Acupuncture: a scientific appraisal takes an evaluative approach, summarising the evidence for acupuncture in an impartial way. An international team of specialist contributors brings a wide range of expertise to the book, drawing together different facets of research and clinical practice to provide a cohesive look at acupuncture today. The increasing integration of acupuncture into health care services in the west, requires stringent criteria of efficacy, safety and cost in order to provide optimal benefit for patients, at minimal risk. All professionals involved in the delivery of healthcare will find this new book of great interest. The conclusions reached should provide a focus for future debate. Fully referenced throughout, Acupuncture: a scientific appraisal is an easily accessible, balanced source of information for all practitioners of acupuncture. Healthcare providers, complementary therapists and members of the primary healthcare team will also find this an invaluable purchase. * examines acupuncture's possible mechanisms of action * contains chapters on both Eastern and Western approaches * reviews the evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture

Ivan Ross takes advantage of the significant growth in the amount of new data available to update and expand his much acclaimed Medicinal Plants of the World: Chemical Constituents, Traditional and Modern Medicinal Uses. This second edition exhaustively compiles new clinical research and references twenty-six of the most widely used medicinal plants in the world, including Allium sativum, Mangifera indica, Punica granatum;, Momoridica charantia, Mucuna pruriens; Arbus precatorius; Moringa pterysgosperma, Phyllanthus niruri, and Jatrpha curcas.

All healthcare professionals working with complementary therapies must be fully aware of legal boundaries, responsibilities and liabilities in the practice of complementary therapies. This book covers all the main topics and principles and deals with points specific to individual therapies, helping practitioners to practice confidently.Legal aspects of using and integrating complementary therapies in health care practice present an area of anxiety for therapists, nurses and others Bridget Dimond is very well known in the UK as a speaker in this topic. It is the subject on which she is most frequently asked to talk at conferences.Information is clearly presented and extremely practical

In the United States alone, more than 38 percent of people use Alternative Medicine to treat and prevent medical issues and more than 50 percent of people have tried Alternative Medicine at some point in their life. But because some people don't feel their doctors see those methods as legitimate, patients often turn to unreliable sources such as the internet, celebrities, etc. for guidance. With so much misinformation out there, how does anyone know which advice to follow and what actually works? In this book, Dr. Mel Borins answers these questions using the latest scientific research and double-blind studies to educate patients and physicians alike on which alternative treatments work, which don't, and why. And more importantly, it teaches them how to safely use these alternative treatments, as a reputable source of information to supplement their conventional medicine treatments. Written in clear, accessible language for the layperson while providing citations to full studies for the medical professional, the book covers traditional healing and herbal remedies, physical therapies, psychological therapies, and natural health products--making it perfect for alternative medicine skeptics looking for hard evidence, doctors of conventional medicine seeking to understand why alternative therapies work, and for those open to alternative medicine but who want to understand the benefits and dangers; these include America's 78 million Baby Boomers who purchase 77 percent of all prescriptions drugs and are seeking ways to treat their health issues without causing more of them.

No period in a woman's life is as filled with special concerns as pregnancy and new motherhood. Among the many discomforts and ailments treatable with the homeopathic remedies explained in this book are:
"For the mother" anemia, back pain, breastfeeding problems, constipation, exhaustion, hemorrhoids, insomnia, morning sickness, post-partum depression, sinusitis, varicose veins, yeast infections
"For the baby" breathing difficulties, chicken pox, constipation, cough, diaper rash, diarrhea, ear infection, hiccups, mumps, sleep problems, teething pains, vomiting
In" Homeopathy for Pregnancy, Birth, and Your Baby's First Year," practicing homeopath, Mirando Castro introduces readers to the many safe, effective, inexpensive, and nonmedical remedies that homeopathy has to offer women in this very important period. With reassuring, easy-to-read text, the book explains the principles of homeopathy and tells readers how to select the remedies that correlate to hundreds of common symptoms of physical and emotional distress. The book also offers natural ways to make labor and birth as relaxed as possible, using homeopathic methods.
Complete with case histories, "materia medica, " and supportive and helpful tips throughout, this guidebook offers a wealth of natural-health information every expentant mother should consider.

The old adage "an army runs on its stomach" could easily be applied to your digestive health. There's an invisible army inside your gut, charging and overtaking toxins, pollutants, and antibodies that threaten your health.

To enjoy a healthy and energetic life, you need these tiny microorganisms to do their job. But it's easy for them to get out of balance and cause a whole host of health problems, including athlete's foot, skin rashes, allergies, digestive problems, sleep disorders, and high cholesterol.

Probiotics offer relief for more than fifty maladies. You can learn how to flush harmful toxins and bacteria out of your body, differentiate between good and bad microbes, and combine probiotics with a healthy diet and proper exercise.

Discovered more than a hundred years ago by Nobel Prize winner Elie Metchnikoff, probiotics support what holistic healers have known for centuries: you can introduce good bacteria into your system that will engulf and destroy harmful cells.

Solve your health problems, protect your immune system, and energize your life with "Probiotics for Life."

Back Pain and Spinal Manipulation: a practical guide presents a highly-illustrated, didactic guide to the diagnosis and manipulative treatment of back pain. Based on a diagnostic approach to back pain the text is extremely practical and includes how-to-do-it-yourself tips based on the authors' many years of practical experience. The second edition of this popular text has been extensively revised and updated to include the developments that have taken place within the field in recent years. New illustrations have been added, and the format has been redesigned to produce a text that makes the information more easily accessible. New for the second edition: * manipulation techniques for the thoracic spine * sacro-iliac disorders and treatment * muscle stretching techniques * muscle energy techniques Features includes: key check points, classification of techniques, charts on technique/directness/specificity and do's and don'ts, and position of the patient/position of the therapist. With an emphasis throughout on practical information that is easy to follow, the book is essential reading for all practitioners, physiotherapists, chiropractors and osteopaths involved in the diagnosis and treatment of back pain.

