X-rays and CT scans can be really useful diagnostic tools. But they also deliver ionising radiation, which carries enough energy to knock electrons out of the atoms it passes through. Once electrons start moving where they shouldn't, the chemistry inside a cell starts to change, and that can cause harm.

This is why the risk is considered cumulative. The radiation doesn't stay in your body. What adds up is the risk, because each scan, whether it's an X-ray or a CT, brings a small, long-term chance of cellular changes, and the more you have over a lifetime, the higher that risk climbs.

Your cells are mostly water. So when the radiation comes through, a lot of it lands in that water and splits the molecules apart. That splitting is called radiolysis, and what it leaves behind is free radicals, including the ones called reactive oxygen species (ROS). A free radical is a molecule with an unpaired electron. That lone electron makes it unstable and reactive, so it grabs another off whatever's sitting closest, right down to the cell's own genetic material. Your cells fight this with antioxidants, which neutralise free radicals and mop them up before they do their damage. Oxidative stress is what you get when the radicals outnumber those defences.

One of the main targets is your DNA. Radiation can break the strands, or damage the bases that make up the code. If the damage is bad enough, the cell dies. Usually your cells catch it and mend it, and that's the end of it. The trouble is the damage that slips through, or gets mended wrong, because when the cell divides it copies that fault along with everything else.

Your mitochondria have their own DNA (mtDNA) too, separate from the set in the nucleus. These are the tiny power plants that make each cell's energy, and their mtDNA sits right where the free radicals are being made, so it is in the firing line. Damaged mitochondria leak more free radicals of their own, which harms more around them, which makes them leak again. Left alone, it turns into a loop.

Radiation can keep mitochondria leaking free radicals well past the scan itself, and some research suggests they are more vulnerable to it than the rest of the cell. There's even early animal research asking whether radiation before conception can change the mitochondria a parent passes to their child.

If you ever want to see how much a given scan adds and how it stacks up, the X-Ray Risk Calculator can help you make informed decisions.

Now, I don't think we should live in fear when an X-ray or CT is medically necessary. But always ask whether a non-ionising scan like an ultrasound or MRI could do the job instead.

If you didn't know, my daughter is under oncology care for a removed kidney tumour, and every three months she has to have an X-ray to check the tumour hasn't returned. The number of X-rays she was having worried me a lot at first, and I fought as hard as I could to reduce her exposure, however there was only so much advocating I could do without risk of being sued for negligence. In the end they agreed to drop the yearly CT scan, but she still needs the regular X-rays. So this homeopathic remedy is the one I love most, because I know it is supporting my daughter.

The remedy I use every single time is called X-ray. It's made homeopathically from x-ray radiation itself, and homeopaths proved the remedy in 1897, two years after x-rays were discovered. I use it before and after a scan to help protect the body against the exposure. Starting the day before means that support is already in place prophylactically. I make it up as a blend, with other supportive remedies alongside the X-ray.

Here's how I dose it. Two drops under the tongue, three times a day, starting the day before the scan and carrying on for five days after.

• Day before the scan: morning, midday and night
• Day of the scan: morning, midday and night
• The five days after: morning, midday and night

Seven days in total, three doses a day.

If it's something you'd like for yourself, my X-Ray & CT Scan Support blend is in the shop.

The remedy X-ray can also be used for deeper work. Under the care of a homeopath, x-rays can be detoxed long after the fact.

"Never been well since" is a phrase we use in homeopathy. It is when your health declined or symptoms came about at a certain point after a trauma, illness or exposure. Some people come to homeopathy having never been well since a scan.

In the homeopathic materia medica, the X-ray remedy is described like this:

Has the property of stimulating cellular metabolism. Arouses the reactive vitality, mentally and physically. Brings to the surface suppressed symptoms, especially sycotic and those due to mixed infections. Its homeopathic action is thus centrifugal, towards the periphery.

In plainer terms, the remedy is understood to wake the body up at a cellular level. It rouses the vital force, that inner spark of reactivity, so the mind and body feel more alive and responsive again. People who feel drained or foggy, or never quite the same since a scan, often find this picture matches how they feel.

A big part of its action is bringing suppressed symptoms back to the surface. In homeopathy we often see symptoms that have been pushed inward rather than truly resolved, whether by repeated exposures or by the body coping the only way it could. X-ray is thought to coax those buried things back out, so the body can finish the healing it started.

Its action is also described as centrifugal, which means it works from the inside out, from the deeper organs and cells toward the skin and extremities. In homeopathy that outward direction is a good sign. It's the vital force clearing disturbances in the right order.