GATEWAY CLINIC One of our outside therapists has mentioned the name of John Tindall and the Gateway Clinic in London on several occasions. A recent edition of "Positive Nation" ran a two page article on the clinic so we thought it might be a good idea to devote the Complementary Therapy space in this edition to a glance at the Gateway Clinic and what it is all about. For the past nine years the Gateway clinic has been providing natural health care treatment for people living with HIV & AIDS. At the Gateway they offer traditional Chinese herbs, acupuncture sessions and Qi Gong (exercises for parts of the body affected by the virus). In an article in Positive Nation John Tindall says that acupuncture is very useful for the immune system and in dealing with the side effects of orthodox drug treatments. When clients are able to receive a prescription for Chinese herbs the rate of successfully treating existing infections and preventing opportunistic infections improves significantly, according to client feedback over many years. A team
of doctors from San Francisco General Hospital recently
initiated a double blind HIV trial of Chinese herbal
formula against a placebo. Preliminary results show
patients felt less fatigue and nausea and had fewer night
sweats. More work is being done to look at the incidence
of opportunistic infection and the impact on CD4 counts. World-wide there has been a significant increase in interest in Chinese herbs as treatments in HIV & AIDS. Several countries, including the USA, fund impressive research programmes looking at what can, both clinically and financially, be a very efficient and effective way of treating the disease. Major pharmaceutical companies are also actively monitoring the use, costs, outcome and acceptability of Chinese herbs as people with HIV seek access to treatments which are most likely to be of optimum value to them. Perhaps a Positive Lives interview with John Tindall or even a visit to the Gateway Clinic might assist many of our readers who are interested in the benefits of Traditional Chinese medicine mentioned in John's article. Anyone interested in following up this article can contact "Positive Lives" through any of the usual methods. If you visit our Hanley centre you can speak to Neil or Maurice about this.
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