Blog Notes Archives - Dr Xandria Williams PhD, M.Sc., DIC, ARCS, MRSC, ND, DBM, MRN

January 2019

Chemo and Hair Loss

As my London practice grew, I came across a variety of problems associated with the medical approach to cancer and the use of chemotherapy and radiations. One of these was hair loss following chemotherapy.

This is a major concern for many people facing chemotherapy and its toxic consequences. This apparently worries peoples so much that as much as eight per cent of women have considered refusing chemotherapy for this reason alone. Scientist [14-10-17 p.15]

I’ve had many clients who have opted to purchase and wear wigs. Most enjoy this, but some of them find the wigs uncomfortable, […]

Raspberry Ice Cream

I faced a forthcoming dinner party that I was giving with some trepidation. I had planned to make a piquant salad with shredded fennel, apple and red onion to start with, followed by vegetable burgers with a tahini-tamari sauce and a generous salad, and a raspberry ice-cream to finish.

For decades I have followed the same dietary advice that I recommend for my clients.This means that all the food was organic, raw, and low in starch, sugar and processed fats. I knew that three of the guests (and myself!) would be delighted with the menu. […]

Joe’s Diet

I wrote about “My Neighbour Joe” in a previous note. He was a taciturn man and it took a while for us to get to know much about each other. In time, he asked me what I did and what my work was.

“I’m a naturopath.”

He thought about that for a while, maybe an hour or two as we worked away on removing a slab of concrete that had been put in the centre of my back garden by the previous owner. She must have been focused on domestic things and been determined to have […]

Travel and Your Biome

Your digestive tract is a teaming population with hundreds of different types of micro-organisms. These make up your ‘biome.’ If you are in good health, chances are that these microbes are contributing to your health. They make a variety of healthy compounds, including vitamins. For instance, the recommended amount of biotin for the average adult is 30mcg per day. It is not likely that you will meet this amount through diet alone, even from the healthiest of diets. For example, tomatoes are considered an excellent source of biotin with 7.2 mcg per cup. Thankfully, […]

Secondary Gains

Deidre, her husband and their three children lived at one end of town. Her parents lived about fifteen miles away in a village on the other side of town. Deidre was multi-level marketing a range of very effective nutritional products. Her mother had a variety of aches and pains including indigestion, insomnia, developing arthritis and occasional headaches. Deidre knew her products could help her mother, but her mother refused to take them.

Saturday morning, Deidre’s mother phoned her, “My arthritis is bad, could you pick me up and come with me to help me carry […]

Diets by Decade

How diets have changed both, over time and in different parts of the world.

I first entered this profession in the 1970s. At that time health food shops were just getting started (UK), so was Naturopathy (Australia). The diet of the decade was based on weight loss, weight-loss pills, meals-in-a-biscuit (UK) and calorie counting.

In the 1980s, the emphasis was on liquid diets for those wanting to lose weight, and Orthomolecular Nutrition for those who were taking nutrition seriously (Australia) plus the very-low-fat high-carbohydrate Pritikin diet.

In the 1990s, we moved into a more firmly based biochemical […]

If you don’t know what’s broken, you can’t fix it

Without a clear understanding of the cause of a health problem, and the mechanisms by which it has developed, it is extremely difficult to completely resolve the situation, restore optimum health and minimise the chance of a recurrence. If you are simply focusing on the symptoms, at best it’s a ‘patch-up’ job. In that case, you may only have pushed it underground, where it is free to develop and re-emerge again in the future. Worse still, it may culminate until a new and worse problem develops.

This happens regardless of whether the problem is simple, […]

My Neighbor Joe

I moved into a house with a large rambling garden in need of a lot of clearing. My neighbour was a grey-haired, retired bachelor named Joe. We shared a boundary fence with a gap in the middle through which we walked one Sunday morning. Joe offered to help me clear my patch. He would tell me which part of my garden should be cleared next, I would agree, and we would set to it. Joe was a great help and we fell into a regular Sunday pattern of working in my garden. Joe was […]

Gran’s Tuesdays

I only knew my paternal grandmother for three years. I met her during my time as a student at Imperial College. Even in that short time, I soon realised that she was a woman of strong will, overlain by a lot of light-hearted joking and optimism.

She was born on a Tuesday, met her future husband on a Tuesday, was engaged on a Tuesday and was married on a Tuesday. In fact, she had been married three times, each time on a Tuesday and each time it was to the same man.

My grandfather, a surgeon […]

Early Warning Signs

I looked at my diary to see who the next client was and smiled. Betty and David. They were a young couple who had first come to see me nearly twenty years ago. As usual, once they were seated I asked them what I could do for them and what was wrong.

“Oh, nothing is wrong, at least not now.” Barbara opened the discussion, but David quickly spoke up.

“The problem is that there is cancer in several members of each of our families. We have two small children, and we want to do all we […]