Our History
The Burghwood Clinic was founded by Dr John Mansfield and originally opened its doors in May 1982, when it has been involved in both research and the practical applications of the rapidly evolving fields of Allergy, Environmental and Nutritional Medicine.
Dr Apelles Econs MRCS LRCP – Director & Registered Manager
Dr Apelles Econs is the Medical Director/Registered Provider at The Burghwood Clinic. He studied Medicine at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London, where he graduated in 1976. After working in a number of hospital posts, he entered NHS general practice, where he spent 22 years as a principal, also operating as a part-time allergy specialist since 1992. During this time, he found that simple dietary changes and safe methods of desensitisation were both more clinically and cost-effective than medications used for common conditions such as chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia, irritable bowel, arthritis, eczema, asthma and many others. Dr Econs is also the Medical Director of Airedale Allergy Centre, Keighley, West Yorkshire. He has a wide-ranging experience with the management of dietary problems, the treatment of intestinal parasites, the use of oral and intravenous nutrition, dealing with chemically sensitive people and the use of all the modern methods of immunotherapy including the Enzyme Potentiated method (EPD), the Low-dose method (LDI) and the more "conventional" sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT). Dr Econs has been a guest allergy specialist in some radio and TV programmes such as Embarrassing Bodies and The Food Hospital, has contributed to local NHS medical primary care groups and lectured at several postgraduate medical conferences.
Dr Econs is recognised by a number of health insurance companies, including Standard Life, Cigna, PruHealth, WPA, BCWA, Aviva Health, Groupama, SimplyHealth and HSA. Although we are a private clinic, we are also able to see patients, who are specifically referred and funded via their clinical commissioning group (CCG), as NHS referrals. This process is slow and relies on criteria, which are rarely met.
Dr Jenny Judge MB BS – Associate Consultant
Dr Judge is an experienced clinician, having worked in the NHS for 25 years. She graduated in Medicine in Newcastle upon Tyne and moved to London in 1997 to train in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. Dr Judge specialised and enjoyed a successful career in Forensic Psychiatry, where she provided long-term care for patients with complex mental conditions and, often, associated chronic “lifestyle-related” physical health issues. Over the years her interest in the numerous chronic physical conditions her patients were suffering from, grew.
Jenny had a personal reason to examine the deeper nature of chronic illness when she experienced a “Long Covid”. Having received treatment but no resolution of her core illness through mainstream Medicine, she used the services at The Burghwood Clinic. She found that the approach fit with a more accurate understanding of the illness and she was able to reap the benefits from treating the underlying causal factors of her symptoms, such as reactivities of the immune system.
Having seen this different approach to health care, Dr Judge decided to embrace it professionally and she has been working hard towards achieving this goal. Dr Judge is following the pathway of one of the British pioneers in this area of medicine as she has made this career shift: One of the early seminal books on food intolerances, “Not All in the Mind”, was authored by Dr Richard Mackarness, a psychiatrist in Basingstoke General Hospital, who was instrumental in bringing food intolerances to wider attention in Britain.
She has a longstanding interest in the importance of the gut microbiome in overall health, and in the role of chronic inflammation as the root underlying cause of many long-term conditions. She is familiar with using the patient’s own observations during the taking of a detailed clinical history as the basis for diagnosis, and so she is able to bring her wealth of clinical experience in using a person-centred approach to her role at The Burghwood Clinic.
Dr Judge is a member of the British Society of Ecological Medicine attending various postgraduate conferences focused on environmental factors affecting human health. She is available for consultations both in Ewell, as well as the satellite clinics in Leeds, London and Oxford.
Dr Judge is registered with the General Medical Council and the General Naturopathic Council.
Dr Peter Latchman MB, ChB – Not currently available (left the practice in August 2019 for a year's contract in New Zealand)
Dr Peter Latchman is our Associate Consultant in Allergy & Nutrition. Dr Latchman completed his general medical training at Kings College Hospital and the Meyerstein Institute of Oncology at UCL (University College Hospital). He gained invaluable experience in numerous posts in general practice and special experience in integrative Medicine working in Dr Econs Medical Practice and in central London. Since 2014 he has been assisting Dr Econs at the Burghwood Clinic. He is especially interested in immune-mediated reactions to common environmental factors as they relate to health and disease. He offers patients at The Burghwood Clinic an integrated and holistic approach to re-establishing and maintaining good health. His caring and compassionate nature allows him to work together with patients to help them with complex medical issues. Dr Latchman is a member of the British Society of Ecological Medicine (BSEM), a body of doctors with a special interest in Allergy, Environmental and Nutritional Medicine and is a qualified practitioner in Medical Hypnotherapy, which he sometimes uses to help people to overcome various food-related addictions.
Dr John Mansfield, Founder (deceased 2016)
Dr John Mansfield gained his medical degree at Guy's Hospital, London, and has worked in both the UK and the USA. He has been working in this specialty since 1976 when he was one of the three original British pioneers. In 1978 he was a founder member of the British Society for Allergy and Environmental Medicine and became President of that society from 1992 to 1995.
Clinical Trials and Studies
In 1986 we completed two separate clinical trials in conjunction with the Department of Rheumatology at Epsom District Hospital. In these studies, the relationship of food sensitivity to classical rheumatoid arthritis was explored. The results of the second trial were published in the Lancet on the 1st February 1986 entitled 'Placebo Controlled Blind Study of Dietary Manipulation Therapy in Rheumatoid Arthritis. This study showed that 33 out of 44 patients with rheumatoid arthritis improved dramatically with the simple expedient of an elimination diet.
In December 1998 we had a study published in the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine entitled 'Treatment of Equine Allergic Diseases with Allergy Neutralisation – A Field Study'. This was the first major study anywhere in the world of neutralisation in an animal model, useful as it is difficult to imagine a placebo response in a horse. It showed very major improvements, often a complete recovery, in 92% of 13 horses with urticaria and 87% of 23 horses with COPD (equine asthma).
