Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Alternative Medicine

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This book is excellent for cross referencing material as well as a basic understanding of terminology.

Dr. Alan Pressman is a chiropractor and dietician and nutritionist in New York City. He is also the author of books such as Integrative Medicine: The Patient's Essential Guide to Conventional and Complementary Treatments for More than 300 Common Disorders, Complete Idiot's Guide to Vitamins and Minerals (The Complete Idiot's Guide), St. John's Wort: The Miracle Medicine, Glutathione: The Ultimate Antioxidant, etc.

Here are some quotations from this 1999 book:

"It's not a matter of being against allopathic medicine and in favor of alternative medicine---it's not one or the other... One weakness of allopathic medicine is that its approach is more toward masking symptoms than curing the underlying cause. As a result, allopathic medicine relies heavily on powerful drugs. It was reported in a medical journal in 1998 that prescribed drug interactions were responsible for about 100,000 deaths per year. This makes drug side effects one of the leading causes of death!" (Pg. xx)
"In April 1998, (Journal of the American Medical Association) published a very disturbing study of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) among hospitalized patients. The authors estimated that in any recent year, 2,216,000 hospital patients had ADRs---and 106,000 died from them. That makes adverse drug reactions one of the top killers in the country---just behind heart disease, cancer, stroke, lung disease, and accidents." (Pg. 7)
"By the 1890s, the nature-cure idea had reached the United States, brought by a pioneer from Germany named Benedict Lust. One of the first physicians to grasp the idea was Dr. John Scheel of New York. In 1895 he invented the word 'naturopathy' to describe the new approach. Naturopathy caught on fast, and by 1920, there were thousands of naturopathic physicians and about 20 naturopathic colleges in the United States." (Pg. 32)
"The macrobiotic diet is low---some say dangerously low---in vitamins and minerals." (Pg. 258)