The Doctor's Book of Natural Health Remedies: Unlock the Power of Alternative Healing and Find Your Path Back to Health

The most comprehensive handbook ever written about vitamins, herbs, supplements, and holistic healing--everything you need to feel better, live longer, and look great doing it

THIS BOOK MAY HELP YOU SAVE A LIFE--YOUR OWN.

With health care costs rising, insurance systems in flux, doctors and hospitals overwhelmed, the only person who can really take charge of your health and the health of your family is you.

This is your guide. For more than 40 years, Natural Health has been the leading authority on holistic, alternative, and natural healing. Now, for the first time ever, all that science-based, expert-driven, research-intensive information has been distilled into one must-have, authoritative guide to healing the self.

In these pages, you'll find stunning new research, unparalleled expert advice, how-to health guides, and a scientific, myth-debunking approach to natural remedies. Search for your symptoms. Find your cure. The power is yours. A clean life for you--and your family--starts now.

Lose Dangerous Belly Fat, Fast: And keep it off for good. Our all-natural, 10-step program tells you what to eat, drink, and do--with immediate waist-shrinking results. Discover which probiotics help you burn more calories when you eat, which popular, "healthy" nut actually slows your metabolism, and the stealth toxin in your kitchen that activates fat cell growth (eliminate it and slash your risk of obesity by 75 percent!).

Look Younger, Feel Younger: Discover the astonishing, inexpensive (and natural!) supplements that tighten skin, increase fat loss, and help build muscle. And learn some simple recipes for building anti-aging smoothies that turn fresh fruit into wrinkle-erasing superfoods.

Sleep Easier Tonight: Conquer fatigue with our 9-step plan to fall asleep quickly--and stay sleeping soundly throughout the night. (Hint: A subtle scent in your bedroom could be part of the problem!)

Re-energize Your Love Life. One supplement alone made a whopping 70% of women feel "more satisfied" after sex. Plus: How plant protein can re-energize your ovaries.

Turn Up Your Mood Meter. This one green, leafy vegetable has been shown to improve the effects of both Prozac and talk therapy.

Cure that Cold or Flu: Stop them before they start, with the newest natural options--one magical berry alone can reduce symptoms by 50 percent. Plus: A homeopathic "flu shot" that's proven 88% effective.

PLUS! THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO HERBAL REMEDIES!

A-Z Guide to Healing Herbs: Cure yourself with these 30 essentials, from aloe vera to white willow bark, nature's relief for migraines, eczema, menopause, UTIs, anxiety, depression, and many more. It's your new medicine cabinet, fully stocked.

The Get Happy Herb Guide: The serenity savers (lemon balm, kava kava) and bliss boosters (chocolate, milk thistle) guaranteed to raise your spirits.

The Best Herbs for Women: These 12 will ease your mood swings, headaches, menstrual cramps, menopause, with no nasty side effects. A must-read for husbands, too.

AND!

Yoga, meditation and Ayurvedic therapies: The latest science on treatments and classes, with complete how-to guides for at-home use.

The Doctor's Book of Natural Health Remedies--in a world of questionable cures, it's the one book you can trust.

Introduction
 
You are the most important part of your health care system.
 
Gone are the days when you saw your family physician, filled a prescription and crossed your fingers—doctor knows best. Now the patient is part of the solution, with more choices than ever. Pick your health plan. Change your provider. Select your treatment. You’ve got hundreds of sources, thousands of cures and millions of opinions a click away.
 
What many of us are choosing—today more than ever—are natural remedies. And we’re choosing them because they work.
 
In fact, natural remedies have been proven effective for thousands of years—herbal treatments, yoga, massage or simply restoring balance to one’s diet. Many of the techniques detailed in this book, all backed by stunning new research, are literally ancient, and still being proven effective today. More than 80% of the world’s population relies on herbs for health and healing. Americans are finally joining them en masse because we’re sick and tired of our health care system, in addition to being sick and tired. Cue the Natural Health Care Boom.
 
One number says it all: $740. That’s the average cost of going to the doctor for a common cold, before insurance deductions. Throw in prescription costs, time off work, and money spent on over-the-counter meds, and of course we’re looking into more affordable alternative therapies. Our country’s health bill is $2.7 trillion annually, and drugs account for 10%—how much of that bill are you paying? How much do you desperately need to save?
 
