Book Reviews—Prescription for Natural Cures • Food for Fitness

By James F. Balch, MD, and Mark Stengler, ND
Reviewer: Deirdre Shevlin Bell

If you are looking for a guidebook to natural healthcare, you’ll want to check out the new Prescription for Natural Cures (Wiley & Sons, 2004). James F. Balch, MD, who coauthored Prescription for Nutritional Healing (Avery Publishing Group) in 1990, teamed with naturopathic physician Mark Stengler, ND, in this latest endeavor.

Drs. Balch and Stengler approach health and well-being from a comprehensive and holistic perspective. While they do not shun conventional medicine—and in fact consider it an essential component of treatment plans for conditions such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, as well as for emergency care—the authors believe many conditions are treatable with natural, nontoxic remedies.

Prescription for Natural Cures is divided into three sections. The first, and largest, is an alphabetical listing of conditions, from abscess to warts. Each entry describes the condition; addresses prevention; lists symptoms, root causes, and testing techniques; and discusses treatment options. Some of the treatment methods covered are diet, detoxification, homeopathy, bodywork, and aromatherapy. One unique feature of this section is that each entry contains a condition-specific “Super Seven Prescription”—recommended supplements that are backed by scientific research and clinical success.

The second section, “The Essentials of Natural Medicine,” provides detailed information about the healing modalities recommended in Section One. The third section consists of a glossary of medical terms and a guide to finding information about holistic health practitioners.

Thorough, wide-reaching, and easy-to-read, Prescription for Natural Cures is a useful resource for treating everything from headaches and bad breath to more serious conditions
like diabetes and multiple sclerosis. But most importantly this book provides a focus on the concept of prevention, giving readers all the tools and practical advice needed for optimizing health and well-being.

Food for Fitness: Eat Right to Train Right

By Chris Carmichael
Reviewer: Elizabeth Marglin

Lance Armstrong’s record-breaking sixth win of the Tour de France in July is probably the best plug for his coach Chris Carmichael’s new book Food for Fitness: Eat Right to Train Right. In his foreword to the book Armstrong writes, “Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learnt about sports nutrition is that paying attention to it can make your dreams come true and neglecting it can be your undoing.”

As an Olympic trainer and former competitive cyclist himself, Carmichael has plenty of experience with how nutrition for athletes differs from the needs of the average American, who has to be prodded to exercise even 30 minutes a day. This is a book written for the unique breed of active people who crave consistent exercise, a group that Carmichael describes as a “distinct and growing population of the United States.”

Whether you are an über-athlete or as Carmichael writes, “a mother of three trying to balance the needs of your children and your need to run to maintain sanity,” Food for Fitness provides a wealth of useful information for all levels of athletes. First on his agenda is debunking the premises of most of the popular diet books, which he says are targeted for overweight people, not for active ones. Speaking as the voice of moderation in the increasingly polarized world of carbs, proteins, and fats, Carmichael counsels eating specific ratios of all three.

Rather than eliminating a food group, Carmichael focuses on exercise as the prime means for weight loss. When you become an active person, he says, “You immediately realize that all foods have their place.”

The premise of Carmichael’s program is the training concept of periodization, which breaks the year into four distinct periods: Foundation, Preparation, Specialization, and Transition. Each cycle requires a different form of exertion and corresponds with different nutritional needs.

Illustrated with numerous graphs and charts, and heavy on the technical minutia of aerobic vs. anaerobic systems, this book is perfect for people who know their heart rate ranges and take a scientific approach to their training. However, even for the more casual athlete, much can be learned from Carmichael’s balanced approach to diet. He firmly steers athletes away from the low-carb craze, which he says can leave them feeling drained and flat. Carbohydrates, he explains, are the body’s high-octane fuel and are necessary for speed, power, and longevity.

Rounding out the book are recipes, sample meal plans, and advice for eating on the go. Carmichael is above all a pragmatist, and when an athlete is bonking (experiencing a severe bout of low-blood sugar), he says, a candy bar and a soda from a convenience store is sometimes the ticket to getting home.

In addition, he provides information for the vegetarian athlete, as well as special sections on nutrition for kids, women, and older athletes. One of the book’s strongest chapters is on the importance of hydration, something that both the couch potato and the fitness addict tend to neglect.

No-nonsense and precise, the way you would want a coach to be, Food for Fitness offers helpful nutritional advice for everyone, even if exercise is more a resolution than a reality. This book may inspire you to ratchet up your exercise level a notch or two. And even if you will never be able ride a bike like Lance Armstrong, at least now you can eat like him.