‘Women are too busy to look after themselves’
media coverage, I got headhunted by four publishers.
How many books have you written?
So far, 26. What happened was that we discovered 69 per cent of women who followed our advice on non-drug treatment were symptom-free within the space of a few months. We were really interested to know why that was and we discovered that very often the women had low levels of important nutrients, like magnesium, B vitamins and zinc, iron, calcium, and essential fatty acids. By following our advice, which included nutritional advice, not only were women getting over their PMS but they were also getting over all sorts of other things — fatigue or migraines or aches and pains or low libido, cravings. They were even losing weight without having to diet.
So I started writing books about that. I wrote one on cravings, and on irritable bowel syndrome. I did one on preconception, pregnancy weaning, fatigue, and then I got interested in the menopause. In 1990, there was already enoughresearchtoshowthatyoucould actually go through your menopause naturally too, and as time has gone on there is more research showing that you can prevent bone thinning the same way. You can prevent osteoporosis. You can prevent heart disease and you can also prevent dementia.
Apart from the books I have done a lot of series on TV. I have now got this programme called the Really Useful Health Show where I look at how to deal with different conditions.
How does the medical establishment respond to your work?
It is a bit of a mixed bag actually. I think there are some people who are very sceptical and will die sceptical. There are other people who are much more open-minded. Unbelievably, it is not on the medical curriculum to teach doctors about holistic medicine that is scientifically based. That has got to change because the internet now allows patients to know far more than their doctors. And why would you want to be on one pill and then another pill and then another pill, with all the side effects? Some people end up on so much medication.
You don’t have to be a crank to just get the balance right in your life, and that is what this is all about. It is learning to meet your needs at whatever life stage you are at. So many women are so busy— they are working, they have children, they have husbands and homes to look after — that they don’t actually spend much time looking after themselves. As a result, they get themselves in a mess — they get PMS or something else — and it stops them in their tracks. Learning to meet your needs can make all the difference.
Let’s talk about the Angelus Foundation,andyourdaughterhester.she died in 2009.
Yes, it will be three years on April 26. She was 21. She was a medical student at Sussex University. She was at an awards dinner where she met up with an old boyfriend and eventually went home with him. She had had a few drinks during the evening and apparently he gave her half a dose of something called GBL, which is paint stripper and was at the time a legal high. Coupled with a small amount of alcohol it can shut down your respiratory system and that is what happened to Hester. It closed her respiratory system and she went to sleep and she didn’t wake up.
The next morning I had two police women on my doorstep who broke the news to me that my daughter had died. It was horrifying. It was such a shock because she wasn’t a drug-taker.
None of her friends knew what GBL was and even the vice chancellor of Sussex University who is a professor of medicine had never heard of GBL. So I started to Google it and I found that GBL had been banned in many other countries around the world four years before Hester died. Eighteen months before there had been a report by the European Committee on Drug Abuse and it had basically said that GBL plus alcohol equals death. As a result of that they had had poster campaigns in nightclubs in Europe, and the communities had got together with charities and the police and the nightclubs and they had had an awareness campaign so that young people knew about it.
I knew that if there had been an awarenesscampaignhereandsheknew that it was dangerous, GBL would never have crossed her lips. I was really angry with the Home Secretary, Jackie Smith, for her inactivity. When Hester died, we got a call from the Daily Telegraph who talked to me about going to see Jackie Smith and about them reporting on it.
That was how it all began really. My eldestdaughteratthetimewasworking at O2 and the communications director there was a Jewish guy called Glenn Manoff who heard what happened and phoned me to say could he help? He introduced me to a PR agency that specialised in video. Jackie Smith had resigned the day before I was meant to see her so I went to see her replacement, Alan Johnson. Every time he wouldn’t do something we wanted, we would just get eight TV cameras outside his office. I was on all the morning shows.
This thing then started to take on a life of its own. My mission was to ban GBL and I thought that if I did that, that would be the end of it. But I didn’t know that GBL was just one of a number of legal highs. As soon as we got it banned, other things came onto the market. In fact, in 2010 there were 41 new substances and no one really knew what was in them except that they were often a cocktail of class B drugs and chemicals — paint stripper, plant food, fish food, bath salts — never intended for human consumption.
I wanted to set up something in memory of Hester. I decided to call it the Angelus Foundation because she had had a dozen dolls and they were all called Angelus. When I was told that she had passed away I felt that I could still communicate with her and I could feel that she was absolutely screaming out for me because she was so shocked at what had happened to her. I spent quite a lot of time just communicating with her. I feel like she is with me all the time and I feel like the whole Angelus thing is a joint initiative between us. That may sound kooky but I just feel that she is working still to make this thing happen.
The aims of the foundation are to raise awareness so that young people make smarter choices and that their parents have wise conversations with them and keep them safe. Earlier this month we announced our Wise-up campaign which will be launched at the beginning of May. Part of it is called Wise-up Parents, which aims to make parents aware of the dangers their kids face, because it has become very normal for kids to take this stuff when they go to clubs and parties. The are sideeffects parents can look out for — anything from psychosis to severe depression, anxiety, panic attacks, difficulty in breathing, heavy nosebleeds. And we need to wise up parents so they can have smarter conversations with their kids about the dangers.
We are also going to set up a website for young people so that we can communicate the right message. A lot of kids are taking these things because of peer pressure, but also because they think they are safe because they are legal. And they are quite cheap?
Yes, and you don’t need ID to buy them. Our big challenge is to get kids to understand that they don’t need these drugs, that they can get high from sports and dancing and music and good relationships.
You said that you have recently been started to work with Mitch Winehouse and his wife?
I have got another woman working with me called Vicky Unwin. She is half Jewish. Her daughter Louise died last year. She was 21. Vicky and I have become quite close. Together we have had several meetings with the Winehouse family. Obviously we have got a great deal in common because they lost Amy, and we lost our girls.
One of the foundation’s goals is to get drugs education back on the National Curriculum. And we’re going to campaign for a separate ministry for drugs and alcohol like they have in France, that answers directly to the Prime Minister and has adequate funds to tackle the problem. Right now there isn’t even a laboratory that can measure all this stuff so that we know what is in it. We haven’t got the faintest clue what these things do to the brain and the organs and fertility and life expectancy. We know that some of them are addictive. We know that some of them are dangerous, but we can’t quantify it. So there needs to be a centre of excellence. We are applying for funding from the Lottery, from different trusts and foundations to make this happen.
The foundation is clearly important to you.
I have had to work 16 or 17 hour days to get it to where it is now. It has been my therapy to be perfectly honest, it has helped with the grief. Yes, Angelus is so important to me. Details of Maryon Stewart’s campaign and petition against legal highs is at www.angelusfoundation.com Information on Lynne Franks’s empowerment workshops for women is at www. lynnefranks.com/www.seednetwork.com