This book provides a comprehensive coverage and a succinct overview of the current status of supportive cancer care with Chinese medicine written by leading experts in the field. The chapters coherently present an overview on the major treatment approaches of Chinese medicine and progresses made with different important aspects on supportive cancer care with acupuncture, herbal therapy and qigong. Moreover, there are reviews on the evidences and efficacies of Chinese medicine for controlling radiation-induced injuries, chemotherapy-related side effects, as well as pain control with Chinese medicine. In order to provide information from basic science at the bench to the patient's bedside, modern researches and clinical trials would be overviewed so as to give an up-to-date and realistic evaluation of a therapy's utility for cancer patients. It is also worth noting that toxicology, safety and herb-drug interactions are the main concerns of using Chinese medicine combined with western medicine. A chapter will expound on these issues and there will also be chapters discussing integrative Chinese and Western medicine, as well as cancer prevention with Chinese medicine. This book presents state-of-the-art knowledge on supportive cancer care with Chinese medicine, which will appeal to anyone involved in cancer care. This is a precious book for all types of readers, including but not limited to oncologists, cancer researchers, pharmacologists, pharmaceutical specialists, traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, Chinese medicine educators, medicine postgraduates and undergraduates, cancer caregivers, cancer survivors, and family members of cancer patients who want to expand their knowledge in supportive cancer care.

This book examines depression as a widely diagnosed and treated common mental disorder in India and offers a significant ethnographic study of the application of a traditional Indian medical system (Ayurveda) to the very modern problem of depression. Based on over a year of fieldwork, it investigates the Ayurvedic response to the burden of depression in the Indian state of Kerala as one of the key processes of the local appropriation or glocalization of depression. More broadly, Lang considers: What happens with the category of depression when it leaves the West and travels to South Asia? How is depression appropriated in a South Asian society characterized by medical pluralism? She explores on the level of ideas, institutions and materialities how depression interacts with and changes local worlds, clinical practice and knowledge and subjectivities. As depression travels from 'the West' to South India, its ontology, Lang argues, multiplies and thus leads to what she calls 'depression multiple'.

An extraordinary compendium of information on herbal medicine, Medicinal Plants of the World, Volume 2 comprehensively documents the medicinal value of twenty-four major plants species widely used around the world in medical formulations. The book's exhaustive summary of available scientific data for the plants provides detailed information on how each plant is used in different countries, describing both traditional therapeutic applications and what is known from its use in clinical trials. A comprehensive bibliography of over 3000 references cites the literature available from a wide range of disciplines. This book offers an unprecedented collection of vital scientific information for pharmacologists, herbal medicine practitioners, drug developers, medicinal chemists, phytochemists, toxicologists, and researchers who want to explore the use of plant materials for medicinal and related purposes.

Explore how everyday people living in eighteenth-century England dealt with sickness, accidents, and disease in this unpublished kitchen book from 1737.Bridget Lane, a typical British housewife and lady of the house, treated her family for the physical ills that befell them. She gathered more than 150 cures and remedies, compiling them along with her unique insights into healing principles and practices of the time.Edited with detailed commentary by Vincent DiMarco, a longtime scholar of medieval literature, this text examines how Bridget Lane's cures relate to folk- and herbal medicine traditions, whether recipes preserved vestiges of magic and spiritual healing, details on ingredients and their effects, and ways certain recipes have been adapted to the modern kitchen.Based on a comprehensive analysis of how the people of the eighteenth-century understood ailments, Mrs. Lane's guide and the attendant commentary is intended for students, lovers of history, and anyone interested in the social sciences. Join an eighteenth-century housewife and discover all she did in the kitchen to protect and help her family with "It Has Helped to Admiration."

The authors describe the electric, magnetic and other relaxational processes in a wide spectrum of materials: liquid crystals, molecular magnets, polymers, high-Tc superconductors and glasses. The book summarizes the phenomenological fundamentals and the experimental methods used. A detailed description of molecular and collective dynamics in the broad range of liquid crystals is presented. Magnetic systems, high-Tc superconductors, polymers and glasses are an important subject of matter. It is shown that the researchers working on relaxation processes in different fields of materials sciences are dealing with the same physical fundamentals, but are sometimes using slightly different terms. The book is addressed to scientists, engineers, graduate and undergraduate students, experimentalists and theorists in physics, chemistry, materials sciences and electronic engineering. Many internationally well known experts contribute to it.

This book on complementary alternative medicine (CAM) for the Elderly provides a critical and objective evaluation of alternative medical therapy for the elderly. The focus on practical aspects such as adverse effects and general risks of various therapeutic methods makes it a valuable reference book for the general practitioner, for geriatricians and professionals within the area of alternative medicine, but also for interested laypeople. In the three sections, Epidemiology, Types of CAM, and Common Medical Problems and CAM, a broad range of issues are covered. They range from drug compliance in elderly people to CAM in the treatment of specific conditions such as pulmonary diseases, arthritis or cancer. The above features and in particular the unbiased approach to discuss the pros and cons of CAM make this publication a must-have for everybody searching for detailed information on alternative medicine for the elderly.