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Thriving with Your Autoimmune Disorder: A Woman's Mind-Body Guide
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Disease Books > Autoimmune Diseases > Item 15
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Thriving with Your Autoimmune Disorder: A Woman's Mind-Body Guide
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Paperback
by Simone Ravicz
Sales Rank: 616042
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$54.00
At Amazon
on 11-19-2011.
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Features
Paperback: 350 pages
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition June 2000
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1572241896
ISBN-13: 978-1572241893
Product Dimensions:
10 x 7 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
While the author means well, she is a psychologist with expertise in post-traumatic stress syndrome, and according to her author bio, she conducts workshops on stress management in her practice. Her primary interest appears to be psychological health, and this interest seems evident, because it is through this lens that her approach to autoimmune diseases appears to be heavily filtered. There is no question that mind-body and coping skills are important, even critical, parts of dealing with an autoimmune condition or any chronic disease for that matter. But most autoimmune disease patients have a physical, medical problem -- not a mental health issue. The book is, however, heavily biased toward stress as a key cause of autoimmune disease, and stress reduction and coping as the "treatments." More than half of this book is dedicated to a somewhat repetitive coverage of exercises to reduce stress, ways to muster healing energy, coping skills, and other psychological, mental health, and counseling-based approaches. With estimates ranging from 50 to 100 different diseases, it's also unclear why the author chose to cover only 8 autoimmune-related diseases, ignoring a number of important conditions, and overlooking entire categories of autoimmune disease wholesale. This leaves the book incomplete. Under each disease, the author has inexplicably repeated entire sections verbatim as part of each chapter. For example, she provides a description of some reasons to avoid sugar, and then proceeds to "copy and paste" the same exact verbiage under each of the other disease sections. Numerous examples of this copy and paste approach are seen throughout the disease chapters, and are evidence of the need for extensive editing. The author does not substantially address the many environmental factors that are thought to contribute to autoimmune disease, and provides little in the way of leading-edge information on traditional or alternative-medicine approaches to specific conditions, or autoimmune diseases as a whole. Better choices would be the more topical, comprehensive and insightful treatment of autoimmune disease found in two more recent books, Mary Shomon's "Living Well with Autoimmune Disease: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You...That You Need to Know," and Elaine Moore's "Autoimmune Diseases and Their Environmental Triggers." Shomon and Moore cover mind-body and stress reduction information well, but go far beyond Ravicz' in their look at the environmental, nutritional and occupational reasons for autoimmune diseases, as well as traditional and alternative approaches for treatment of these diseases.
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Thriving with Your Autoimmune Disorder: A Woman's Mind-Body Guide
Available from Amazon
Price: $54.00
Updated on 11-19-2011.
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