And more to the point, are you even happy with the expensive health care you’re getting? Overworked and underpaid, many Western doctors simply don’t have the time to spend with patients, churning them out faster than ever, according to recent studies. There are also more patients than ever, as the obesity epidemic and disease rates soar. And the Affordable Care Act may put even more responsibility into your hands, as well-meaning providers become overwhelmed by an increased caseload and more paperwork.
 
Additionally, the medications Western doctors prescribe, even the seemingly benign ones, give us pause, as we grow more skeptical of pharmaceutical companies. Most drug ads resemble an episode of The Walking Dead, since “side effects may include” diarrhea, hallucinations, ejaculation failure, severe depression. One drug, a popular hair-loss product, could cause grown men to lactate. Worse, doctors are overprescribing these “cures”—one new study, in the peer-reviewed JAMA Internal Medicine, found docs doled out antibiotics to 60% of sore throat patients—when only about 10% can actually benefit. Another headline-making study found azithromycin—a catch-all antibiotic you’ve probably taken if you’ve had an earache or pneumonia—increases the chances of sudden death in adults. The scariest line from The New York Times article which detailed the findings: “Two related antibiotics...were already known to raise the risk of sudden death. But azithromycin was thought to be safer.”
 
The American health system itself has become the leading cause of death in the United States, according to a riveting peer-reviewed piece of research by some of the nation’s leading Ph.D.s and M.D.s, titled Death by Medicine. Each year in the United States, 783,936 people die from medical mistakes—many in hospitals—including adverse drug reactions (106,000), bedsores (115,000), unnecessary procedures (37,136) and just plain medical errors (98,000). No wonder so many are choosing alternative routes.
 
So, too, are many doctors and health researchers. By applying Western science to the study of alternative cures, The Doctor’s Book of Natural Health Remedies is intended not to scare you, but to arm you, with the most authoritative information available about natural, beneficial treatments that may work separately or in tandem with your current care. The reasons for doing so are legion.
 
1. Natural health remedies
are less invasive.
 
Not all solutions involve going under the knife. Acupuncture was shown, in a landmark 2012 study, to help relieve back pain and arthritis, and to improve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Meditation, done right, can reduce your risk of a heart attack by 48%. And botanical remedies like milky oat seed can help those sick with stress, without the nasty side effects of a Prozac or Gaviscon.
 
2. Natural health remedies can
be taken long-term.
 
Natural remedies can be continued for life, and also work to improve your general health while treating your illness—unlike prescription medications, which are targeted, generally used short-term and eventually stop working, sometimes causing your symptoms to return.
 
3.Natural health remedies are backed by science—now more than ever.
 
Although plenty of Western doctors still brand any nonconventional treatment as quackery, this is quietly changing. In 2013 the American Board of Physician Specialties, a national body that offers board certification, announced that it plans to start accrediting integrative doctors; and in 2012 the American Medical Association removed this line—“There is little evidence to confirm the safety or efficacy of most alternative therapies”—from its official policy.
 
4. Natural health remedies can perform as well as Western medicine—and even improve its effects.
 
For instance: A 2013 controlled study compared the effects of turmeric to the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac), on depression. After six weeks, researchers found that the turmeric worked just as well as the antidepressant. Ginkgo has also been studied extensively for its benefit in resolving erectile dysfunction; a 2013 review found that after taking it for six months, participants had a 50% improvement. And a University of Maryland study found that acupuncture significantly improved the odds of pregnancy for women undergoing in vitro fertilization. This book is filled with revelatory proof like this.
 
5. Natural health remedies are already working for your friends and family.
 
Nearly 40% of American adults use some form of complementary or alternative medicine (we’ll call it CAM), according to a 2009 report from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). The NIH also reports that we spend more than $33 billion a year on alternative remedies and practitioners. To put that in context, the $11.9 billion spent on visits to CAM providers is about a quarter of what we spend on conventional doctor visits. (That there even is such a center run by the U.S. government proves how very seriously the establishment is investing in alternative therapies.)
 
6.Natural health remedies are easy to find and easy to use.
 
