-
Education – Bring it on!
I continue to be amazed at the options available to give better results to our patients. No more is this evident in the area of complementary medicines. Young pharmacists to whom I speak give me the impression that complementary medicines are unproven, unprofessional and almost “beneath” them from a patient care perspective. What they are…
-
Accessing Medical Marijuana
Australia really does have a peculiar poisons regulation system, particularly when you want to access a non-psychoactive version of medical cannabis, in the form of hemp. According to this outpatient alcohol rehab, although doctors can now legally prescribe medical marijuana they can only do so if they register at the federal and state levels for…
-
Politics and Health
As if the Victorian Government doesn’t have enough on its hands at the moment with some demarcation issues, the recent Health Complaints Act heralds an effective abolition of the right to practice a total of seventeen natural health therapies. This must be one of the most discriminatory Acts since the Middle Ages. What is happening…
-
Why is there a need for the Health Australia Party (HAP)?
Many Australians rely every day on natural medicines and/or the services of a natural health practitioner to maintain their health. Yet this significant contribution to the well-being of grateful ordinary Australians goes largely unacknowledged by politicians, the news media and mainstream medicine. Rather instead we see an extraordinary bias against these therapies, to the point…
-
The Perfect Prescription
In the world of pharmacy we have evolved from basically a practice that dealt in compounded prescriptions of herbal substances at an affordable cost to a plethora of synthetic drugs supported by dubious evidence. And it has happened in my lifetime. My query is that if we have a situation where so-called solid evidence exists…
-
Switzerland Gets it Right
Switzerland is a country known for its precision and its ability to keep its transport system “on time”. It is a landlocked country so when it decides how it could survive, it basically chose financial services and manufacturing industries that are “light” in weight but high value. Drug manufacture fitted that requirement, as was watch-making.…
-
Community Pharmacy or Commodity Pharmacy?
Are pharmacies becoming a glamorised outlet for widely advertised complementary and over-the-counter medicines that require no skill to “pack and wrap”? Sales based on an advertisement in weekend papers (all heavily discounted of course!) and sales of nutritionals into China are driving our professionalism underground. Pharmacists who have never entertained supporting a particular complementary medicine…
-
Blackmore’s New Flagship Store – Now There’s a Model for Pharmacy!
Blackmores have designed and opened an innovative flagship store that offers the complete wellbeing experience, with rooms for private consultations with qualified naturopaths, a modern ‘Mindful Ocean’ system to assess mindfulness, the Wellbeing Bar for food and drink tasting as well as offering the comprehensive Blackmores’ product range. Located on Level 5 of Westfield, Bondi Junction, the…
-
People with high autistic tendencies see the world very differently
I once viewed an ABC health program where an eminent psychologist was commenting on different levels of the autistic spectrum. In particular, she referred to people who had Asperger’s Syndrome and how they all seemed to have high IQ’s and an obsession with specific detail. Her punch line was that many of these people had…
-
Confused over chromium?
It’s often difficult to get the true picture when you hear and read a sensational report about a nutritional supplement causing cancer. Erin Brockovich brought chromium into the spotlight because of the 2000 movie and book, in which there was shown to be a link between an elevated cluster of illnesses, including cancer, to hexavalent…