Research shows that biochemical imbalances caused by nutritional deficiencies are a contributory factor in chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, auto-immune conditions and cancer. This handbook for practitioners explains how to identify and treat such biochemical imbalances in order to better understand and manage a patient's ill-health. The book examines a range of biochemical imbalances, including compromised adrenal or thyroid function, gastro-intestinal imbalances, immune system problems and sex hormone imbalances, and explains how and why such states occur. It pulls together a wide range of evidence to show how such imbalances are involved in the most common chronic diseases. It helps practitioners to understand how to identify the imbalances through appropriate case history taking and laboratory testing, and how to design and implement effective nutritional interventions. Developed by leading academics and practitioners in the fields of nutritional therapy and functional medicine, this evidence-informed approach can be used with all patients who present in clinic, regardless of whether or not they have a 'named medical condition'. In the final chapter, a case example illustrates how to use the theoretical information in the practice of treating patients with chronically compromised health. Biochemical Imbalances in Disease is an essential text for nutritional therapy practitioners, as well as for students, and will be welcomed by complementary and conventional healthcare practitioners alike.

* Why has 'the discursive turn' been sidelined in the development of a social theory of disability, and what has been the result of this? * How might a social theory of disability which fully incorporates the multidimensional and multifunctional role of language be described? * What would such a theory contribute to a more inclusive understanding of 'discourse' and 'culture'? The idea that disability is socially created has, in recent years, been increasingly legitimated within social, cultural and policy frameworks and structures which view disability as a form of social oppression. However, the materialist emphasis of these frameworks and structures has sidelined the growing recognition of the central role of language in social phenomena which has accompanied the 'linguistic turn' in social theory. As a result, little attention has been paid within Disability Studies to analysing the role of language in struggle and transformation in power relations and the engineering of social and cultural change. Drawing upon personal narratives, rhetoric, material discourse, discourse analysis, cultural representation, ethnography and contextual studies, international contributors seek to emphasize the multi-dimensional and multi-functional nature of disability language in an attempt to further inform our understanding of disability and to locate disability more firmly within contemporary mainstream social and cultural theory.