Introducing Dr Alex Concorde
We’re delighted to welcome Dr Alex Concorde, who we had the opportunity to interview recently, as a subject matter expert in virology. Some of you may remember her from a speaker at CamExpo and immunology trainer at CNELM and from courses she runs in Applied Psychology, PNI, New Medicine and CAM.
It’s been a bit of a time since we last saw you making all the headlines. What happened?
Well, from being almost ‘omnipresent’, and having adopted a leadership role in CAM for the decade of 2001 to 2010, I went into hiding. Now I’ve finally re-emerged to support the ThinkTree Hub venture. I am a firm believer in only supporting Professional Associations who share your values, who operate with integrity and who you can totally believe in. So here I am.
What do you feel you can bring to the membership?
Along with my training as a medical doctor, part of my background includes a PhD in Immunology, Virology, Molecular Genetics and Pathology. Inevitably I am eager to share my insights into COVID-19 with you from that standpoint – and to that end I will be developing some courses especially for ThinkTree Members.
However it is part of my USP to always be thinking about the whole field strategically and to that end I wish to say that it’s so important that, with your status as a Healthcare Professional, comes proper understanding of the issues that are at stake. No matter what type of Practitioner you are, for almost everyone (including me), there will be science at play that is outside of your zone of training… and yet, because of your role, you will be asked questions by your clients, once you can safely resume working, or sooner, as they look to people they trust to lead them and support them in their confusion, anxiety and uncertainty.
You will need to be able to answer those questions – how you are viewed as a professional in the coming months, crazy as it might seem, it may be more of a reflection of whether you are able to answer COVID-19 questions with measured accuracy, insight and ease, than if you offer great treatments! As a profession we need to seize all opportunities to establish ourselves as having command of our own spheres of operation… AND of every field that impacts on it.
Speaking forthrightly, and making my point as succinctly as I can: now is NOT the time to be talking baloney. Every time we open our mouths to impart our wisdom, we will be moving this Profession closer to the heart of the Healthcare Community, or further away from it.
Where do you think the science of COVID-19 is?
This is the problem: it is emerging day by day. And unlike how people view to tend to view science, it really doesn’t arrive with a Big White Flag screaming ‘THIS IS THE ANSWER to XYZ Burning Question’. Science isn’t ‘facts’ – it’s viewpoints. Granted, viewpoints presented in a way that looks like objectivity. But actually, it’s a cloud of data and information swirling about, reflecting lots of different people’s research sometimes with conflicting ‘answers’. Apart from anything else they are researching different subsets of people at different times in different ways. Part of your role is to understand why sometimes the ‘answers’ to what seems like the same question, contradict, or even cancel each other out.
That sounds pretty confusing. How would we go about it?
As a healthcare professional, we need to be willing – and able – to look past the headlines we see on our smartphones as Headline News Notifications, and really critique the issues at play. Anyone who follows me on twitter (@dralexconcorde) will know that I spend my day critiquing a lot of what I see happening so loudly that it almost approaches an ongoing rant. I do it on purpose – to make people THINK. As Healthcare Professionals we cannot just limply accept what we are fed, like sheep. Part of the role, and the responsibility, of being fortunate enough to have an education of any kind – and far more an education that places you in a position of trust – is to help and enable others to shape their own thoughts, and that includes your patients’.
I have been ranting a lot about the easing of the lockdown – I am not a sheep. Minimally, for example, I would expect that everyone reading this newsletter will have formulated your own opinions as to how valid it is to be easing the lockdown at all. And to be able to knowledgably and insightfully discuss these issues with your patients. Remotely.
So how might we do this?
One of the contributions I want to offer to ThinkTree members is an overview of the science as it emerges, together with my wish to help you to shape your own thoughts ever more, as professionals. It’s not something that people think about much, but actually what separates a professional from a non-professional isn’t a title, or a certificate – it’s a capacity to think in ever more individual and rightly-self-assured ways. What you in turn bring to your profession, via what you bring to your practice, depends on it and reflects it. Handily the Association is called Thinktree – no wonder it resonates! As a name it means many things, and different things to different people – but one of those things, I feel, is ‘Evolution Through Thought’.
As part of the ongoing add-ons that come as fringe, or indeed central, benefits with the COVID-19 Courses that I will be helping to offer you via ThinkTree, there will be ways in which you can keep abreast of the science of COVID. This is key. But importantly, as per my USP as an educator of professionals, my aim is not simply to ‘tell you’ what I think the science says, but to help you develop how YOU think and how you ‘think about’ what the science says, and what it means to YOU and to your PATIENTS. This is not just about COVID, it’s about killing two birds with one stone by seizing every opportunity to undertake professional development that isn’t just about ‘learning some new information’. Learning information, and learning thinking, happening hand in hand.
What do you think therapists particularly need to be aware of in relation to COVID-19?
There are some emerging problems consequent of COVID-19. There have been some extremely unusual pathologies associated with this virus and the fact is that there may be longer-term consequences that we are as yet not aware of, but which I am becoming aware of in the periphery of my vision..
It hasn’t been around long enough to know for sure, but there are some people that we can almost certainly say for sure, who are struggling to shift the infection, or their physical problems since the infection. There are some people for whom the greatest ‘pathology’ has been gastrointestinal, not respiratory, and a proportion of them are having ongoing challenges with gastrointestinal issues – although much of this is anecdotal at present. In addition, the bizarre clotting pathology associated with this virus has claimed many lives. I speak frequently with medical colleagues frontline about the devastatingly-difficult-to-treat ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ clotting issues that have been gruesome deal-breakers in the fight at the frontline. Children, as we all know, thank goodness, do not tend to get severe COVID infection – but yet there has been an increased incidence, worldwide, of two usually-extremely-rare vascular disorders affecting children that are also linked to abnormal clotting. There are neurological issues that are linked to this infection, just as there has been with HIV/AIDS. And the list goes on.
