Prescription for Nutritional Healing by James Balch, James F. Balch, Phyllis A. Balch (2000)

As alternative health therapies have come and gone, one of the ones that I have the most faith in is nutritional healing. So naturally, I was drawn to this book like a bee to honey. I tote it around to anyplace I'll be for more than a few days, and very often refer friends to it as a source health advice. My copy is battered and dog-eared, but nonetheless maintains an honored place on my bookshelf.

Why, you might ask, is this book so important to you? For a number of reasons. Primarily, I believe that western medicine has a tendency to treat symptoms rather than causes. We pop pills like candy in an effort to relieve our suffering, but rarely do we address the root causes of why our symptoms keep recurring. Have you ever had just one headache, that never returned after you had taken a painkiller? I know I haven't.

Prescription offers a wide variety of alternative treatments for modern maladies, including nutritional therapy and herbalism. Most people who have been keeping up with the alternative medicine vs. western medicine debate know that medicinal herbs can be found in virtually every grocery store and drugstore in the country. Many of these herbal preparations, however, do not meet the standards of purity and efficacy determined by scientific study. Prescription offers a list of herbal remedies for every illness in the book, and this poses a problem. Unless the reader does a significant amount of research on their own, simply choosing an herb from the list provided, purchasing it, and using it as directed may not be effective and may even be dangerous. Unless you are very knowledgeable about herbalism or until all medicinal herbs are standardized and pure, following herbal advice from a book may be hazardous.

Prescription does, however, focus more on nutritional therapies than herbal ones. For each illness, the Balchs provide symptoms and a list of nutritional {foods, vitamins, minerals, and nutritional supplements (like fibers, live cultures, and essential fatty acids)} therapies that can help heal the condition. These are rated by importance, and give recommended dosages, which are intended to help heal the designated condition. Some of the therapies listed sound extreme, and a few of them have been determined by western medical doctors to be dangerous. But most of the therapies focus on aspects of nutrition that are already becoming mainstream: drinking lots of water, eating lots of fruits and veggies, choosing whole grains over refined ones, limiting the intake of animal products, and limiting the intake of refined sugars and chemical additives and preservatives.

Combining these with dietary supplementation in the form of vitamins and minerals is something we've been hearing about for years, but often not before a doctor recommends taking some kind of pill. Why not improve your diet and lifestyle as a means of maintaining/attaining good health, rather than relying exclusively on drugs? For serious, life-threatening conditions, like cancer and AIDS (which the Balchs do include in their book), relying on a text like this as a solo form of treatment who be simply, well, stupid. But for non-life threatening conditions like heartburn, headaches, and skin disorders, which western medicine doesn't always have a cure for, eating healthfully and exercising can hardly hurt.

One of the problems with the book is that, like the labels on dietary supplements, the dosages listed aren't adjusted by sex. And if you were to follow their nutritional recommendations down to the last one, you would be spending quite significant sum of money.

Overall, this books gives you the tools to begin to take your health into your own hands, rather than rely on drugs and medicines. However, you'd be well advised to do additional research, or even talk to your doctor, before you adopt some of the changes the Balchs recommend.