Dr Peter J Herbert

About Dr Herbert

After training at Middlesex Hospital, Dr Herbert worked in Intensive Care, Cardiology and Psychiatry before becoming a Principal in a training general practice in North West London in 1983. He was involved in teaching from the outset and was honorary Senior Lecturer at the Royal Free and University College London and GP Tutor to Camden and Islington and South Barnet. He was awarded FRCP because of his educationalist role. Until 2017, he taught fourth year clinical medicine to medical students at UCL and for ten years was an appraiser for NHS England.

Dr Herbert became frustrated with the lack of effective therapeutic interventions for the huge number of patients with musculoskeletal conditions in primary care. Referring to outpatients and physiotherapists meant delays in treatment and unsatisfactory outcomes for many people with myofascial pain syndrome and osteoarthritis.

Starting his journey of discovery, he studied traditional needle acupuncture with Kenyon and Lewith and became a member of the British Medical Acupuncture Society. A new world of understanding opened up for him with the recognition of trigger point medicine of Peter Baldry and Felix Mann in the UK, Chan Gunn in Toronto and Travell and Simons in the USA.

After a while he was tempted to use a single probe laser pointer to stimulate acupuncture points instead of needles. He trialled a Swiss Laserneedle device for stimulating many acupuncture points simultaneously, and some conditions responded well.

Ten years ago, he went to Toronto to be trained in the use of the Meditech Bioflex device which uses multiple laser and LED diodes in a flexible array. This no longer treats acupuncture points but treats the affected part of the body directly – not using tradition al acupuncture principles. This has proved remarkably effective in the treatment of many conditions where inflammation is the culprit, as is so often the case. Dr Herbert was one of the first clinicians to use this system in the UK and he has treated over five hundred patients with this painless, safe and effective technology.