Natural Relief for Your Child's Asthma: A Guide to Controlling Symptoms & Reducing Your Child's Dependence on Drugs [Paperback]

M.D., Steven J. Bock (Author), M.D., Kenneth Bock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1999

A groundbreaking, practical, and holistic approach to treating children with chronic asthma

From two physicians with fifteen years of experience in treating asthma comes the only book for children with asthma that supplements conventional approaches with effective and proven natural remedies. Parenting a child with asthma is often scary, unpredictable, frustrating, and expensive. Through controlling symptoms, decreasing attacks, and eventually reducing the need for prescription drugs, the Drs. Bock will help you and your child regain control of your lives. This book will show you how to:

• reduce attacks by dealing with the underlying causes

• reduce the need for conventional drugs, making them safer to use for emergencies

• help your child's body heal itself

• avoid permanent lung damage and encourage healthy new lung tissue to grow

• minimize emergency room visits, time lost from school, and time lost from work

• detoxify your environment, minimizing the effects of pollen, dust mites, and mold

• identify foods that can trigger attacks

• properly use nutritional supplements

• build a treatment and prevention program tailored to your child's needs

This medically up-to-date, practical, and supportive book focuses on stopping asthma symptoms and attacks before they start. It is a must-have reference for any parent of a child with asthma.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There's nothing more frightening than witnessing a child's asthma attack, listening to her wheeze and cough and fight for every breath--and sharing her panic. Fortunately, pharmaceutical advances have resulted in a whole new class of drugs that prevents or relieves asthma flare-ups. But do you want your child on drugs, with their potential short- and long-term side effects? Besides, asthma drugs treat the symptoms without treating the underlying condition. Are there alternatives that can lessen an asthmatic child's drug dependency? Yes, say authors Steven J. Bock, Kenneth Bock, and Nancy P. Bruning. "It is our belief that asthma rates continue to soar because of our increasingly toxic environment," they write. "Our children are assaulted from every direction with indoor and outdoor air pollution, poor food, and stress." The cumulative toxicity makes children more susceptible to diseases. In this book the authors present a natural asthma program to complement your child's conventional care and help to reduce asthma attacks and drug dependency. This includes reducing asthma triggers (including advice for "saying goodbye to Fluffy"); eating a cleaner, more nourishing diet (emphasizing plant foods); taking supplements, herbs, and homeopathic remedies; and learning to cope with emotional stress. The book ends with three case studies of children who used the program in various ways and dramatically improved their health. --Joan Price

About the Author

Dr. Steven J. Bock received his medical degree from New York Medical College in 1971; his brother and coauthor Dr. Kenneth Bock received his medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1979. Integrating their expertise in complementary and traditional medicine, they jointly founded two health centers in upstate New York, the Rhinebeck Health Center and the Center for Progressive Medicine in Albany.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1st edition (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006095289X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060952891
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #408,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Respiratory

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful information for parents!, June 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Natural Relief for Your Child's Asthma: A Guide to Controlling Symptoms & Reducing Your Child's Dependence on Drugs (Paperback)

This book helped our family put the brakes on the out-of-control rollercoaster ride of asthma. "Natural Relief for Your Child's Asthma" empowers parents with page after page of specific instructions on how to reduce your child's dependence on medication by understanding the limits of conventional medicine, finding and avoiding triggers, using food as a healer, using supplements to strengthen your child and using alternative mind-body medicine to enhance your child's well-being. While the authors have lots of great information about how to reduce dependence on medicine over time, they aren't zealots who encourage you to turn your back on conventional medicine. The real power that comes from this book is that now, when I go to see my child's asthma specialist, I can ask informed questions about my son's condition. I'm no longer a note taker jotting down what medicines my child should take when. I can encourage my doctor to challenge us to make dietary and lifestyle changes to detoxify our child's environment that he might not otherwise have mentioned assuming that we would prefer the "easy" way out of finding stronger and stronger medicines to rescue our child. I strongly encourage any parent of a child with asthma to read this book!

