Book Review: AN EPIDEMIC OF ABSENCE

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff
Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

Moises Velasquez-Manoff is a journalist – a science writer primarily — who has taken on the job of translating an ambitious scope of research for the non-medical reader. The central thesis is that we evolved with parasites, mostly insects and worms, and without their stimulus our immune systems get restless and look for targets that often end up being some part of ourselves. This sort of ‘friendly fire’ becomes allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases. It’s important to point out that the many examples in the book are based on correlation, not causality. The correlations are indeed compelling, however. One, for instance, is that mothers who live on farms with animals have children with less asthma and fewer allergies. Another correlation links the end of malaria in Sardinia to a rapid rise in two autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis and type-1 diabetes. This book is dense with such examples.

Book Review: COULD IT BE B-12? An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses

By Sally M. Pacholok & Jeffrey Stuart

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

“Epidemic of Misdiagnoses,” the subtitle of this book, sounds like hyperbole. But to some of those who have been misdiagnosed it may, on the contrary, seem tame, especially if psychotic or demented or paralyzed from nerve damage because the lack of vitamin B-12 was not noticed by their doctors. Similarly, wouldn’t a parent whose aloof and silent toddler is labeled autistic – instead of being cured with B-12 injections — find that subtitle reasonable? So think the authors of this book.

Vitamin B-12 is essential to the human diet because we don’t manufacture it but we need it. B-12 is functionally diverse, playing a significant role in the nervous, cardio-vascular, gastric, immune and mental systems.

Who is at risk for B-12 deficiency? Vegans and those who avoid animal products; people who take pills to suppress stomach acid; people with intestinal or other problems that interfere with B-12 absorption; and people whose dentist has used laughing gas instead of Novocain. There are also some with a genetic anomaly that gives them pernicious anemia, the name of the blood disorder, which results from B-12 deficiency.

Click here to download the full review.

Book Review: Perfect Health Diet: Four Steps to Renewed health, Youthful Vitality, and Long Life

By Paul & Shou-Ching Jaminet, YinYang Press, 2010

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

If you’re interested in the so-called “paleo diet” or if you’re interested in knowing why we might benefit from eating as our distant ancestors did, those ancestors who evolved before the development of agriculture, then this book will interest you. Even if you feel perfectly healthy on another regime, you might well be interested in reading in these pages about ways to combat disease through diet.

Book Review: Minimally Invasive Dentistry – How to Reverse Tooth Decay

Cure Tooth Decay By Ramiel Nagel

Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye By Ellie Phillips, DDS

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye and Cure Tooth Decay are two books singing in the same choir but not quite harmonizing.

Both authors believe in minimally invasive dentistry, relying on prevention and on the re-mineralization of teeth.  Re-mineralization is the good news!  The self-repair of teeth is an alternative to drilling and filling.  The authors disagree, however, on several topics:  the use of fluoride, the use of xylitol, and whether bacteria cause tooth decay.

Click here to download the full article.

Book Review: The Acid Alkaline Balance Diet

By Felicia Drury Kliment

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

A Yin-Yang-pH Approach to Health and Disease

If you’ve heard that the acid/alkaline balance in your body might be important for your health and want to know why, this is a good book to read. The presentation is comprehensible, clear but not overly technical for the lay reader. Handy summaries of the author’s recommendations for each ailment make this a useful reference book as well as an explanatory text.

Click here to download the full review.

Book Review: The Trophoblast and the Origins of Cancer: One Solution to the Medical Enigma of Our Time

By Nicholas Gonzalez, MD, and Linda Isaacs, MD

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

An Intriguing Approach to Cancer and How to Treat It

Where does cancer come from? What’s going on in our bodies when we get cancer? This intriguing, seriously researched book offers a plausible – but unorthodox – explanation for at least the 90% of cancers. These are the tumors that initiate in the epithelium, the lining of our organs and glands. Researchers have long puzzled over why healthy somatic cells should, or could, become malignant. Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs propose that it is stem cells that go awry, stem cells that in being pluripotential, or “invested with full power,” can become anything.

Click here to download the full article.

Book Review: Food and Mood for 2009

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

Let’s face it— we’d all like to eat something to brighten our mood…..and it doesn’t at all brighten our mood to hear that we should cut out sugar, though many in the field of nutrition agree that added sugar in any consistent quantity is ultimately a depressant.

Sugar, when first consumed, picks you right up, as digestion turns dietary sugar into blood glucose, which fires the brain. But then the pancreas responds with insulin to bring the blood glucose into healthy bounds, whereupon your mood droops – and you get a little fatter into the bargain. In fact, too much sugar is rather like an economic bubble. It feels great at first but “Buyer, beware!”

Click here to download the full article.

Book Review: IBS-Free At Last!

By Patsy Catsos

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

A Useful Book about How to Avoid Irritable Bowel Syndrome

IBS – Irritable Bowel Syndrome – torments many people. Some have figured out that certain kinds of food produce distress in the form of bloating, gas, diarrhea, or constipation. Trial and error is probably the best way to learn these lessons; however, I found it very interesting that researchers in Australia have grouped the different fermentable sugars, which they consider the probably culprits, and have dubbed them FODMAPS for “fermentable oligo, di- and mono-saccharides and polyols.”

Click here to download the full article.