Patrick Holford

Biographical Information
"Patrick Holford is a pioneer in new approaches to health and nutrition, specialising in the field of mental health. He is widely regarded as Britain’s best-selling author and leading spokesman on nutrition and mental health issues, hence being frequently quoted in national newspapers from the Daily Mail to the Guardian... He became a student of the late Dr Carl Pfeiffer, director of Princeton’s Brain Bio Center, and later a student of Dr Abram Hoffer, Director of the International Schizophrenia Foundation in Canada...

"In 1984 Patrick founded the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION), a charitable and independent educational trust for the furtherance of education and research in nutrition. Today, ION is the largest training school in the UK offering a diploma course in nutritional therapy and is widely respected as a leading edge organisation by professionals and media alike. Patrick formed a relationship with the late Dr Linus Pauling, who became the Patron of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition.

"In 1986, Patrick started researching the effects of nutrition on intelligence, collaborating with Gwillym Roberts, a headmaster and student at ION. This culminated in a randomised controlled trial testing the effects of improved nutrition on children's IQ – an experiment that was the subject of a Horizon documentary and published in the Lancet in 1988. This study was the first of its kind in the world and considerably raised awareness of the role of nutrition in intelligence.

"Patrick is a registered member of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council. He was awarded an honorary Diploma from ION and is also an Honorary Fellow of BANT (the British Association of Nutritional Therapists), and a Member of NTC (Nutritional Therapy Council). He has received two ION awards - the Award for Excellence and Best Contribution to the Industry. In 2003 he founded the Brain Bio Centre at ION, a treatment centre pioneering the optimum nutrition approach for mental health, to formalise the treatment of mental health with nutrition and to act as a research centre. The Brain Bio centre is owned by the Food for the Brain Foundation, a registered education charity set up by Patrick to promote awareness of the link between learning, behaviour, mental health and nutrition. In 2007, Patrick was appointed Patron of South African Association for Nutritional Therapy..."

Criticisms of Holford used to be available on the dedicated web site http://www.holfordwatch.info/


 * Columnist, Longevity magazine
 * Expert, Natural Medicine magazine

Criticism

 * Ben Goldacre, "Patrick Holford’s untruthful and unsubstantiated claims about pills", September 19th, 2007.
 * Andy Lewis, "The Myths of Patrick Holford", Quackometer, January 11, 2008.

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