DThe King’s doctor, Dr Michael Dixon, wearing his trademark bow tie, debates whether homeopathic remedies should have a role in the NHS. “If you’re going to talk about homeopathy in the medical world, you might as well put your head on a guillotine and wait for someone to cut it off,” he laughs.
Mr Dixon, 72, an NHS GP, was appointed Head of the Royal Medical Household when Prince Charles ascended the throne. Of the many changes to Buckingham Palace, this was perhaps the most controversial.
Campaigners were appalled by Mr Dixon’s previous support for homeopathy. Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor at the University of Exeter, said the king seemed to favor doctors who “promote questionable treatments”. This newspaper published an article last year He urged the king to “eliminate this fake homeopath.”
A year later we met for coffee in central London. In a rare interview, Mr Dixon expressed his strong views about Mr Ozempic, Labour’s budget and the “toxic” treatment of NHS staff. But first of all, is he a homeopath? “Can I say for the record that I have never studied homeopathy?” he says. “I’ve never even recommended homeopathy. What I’ve done is, if a patient feels they’ve benefited from homeopathy, they’re told, what’s the problem?”
The problem, scientists would argue, is that homeopathy undermines trust in real, evidence-based medicine. Homeopathic remedies are often made by diluting the active ingredient with water so that no trace of the original substance remains. Homeopathy has been banned on the NHS since 2017 because it is “at best a placebo”.
But for Dixon, this “trench warfare” division between alternative and conventional medicine is too dichotomous. Even if something is scientifically impossible, if it helps patients, that’s all that matters, Dixon said. “Years ago, a Christian faith healer started seeing some of my patients. She improved many of them. She didn’t care if it was a placebo or not. Their symptoms were better. ” he says.
He believes homeopathy can serve a certain purpose in the NHS, but says he believes it is “the madness of some of the more selfish complementary medicine practitioners” who insist on using homeopathy to vaccinate children. I’m drawing the line. “I always oppose people who try to use complementary medicine when there is good, evidence-based conventional medicine.”
Dixon arrived for our interview wearing a suit and bow tie and carrying an old-fashioned leather doctor’s briefcase. He is cheerful and soft-spoken. The father-of-three spent the previous day at his general practice in rural Devon, where he has worked for 40 years, before taking an early morning train to London. He spends one day a week as an NHS doctor, leading a team of medical professionals who look after the royal family, and is also the king’s personal physician.
Mr Dixon becomes the first general practitioner to be appointed as Royal Head of Medical Household.
mark passmore
For obvious reasons, Dixon cannot speak about royal health issues. This year has been an unusual year. The king’s cancer diagnosis was first made public. A few weeks later, the Princess of Wales said after abdominal surgery that she had been found to have cancer.
Dixon and the King have been working together for decades, bonded over their interest in alternative medicine. Dixon is president of the College of Medicine and Integrative Medicine, an organization that promotes a holistic approach to health care, and says complementary therapies such as herbal medicine, yoga and acupuncture can be used alongside conventional treatments. claims it can be done.
The university’s patron, the king, argued that the government should “abandon traditional thinking” when it comes to health care. Last month, Charles and Camilla completed a three-day stay at an Indian wellness resort offering Ayurvedic treatments.
The King recently stayed at Sukhya Wellness Resort Center in Bangalore.
The two men also share a love of gardening. Dixon General Practice in Devon has an herb garden, run entirely by patient volunteers. Dixon says St. John’s wort is “a great herb for mild to moderate depression and fatigue,” peppermint tea is “very effective for intestinal complaints,” and aloe vera to offer to eczema patients. He said he always has it on hand.
What other alternative medicine techniques does he work with? “I like acupressure. I do a little bit of manipulation, a little bit of herbs, a little bit of self-hypnosis, which I find very effective. “I think so,” he said, explaining that in the past he “hypnotized himself to be happy.”
This enthusiasm for unconventional treatment landed Dixon in trouble when he was appointed to the royal family. His role was initially kept under the radar, but in December last year the Sunday Times reported on the king’s “quiet appointment” of the “physician who has championed horny goat weed”. Dixon has used goat weed herbs in the past for patients with impotence, but as he clarifies, “This was many years ago, before Viagra and everything else. ”.
Mr Dixon also faced allegations of discrepancies on his CV regarding the timing of his posts at University College London and the University of Exeter. He had been under scrutiny for his involvement in a deal by Charles’ charity to set up an NHS alternative medicine clinic using funds from the Indian government. NHS clinics will not open and the King’s Foundation will be forced to return up to £110,000 to India.
Dixon denies any wrongdoing on his resume, but says some of the criticism was “very personal and very vindictive.” “I’m pretty thick-skinned and it’s frustrating for my wife and kids,” he added. Two of his children are general practitioners and his wife Joanna is a professional artist. “They say you’ve been a general practitioner for 40 years. Your GP practice has been rated excellent and you’ve never had a single complaint. Then I’ve been featured as a homeopath in all the national newspapers. You get labeled.”
• Is the King’s interest in Ayurvedic treatment healthy?