A niche market for hundreds of years, herbs, vitamins and alternative therapies are now trusted by your mom, your yogi, your girlfriend (maybe even your M.D., if you’re lucky) and everyone’s getting in on the action: local healers, farmers’ markets and even those young, patchouli-smelling upstarts, Walmart and Mickey D’s. Shops specializing in natural products used to stereotypically be a refuge for hippies, cultists and vegan masochists. “This stuff tastes awful,” Woody Allen joked in Sleeper. “I could make a fortune selling it in my health food store.”
 
Now, Whole Foods has gone from six stores in 1988 to 350 mega-marts today. Throughout the Southern U.S.—home to fried chicken and Busch beer—you’ll find the farmers’ market-like chain Sprouts; New York is home to growing chain Fairway (with 300 locations expected nationally); and Wild Oats, the organic pioneer based in Boulder, Colo., is also expected to expand, taking over the more traditional Fresh & Easy chain nationwide. Each of these mega-chains carries organic fruit and vegetables—and has an all-important herbs, supplements and vitamin aisle.
 
But the world of alternative medicine—especially those nutritional supplements, homeopathic remedies and herbal concoctions that are so widely available—can often be the most intimidating. Sales of herbal dietary supplements reached an estimated total of nearly $5.6 billion in the U.S., according to the nonprofit American Botanical Council. That’s up 5.5% from the year before. And the NIH’s NCCAM puts the total Americans spend on non-vitamin, non-mineral products such as omega-3 fish oil, glucosamine and echinacea at a whopping $14.8 billion. When there’s that much money to be made, you can bet there’s some snake oil mixed in with the fish oil.
 
Think of this book, then, as a decoder ring for these new stores—your authoritative guide on what to buy, how to use it and what should make you wary.
 
7.Finally, as we said at the beginning,
natural remedies are less expensive.
 
Less expensive than a stay in the ER; less expensive than generic drugs; less expensive because they come from Mother Earth. This book has already paid for itself!
 
 
Mini-Glossary
 
“ALTERNATIVE” means used instead of conventional medicine.
 
“COMPLEMENTARY” and “integrative” medicine generally refer to non-mainstream therapies used with conventional medicine.
“BOTANICAL” means anything based on a whole plant. Herbalists believe whole plants are more effective than the isolated elements and synthetic ingredients used in drugs.
 
Overall Precautions
 
Most of the information about therapies, herbs and supplements you’ll find on the following pages includes a section called “Precautions”; what you’ll find below are general precautions you should take before trying any alternative or complementary treatment. And keep in mind that the information in this book is meant to guide you toward treatments you might not have considered. Always get medical advice from your doctor and/or a reputable source of medical information.
 
Tell your primary care doctor if you are using, or considering, any form of alternative or complementary treatment or herbs.
 
Tell your complementary practitioner about any treatments—conventional or nonconventional—drugs or herbs you are currently using.
 
If you are being treated for an illness, do not stop treatment without consulting your doctor, and do not stop any course of treatment that is working. Do not stop conventional treatment solely on the recommendation of an alternative practitioner.
 
Be extra careful if you’re pregnant, nursing or trying to conceive; most herbs have not been tested on pregnant women or babies—and remember that whatever you ingest, your baby ingests. Most doctors will not recommend herbs or homeopathic remedies during pregnancy. Always consult with your caregiver before embarking on a nonconventional course of treatment.
 
Always check the credentials, professional alliances and education of a practitioner you are planning to see. Beware of any practitioner who will not see you for an informational appointment before signing you up for a course of treatment. In fact, beware of practitioners who insist on signing you up for a course of treatment.
 
Always ask how long treatment should be expected to last, and what the total cost will be.
 
Avoid any practitioner who makes you feel uncomfortable or pressured. Be wary of practitioners who seem to make excessive claims and guarantee a cure, especially if they stand to make a lot of money. Also be wary of a nonconventional practitioner who will not talk to your conventional doctor, especially if you are being treated for a serious illness.
 
Be sure to tell your doctor or practitioner if you have a sexually transmitted disease.
 
 
Excerpt From: The Editors of Natural Health. “The Doctor’s Book of Natural Health Remedies: Unlock the Power of Alternative Healing and Find Your Path Back to Health.” iBooks.