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Vegan Baloney, September 29, 2009

By 

Glacier Mom - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Natural Relief for Your Child's Asthma: A Guide to Controlling Symptoms & Reducing Your Child's Dependence on Drugs (Paperback)

Here's what's cool about the book: What could be better than a book that places in perspective the immediate need for conventional drugs to reduce or eliminate symptoms of asthma, the fact that conventional drug use will eventually only worsen and perpetuate asthma and create a vicious cycle of dependency, and the importance of integrating holistic, long-term therapies into a treatment plan in order to address root causes of asthma.

What's not cool about the book: "Our eating plan is vegetarian or near vegetarian. It emphasizes plant foods and...plays down animal products such as cow's milk and meat because these foods are associated with a slew of serious diseases and conditions, including several types of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, and ashtma. Plant foods, on the other hand, help promote better health." Say what? Based on what? OK, I get it; when my daughter's blood test showed allergies to wheat, eggs, and dairy, I found myself shopping in the vegan snackfood hell aisle at Whole Foods. But wait! My prolonged research shows that vitamin A--not beta carotene, not a precursor that may or may not be bioavailable to a child's body--is crucial to healing--not just asthma--but ADD, autism, neurological disorders. So my treatment plan includes attempting to get my child to take her fermented sticky brown cod liver oil, redoubling my efforts to buy good pate or cook with organ meats, make stock with the bones for calcium, etc. Then I'm reintroducing gradually the raw dairy; I've already reintroduced pastured organic eggs, as I find eggs dubious allergens. Plus, you've got the logical problem that the authors recommend soy as the replacement source of calcium--but wait--soy is a major allergen.

I came to this book in a sort of back-door way, in that I first consulted with a naturopath for my daughter's chronic cough. The idea that she had mild asthma flummoxed me, as we already did so many things right--avoiding fluoride (won't find that in the book), eating organic, filtering bath water for chlorine, prolonged breastfeeding, and, though my daughter was vaccinated as a baby, signing the philosophical objection paperwork when it came time for boosters (the book will tell you about allergens like formaldehyde in soap but doesn't touch with a ten-foot-pole the allergens like formaldehyde found in vaccines, which bypass normal filtering routes and are introduced directly into the bloodstream.)

For an entire summer, we avoided food allergens, took herbal drops, probiotics, amino acids; once school started and she caught a cold, my daughter's cough turned to pneumonia. Initially I was bitter about the holistic approach and tossed it all to see what our conventional pediatrician had to offer. It took me a while to work out a good integrated approach that works well for us, but I'm pleased now to be using albuterol and flovent sparingly--far more sparingly than my pediatrician knows--while also incorporating holistic remedies. The book doesn't touch the holy grail of homeopathy--the constitutional remedy--but I'm pursuing that one, as well. Along the way I've walked out on a bully of an allergist who insisted I was a bad parent if I didn't give my child the scary Singulair he was pushing.

I've had to piece it all together myself, and if, at any time, I'd blindly gone along with an expert's opinion, my child would have suffered; that's what I like best about this book's integrated approach: take charge of your child's health, parent, because no one else will.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great but a little outdated, April 15, 2010

By 

healthmomma - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Natural Relief for Your Child's Asthma: A Guide to Controlling Symptoms & Reducing Your Child's Dependence on Drugs (Paperback)

I got this book after reading Dr. Bock's other book: Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma and Allergies because my son's major problem is asthma.

I really like that this book is more focused towards asthma and gives specific amounts of supplements to give (the other book just gives an approximation.) What I don't like about this book is that it is a bit outdated and is contradictory to the newer book (Particularly the diet topics). Prior to reading this we had already started a gluten free casein free diet (based on the advice from the new book) and noticed dramatic improvements. However the diet section in this book is very different and does not talk much about the benefits of a GF/CF Diet.

This book is best used with the newer book but is definitely useful because it goes into more detail about the variety of supplements. If Dr. Bock updated this book, it would be my asthma bible.