Customer Reviews

The Allergy and Asthma Cure: A Complete 8-Step Nutritional Program

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book is based on changing your eating habits to improve asthma. It has alot of good information on allergies, food intolerance, and asthma, as well as allergy tests. It also talks about asthma medications and their side effects, and has a chapter on nutritional supplements. The author used to work for Atkins and is his philosophies are less extreme than Atkins but he does incorperate alot of meat into his program. His basic program is to identify food sensitivities, and avoid foods that you are sensitive to, as well as things that contribute to candidiasis and leaky gut. If you aren't ready to make big changes in your diet you may be wasting your money. The diet cuts out sugar and fruit for a limited time, and he advises you to leave the sugar out. One of the issues in this book is it is really based around identifying your food intolerances. He recommends tests which will run you $400 and up. These are not often covered by insurance. I did take the test and found out my intolerances. He also states you can do an elimination diet if you can't afford the tests but it sounds very confusing and hard to implement. While he recommends most meats, much research shows that antiinflammatory diets work best with asthma, as well as vegan diets, which would contridict this method. I'm not a vegetarian but I have tried to keep my meat consumption down based on my own research and I have tried to stay on an antiinflammatory diet that is more plant based. Also, his recommendation for fish oil, while great, is contridicted in alot of lietrature as it can make symptoms worse for some asthmatics. So do your own research on fish oil and see if it gives you any problems if you do implement this part of his program.
I think his book is good in the sense that it focuses on positive diet changes and would be beneficial to someone who is eating alot of junk food and it may well help their asthma. It also is a decent reference book for allergy tests, medications, and supplements. If someone is on a healthy diet and takes good care of their health and is savy to nutrition it may not be a big help. Also not recommended for vegetarians, except that the tests may uncover food allergies if you are willing to pay for them. To some it may be worth a try, it does have some good information.

I had been getting more and more allergic every year. Last year I developed asthma, and kept up with an intense schedule by using inhalers, a lot! Even though I gave up dairy and wheat, they continued to get worse, finally to the point where I had hives and welts from touching my books (a little microscopic mold, I suppose). That was the last straw and I bought this book and followed it for 3.5 months now. I went from using inhalers 3 times a day to 0. I can hug my cats again, where I would cough when they walked into the room with me before. I had some patches of eczema on the elbows that is gone, and I finally have some get up and go again.

If you feel despair of having your body literally self destruct with allergic reactions, follow this program with ALL of the pertinent supplements (3 handfuls a day for me), and get your health back!

I read this book with very great interest. It's the most promising and sensible approach I've seen to addressing the allergy and digestive problems I've been having for many years, which my own doctors have by trying ineffectively to treat by drugging the symptoms into submission. I intend to try the program.

However, I expect to have some trouble talking my doctors into supporting this. Pescatore appears to have developed his "cure" based on a lot of clinical trial and error and some guesswork based on a rough theory that the problems are all rooted in leaky gut and candida yeast overgrowth. That kind of clinical approach is very valuable, but it takes more than that to really convince the medical community. Pescatore appears to have choosen to market his method directly to consumers via popular books and TV talk shows, rather than market it to the medical community via formal clinical studies or experimental research. Much of his suggested treatment is going to be questioned by the mainstream medical community. For instance, does it really make sense to eliminate all sugar from your diet when your body makes its own sugar from the foods you eat, so there will always still be lots of sugar in the bloodstream? Still, I have seen some medical research from other sources that hints that there really is something to his approach. For now, his approach may be the best available, though many of it's details are unproven.

I also find it slightly off-putting that when I go to the store to get the macadamia nut oil that he heartly recommends, I find the oil is sold by him. (Though it really is good and healthy and was probably hard to get before he started marketing it.) When I go to the web site of the blood test company he recommends, there's his ringing endorsement. Pescatore Inc is there wherever I go.

He's certainly not nearly as bad as other "show doctors" who build financial empires on dubious weightloss theories. His book clearly distinguishes between established medical fact and his own approaches. He's clearly aware of mainstream medical research and has been integrating it into his approach as far as possible. There's no crystal waving here. It's not quite science, but it's close, and it's may be the best we are going to get for a while. And his suggested treatment is, at the very least, less likely to do harm than all the medications my doctors have been suggesting.

I first read about treating children for allergies and asthma in Dr. Pescatore's first book, "Feed Your Kids Well". As a physician, I implemented many of his ideas in my practice and found remarkable results. Literally, people's lives were changed. This book goes more in depth to treat people of all ages, and if you suffer from allergies of asthma, it can change your life as well.

As a clinical nutritionist, I all too often see chronic suffering and serious secondary problems when patients use a strictly pharmaceutical approach to managing allergies and asthma. As Dr. Pescatore so clearly describes, the smarter approach is to look for and correct the imbalance that caused or is at least aggravating the problem. When the body is in balance, the need for medication is reduced or even eliminated. There is so much practical information and even emotional support in this book that it will be assigned homework for any of my clients who have allergy or asthma.

I bought this book desperate to find something new, something that would work. I've tried every anti-histamine out there and have been on allergy shots on and off for 12 years with minimal impact.

The cure for allergies and asthma is a bold claim, so I assumed there would be something behind it. This book was a big disappointment. My issues:
- There is no cited science or scientific studies to back up his claims. He talks about what he's done in his practice, but no double-blind scientific studies, journal-published articles, or really evidence at all outside a few testimonials. I expected more from a MD.
- He claims that basically all allergies are caused by leaky gut and candidas. Really, my allergies go nuts in one city but not another because I have a yeast infection in my gut?
- There are some tests to diagnose these conditions, but he either doesn't use them (candidis) and just assumes everyone has the conditions, or the tests cost $1000 and aren't covered by most insurance (ALCAT).
- The diet is so amazingly complex as to be unmanageable for most people. Here's a short list things you can't eat for 3-7 months (and may or may not be able to reintroduce): Sugar, Fruit, Cheese, Salad dressing, Tomotoes, Corn, Peas, Carrots, Pototoes, Anything with Yeast, White Bread, White Rice, and Alcohol.

Yes, I read the whole book. No, I will not be trying this crazy diet from a former Atkins doctor to "cure" my allergies.

A great new book from Dr. Pescatore -- it should be required reading for anyone suffering from allergies and/or asthma. His recommendations have helped me with my allergies; my best friend, who has asthma, has found relief, too (after so many years!). Thank you for such an important book.

I previously purchased this book, used it successfully, and then lent it(much marked up) to someone (don't remember who)and now I need it again. I didn't follow the program 100%, but it did work. I was on allergy shots, and had asthma symptoms at certain times of the year depending on what was blooming. This book worked for me, and I have tried a lot of them.

I really was interested in this book for treatment of my allergies and asthma and hoped it would offer some great alternatives to using medication. However, I found the book to be very detailed and a little too restrictive in terms of diet for me (I don't do well with "diets". For someone who is a little more disciplined in their diet, this would probably be a great help. It is a well-written book, but just not for me.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. Being an asthma sufferer for almost 30 years it is very important to have set recipes and pieces of advice from an expert. I am finding it very hard to cut out Candida as it makes me feel very weak and tired, however I am sure this will pass with time. I will continue with the program and will keep everyone posted!