Living Well With Autoimmune Disease, by Mary Shomon
Autoimmune diseases are quite widespread. The table below lists some of the more common ones:
If you want to learn more about one of these diseases, Living Well with Autoimmune Disease is an excellent encyclopedic resource for your library.
Mary Shomon is an exceptionally skilled journalist who writes from the perspective of someone having lived through an autoimmune disease. Her journey with hypothyroidism prompted her to find answers through authentic alternatives to the drug-oriented medical paradigm.
Mary interviewed me for her Web site several years ago, and she impressed me as one of the most insightful journalists I have ever encountered. Her questions were highly targeted and oriented toward practical recommendations for her readers.
The book is broken down into four sections:
Understanding Autoimmune Disease: Reviews basic elements of your immune system and some of the causes and risk factors for autoimmune diseases. It will help you understand what it means to have an autoimmune disease and what impact it will have on your current and future health.
Key Autoimmune Conditions: Over 150 pages of reference material that will help you find out the details of your specific autoimmune condition. You will learn the key symptoms, diagnostic procedures and conventional treatments for the most common conditions. This information will help you to get the proper diagnosis.
Holistic Approaches: Provides a comprehensive overview of the many natural treatment options that exist to manage these diseases. Many practical dietary, supplemental and lifestyle approaches are reviewed. Some of the more innovative and promising new treatments for key autoimmune diseases are also discussed.
Creating Your Plan: Provides simple and practical recommendations based on the wisdom of someone who has personally fought and helped many tens of thousands of others recover from their struggle with autoimmune disease. It is loaded with dozens of strategies, worth much more than the price of the book. This section will help you find out where to go for treatment and how to find the best doctors, as well as give you ideas for helpful books, patient organizations, experts and Web sites for further information. Essentially, this helps you learn how to become an expert on your disease.
The book is a major shortcut to a wealth of information. If you have an autoimmune disease, it can save you months of time.
Most of you know that diet is one of the keystones of my health approach. My only reservation on the book is that it does not incorporate any Metabolic Typing information, but for that matter neither do over 99 percent of all health books.
Mary interviewed me for this book as one of her featured experts, and at the time I had not yet implemented nutritional typing into my practice. Understanding nutritional typing helps to clear up the major confusion regarding diet; this is even present in this book as both low-fat and high-protein diet recommendations are given without clear indications of how to find out whether either one is right for you.
That is a relatively mild shortcoming though and is easily compensated for by reviewing nutritional typing and integrating the diet information into the marvelous resource that Mary has created for those with autoimmune disease.