From renowned integrative family physician Dr Kenneth Bock, a groundbreaking approach to understanding and treating mental health among adolescents and teens.

Over the past decade, the number of 12- to 17-year-olds suffering from mental health disorders has more than doubled. While adolescents and teens are notorious for mood swings and rebellion, parents today are navigating new terrain as their children are increasingly at risk of struggling with a mental health issue. But the question remains: What is causing this epidemic of illness?

In Brain Inflamed, acclaimed integrative doctor Dr Kenneth Bock shares a revolutionary new view of adolescent and teen mental health - one that suggests many of the mental disorders most common among this population (including depression, anxiety, and OCD) may share the same underlying mechanism: systemic inflammation. In this groundbreaking work, Dr Bock explains the essential role of the immune system and the microbiome in mental health, detailing the ways in which imbalances in these systems - such as autoimmune conditions, thyroid disorders, or leaky gut syndrome - can generate neurological inflammation.

While most conventional doctors assume that teens' psychological struggles can be resolved only with therapy and psychotropic drugs, Dr. Bock's approach considers the whole-body health of his patients. In his integrative evaluations, he often uncovers triggers such as gluten sensitivity, adrenal dysfunction, Lyme disease, and post-strep infections - all of which create imbalances in the body that can generate psychological symptoms.

Filled with incredible stories from Dr. Bock's more than thirty years as a practising physician, Brain Inflamed explains the biological underpinnings of many common mental health issues, and empowers the parents and family members of struggling teens with practical advice - and perhaps most importantly, hope for a brighter future.

The ultimate guide to protection from everyday germs

From public toilets to pay phones, handshakes to hugs, burger joints to five-star restaurants, the possibility of germ-borne sickness lurks in every part of our world. More than ever, readers need professional guidance on how to protect themselves and their loved ones from infection. The Germ Survival Guide:

• Describes 80 common locales in which germ-borne diseases pose a threat
  
• Offers simple preventive measures, from removing hotel bedspreads to draining backyard birdbaths
  
• Tells readers how to recognize symptoms and get treatment
  
• Introduces readers to more than 100 types of bacteria, molds, and parasites
  
• Combines conventional medical techniques and natural measures to give readers a complete and effective health plan
  

Autism is an epidemic: It has spiked 1,500 percent in the last twenty years. ADHD, asthma and allergies have also skyrocketed over the same time period. One of these conditions now strikes one in every three children in America. But there is hope. Leading medical innovator Kenneth Bock, M.D., has helped change the lives of more than a thousand children, and in this important book, with a comprehensive program that targets all four of the 4-A disorders, he offers help to children everywhere. This is the book that finally puts hope within reach.
Doctors have generally overlooked the connections among the 4-A disorders, despite their concurrent rise and the presence of many medical clues. For years the medical establishment has considered autism medically untreatable and utterly incurable, and has limited ADHD treatment mainly to symptom suppression. Dr. Bock and his colleagues, however, have discovered a solution - one that goes to the root of the problem. They have found that deadly modern toxins, nutritional deficiencies, metabolic imbalances, genetic vulnerabilities and assaults on the immune and gastrointestinal systems trigger most of the symptoms of the 4-A disorders, resulting in frequent misdiagnosis and untold misery.
Dr. Bock's remarkable Healing Program, drawing on medical research and based on years of clinical success, offers a safe, sensible solution that is individualized to each child to help remedy these root causes. The biomedical approach to autism, ADHD, and the other 4-A epidemics, as innovated by Dr. Bock and some of America's finest integrative physicians, is one of the most promising and exciting medical movements of our time.
In this eminently readable account, written by Dr. Bock in collaboration with critically acclaimed author Cameron Stauth, you will meet children and parents whose dramatic stories will inspire you to change the life of your own child. This program may be the help that you have been praying for.

"From the Hardcover edition."