Review:
To the millions who suffer from allergies--about 38 percent (or 100,000,000) of the U.S. population alone--chronic sneezing, wheezing, itching, and other unbearable ailments are no joke. Yet keen humor lightens the dark side of this "silent epidemic" in Allergy Free Naturally, where writers Rick Ansorge and Eric Metcalf, plus a host of Prevention Health Books editors and writers, dissect allergies in a way that both entertains and informs. Seeking to transform each reader "into an allergy sleuth and an allergy enforcer," Ansorge and Metcalf present thorough background checks on the conventional, environmental, and alternative approaches to allergy. Diagnostic tests, typical prognoses, and recommendations from each of these three disparate schools of treatment are clearly presented, applauded, or questioned here. Then, swollen chapters on topics from asthma to sinusitus detail specific steps for uncovering and outwitting allergy triggers in the home, the yard, at work, and elsewhere. While this comprehensive information draws from each school of thought, sensible action plans help readers create their optimum combination of nondrug solutions to allergy symptoms. The history, research findings, sidebar essays, and helpful suggestions flow simply across the book's 500-plus pages. Consider it a semester's worth of reading for a class titled "The Biography of Allergy," team-taught by a well-educated, rather witty staff (who, incidentally, chose cover art obviously inspired by a certain prescription antihistamine.) --Liane Thomas
From Publishers Weekly:
This comprehensive look at allergies first distinguishes between traditional allergy treatments and environmental and alternative treatments. Rather than focus on specific causes or stresses (cat hair or mold spores), alternative allergists focus on how all of a range of stresses from environment, physical and emotional can cause a body to react in a variety of ways. Heredity, nutrition and emotional or physical makeup might determine a type of allergic reaction. The book identifies and explains an enormous number of common allergic reactions to pets, foods and outdoor elements such as pollen. Especially useful are the detailed summaries on creating an allergy-free environment at home; an allergy-free diet, with a special focus on children; and solutions to common allergies, such as what to do to combat reactions to insect bites. Traditional physicians might argue that the book goes too far in its focus on natural treatments, but since diagnosing and curing allergies is difficult, anyone suffering from severe allergies will find this book beneficial, both for self-diagnosis and when dealing with physicians. Detailed but accessibly written, this book is a solid addition to all home medical libraries.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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