To what extent do you feel these problems may affect our practices and are there any solutions or actions we should take?
At the moment we do not have the answers. If we ask the question: Do any of these issues present opportunities to highlight the responsible, informed contribution of our Profession… along with what we are becoming increasingly aware of with regards, say, obesity and COVID-19, other underlying health problems, Vitamin D and so on. Not to mention the issue of ethnicity and impact on BAME populations. A Public Health Report that was released today remarkably failed to provide a single recommendation, despite having had that set as part of its brief. Is there anything we can do to help? Any meaningful contribution we can make?
The key words here are: responsible, informed, meaningful.
These are the sorts of things we need to think about as Professionals – what do they mean in Practice?
How can we increase our value as professionals and as a profession, by adding ever increasing weight to those words?
These are the sorts of things that matter to me as a Healthcare Strategist and a Professional Educator and one that I see as an opportunity for us in the present moment.
Our members are particularly interested in when it is safe and appropriate to begin working again, given government permission to reopen. *Please see footnote
It’s a very difficult time for therapists of every kind who work in close proximity to their clients, One of the pivotal issues will probably be COVID-19 Antibody Testing – which I am offering from my Clinic, at a discount to ThinkTree Members, via SafetoMove.com, run by Paula Esson who you may all know well. Now there are big issues with testing. Uniquely , we are uniquely offering a clinical reporting system at the time of your test, and ongoing updates, to help you use the result in a judicious way. You can buy a test marginally cheaper that means very little, whereas we have made our test valuable to you and your patients. Very importantly, and a topic for another posting, you really must do follow up tests to really get an idea of your own immunity situation, and to do so in conjunction with clinical information.
The first thing to do is create a baseline test and to do that as soon as possible. We are offering significant discounts for repeat testing. We will reflect on what we are seeing for you as an INDIVIDUAL in our reports, as your own situation evolves over time in parallel with the evolution of the science. In short: you need your own COVID Timeline, with reliable knowledge, via tests, of whether you have any immunity at all, when, to what extent, and how long for. Just like Pro Footballers who are testing twice a week (but using the other test).
Looking further into the future, how else do you see your role in supporting ThinkTree? We know that your expertise encompasses many fields of science.
Although COVID-19 is overshadowing just about everything at the moment, those who know me already will realise my major role is as a strategic innovator. One of things we have developed is ‘New Medicine’ (New Paradigm Medicine’) and I would like to help you develop insights around that, and support your efforts to marshal them into your practice in your own unique way.
We have also developed ‘New Psychology’ (‘New Individual-Paradigm Psychology’) – which is a radically different way of ‘doing’ mind and brain work. For example, there are ways of working with the trauma that people are currently experiencing, that are far more easily effective than ‘standard’ psychology – and it helps to have access to ideas about that.
New Psychology also provides a massive matrix that can support any practice, because it ‘illuminates’ many of those thorny problems and ‘things patients say’ in ways that, to my best knowledge, are outside of any other system of understanding. My will is to help you find new avenues for being empowered to tackle those issues with a deep understanding of what they are ‘about’, what people are ‘saying’, plus ‘how tos’. which provide you with insights about how to develop your own modality and ideas in a way that answers some of those questions. At the end of the day, people don’t just rate you and recommend you because you are ‘a great physical therapist’, or do ‘great physiological work’… but because you reach them in poignant ways.
What do you feel we all really need to know right now?
Interestingly enough, it’s aspects of my MBA and Psychology, beyond physiology and medicine that come to the forefront of my mind. I studied two MBAs – one majored in Strategy & Innovation, and the other was in Life Sciences & Healthcare. In both, there was a huge emphasis on thinking past the next week or month, to the future beyond that, in order to steer yourself and for organisations and companies to be prepped, ready and able, at the right time, to meet the emerging possibilities head on, rather than always lagging behind and being overtaken by them.
I’d like to say… As with emergent science, so there is emerging understanding.
With emerging understanding, so there is emerging opportunity. As we grasp the nettle and create new possibilities, and find we have new answers to provide… so we also find the stress, confusion, anxiety and uncertainty start to fall away.
Any final words?
Just to please tell all your friends and colleagues to join up as Members of ThinkTree. Now is our time. We will get there through our commitment, our connectivity, our community, and the opportunities brought to you through responsible and insightful leadership, which, with our collective foresight and understanding, can help steer our best endeavours.
Dr Alex Concorde BSc (Hons), MBBS (London) PhD, MSc (FPsych) has created a whole new system of Medicine and Psychology. She is passionate about people and believes they should be able to benefit from the enormous value of naturopathic, functional and lifestyle medicine.
*The ABBOTT ARCHITECT COVID-19 TEST is the top-rated test in the world and has been assessed by PHE. The top UK independent laboratories processing this test for Dr Alex, have found this test to be as accurate and as reliable using home-draw, as using venesection (ie the performance criteria for blood that you take yourself, and for blood taken by a doctor or phlebotomist, have been found to be exactly the same). However the MHRA has discovered some rogue tests on the market and has made it illegal, pro tem, for any tests to be sold using the home draw system, for now, UK-wide.
*So we will pause sales of these tests for the time being. Please do though follow the link to Dr Alex’s site and fill in your details – and you will be the first to know when we can resume sending out these kits, to help you establish your own timeline with COVID.