Dixon’s interest in alternative medicine is closely tied to his firm belief that too many people are taking too many medications. He said it was “insane” that one in five adults in the UK were taking antidepressants. He believes he is partly responsible for the pressure on the attending physician. “If each appointment is only five or 10 minutes, it’s much easier for me to give them Prozac than to start talking about the stresses of life and work and everything else.”
The day we met, Ozempic was in the news again, and Dixon, who believed we should focus on fixing our broken food system, was disappointed by the clamor for a silver bullet. “The more I go down Ozempic’s path, the more I say, ‘It’s not my fault, give me a shot, give me medicine,'” he says.
Dixon and the School of Medicine have long championed social prescribing, when patients are referred to art classes and walking, gardening and singing groups, rather than relying on prescription drugs to “medicalize everything.” . Thanks in part to Mr Dixon’s work, the NHS now employs more than 3,500 social prescribing ‘link workers’.
Two of these linkworkers, Beth Bramble and Ruth Tucker, are based at Dixon’s GP practice in the market town of Cullompton, Devon. Bramble connects teens with mental health issues with volunteering opportunities. This “creates a virtuous cycle,” Dixon said. “There are a lot of lonely old women who would like someone to tend to their gardens or teach them how to use a computer or mobile phone.”
Mr Dixon and Beth Bramble and Ruth Tucker, social prescribers at the Devon operating theatre.
mark passmore
Mr Dixon’s enthusiasm for social prescribing is part of an overarching philosophy of putting care back into the community to fix the NHS. “The ultimate challenge is for communities to take care of themselves and for individuals to take care of themselves. The more we depend on experts, Ozempic and everything else, the less our independence becomes. and the sustainability of health services decreases,” says Dixon.
One of the ways the NHS has made serious mistakes, he claims, is by funneling money into hospitals at the expense of general practice and “money disappears”. Labour’s recent budget is emblematic of this. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has given £22.6 billion to the NHS to reduce hospital waiting lists of 7.6 million people. At the same time, increases in national insurance contributions for employers have been imposed, affecting GP surgeries, with some now facing closure. Mr Dixon said of the budget measure: “It was a mistake and an own goal” and backed calls to exempt GPs from the tax increase.
His prescription for the NHS also includes eradicating bureaucracy, which he describes as “the disease of the health service”. Despite being an experienced rural GP, he has to spend “many hours” each year completing compulsory NHS training on topics such as fire safety, equality, diversity and preventing terrorist radicalization. It doesn’t have to be. “All the statutory training is completely pointless and has become a cottage industry in itself. We are infantilized as professionals. Most of us go into general practice seeking autonomy. . We want to be able to create and invent things for the locals. Then we keep getting bloody stupid orders from above. It’s demoralizing.”
He says the NHS is alienating doctors by “repressing staff with too much regulation”. While there are fewer full-time doctors than there were a decade ago, young doctors are being lured by life in Australia and Canada. “The treatment of NHS staff is harmful,” Mr Dixon said. “When I was a junior doctor in Exeter, you could park your car outside the hospital and you were given breakfast after a night on call. That’s all gone. Thirty years later, if you’re doing the same job as me… My daughter couldn’t even park in a car park. My generation loved the NHS. It’s a flaw, but we’re all idealists. [junior doctor] I think the medical service is crap. It has been abusing them so why should they get involved in it? It’s a really sad situation. ”
During his long career, Mr. Dixon has established himself as an influential figure in health policy. When Labor was in power from 1997 to 2010, Mr Dixon was often at the ‘top table’ due to his role as chair of the NHS Alliance, the national organization defending GPs. He was an adviser to Lord Darge of Denham, the health secretary in Gordon Brown’s government, who recently undertook the government’s landmark review of the NHS. As well as Mr Darzi, Mr Dixon maintains contact with Alan Milburn, who was health secretary under Blair and is now an adviser to Wes Streeting. “It’s interesting to see the old characters come back,” Dixon said, praising Darji’s “great” reviews.
Lord Durge of Denham carried out a review of the NHS.
Mark Harrison coloring the times
Mr Dixon called on Mr Streeting to deliver on his promise of fundamental reforms, with a focus on tackling the social determinants of health, such as obesity and loneliness, which cause 80 per cent of disease. He wants more social prescribing to bring communities together and a resurgence of general practice as a “local arm of public health”. “There is huge potential for GPs to connect with local schools, local supermarkets, local farms, local authorities and the voluntary sector,” Mr Dixon says. “Everyone is on their own and without community, you end up with very expensive health care services.”
In his 40 years as a family physician, Dixon’s day-to-day work has changed dramatically due to financial constraints. “There were three of us in the clinic yesterday and we had to see and contact 150 patients a day. The system is overloaded.”
For Dixon, it’s about restoring the personal relationship between GP and patient. “When we ask patients who their doctor is, they often don’t know. We’ve lost that fundamental connection. Yesterday, we’ve been in the same practice for 40 years. I also met the grandchildren of patients I had known for a long time, as well as the children I had delivered.Knowing the families made it much easier for GPs to have ongoing relationships with patients. We know that this will result in fewer referrals, fewer prescriptions, and fewer hospital visits.
“What I enjoyed about general practice is that you get to see through the lives of your children and grandchildren and all these other people. That’s what I enjoyed. Now that we’ve destroyed it, We need to get it back.”
