was the first time this hip has caused problems : one that was immediately rectified by an immediate change in diet.

The question that arises:

Did the move here and a possible change in diet and certainly life style prevent Arthritis developing in my second hip, a deterioration predicted by doctors. Secondly could diet have prevented the onset of Arthritis  in both hips in the first place.

In all my dealings with doctors, diet was never mentioned. Could this not be that this has never been properly researched within the NHS? When you stop and think : who would pay for reliable accredited research to be undertaken? We know that drug companies like Glaxo will pay for research to show that their drugs are effective: that's how they make money. But who pays for diet research? No one. So it ends up as a body of opinion and hearsay with little credibility and a massive muddle with what seem to be religious fanatics on the one hand and dour sceptics of the lot on the other.

Once again are we not being manipulated by people at the top in the form of the NHS to only think along their lines with the alternative medicines having to struggle and being prone to the "bad science" that discredits it?

Make any sense Johnno?