By Case Adams, Naturopath, posted on greenmedinfo.com 03/09/2013
New research from the U.S. National Institutes of Health shows that the biochemicals in green tea change a women’s estrogen metabolism, revealing at least one of its mechanisms for reducing the risk of breast cancer.
The study comes from the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, and was led by Dr. Barbara Fuhrman. The researchers tested the levels of urinary estrogens and metabolites among 181 healthy Japanese American women from California and Hawaii. Of the group, 72 of the women were postmenopausal. The remainder of the group was premenopausal.
James Greenblatt, a local psychiatrist practicing in Waltham, MA gives special attention to the role nutrition can play in mental illness.
He works with both adults and children and, though fully prepared to prescribe medications when useful, he also points to the statistics showing the limited effectiveness of such drugs. In the last twenty years the number of Americans on psychiatric disability leave has trebled. What’s wrong with this picture?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
