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Your Proven Guide to Peak Wellness and Ideal Weight
Dr. Joseph Mercola
2007
www.mercola.com
http://products.mercola.com/take-control/
Let’s get the caveats out of the way first:
1) The book is sloppily edited in places, which is annoying.
2) Is Dr. Mercola a “fanatic health-nut,” as people used to say? Yes. He is focused on achieving optimal health to a degree that most of us would find oppressive. He is curious about what is possible and dedicated to spreading the word about what he learns with what could be off-putting zeal. He is also intelligent, and good at gathering and synthesizing a lot of disparate and hard-to-find nformation.
I have found him to be a courageous pioneer in providing reliable information to a public brainwashed by conventional medicine, big pharma and the FDA, and the processed food industry. (Do you have doubts about the role of the FDA in suppressing information about natural health? Here’s a sample of the kind of ridiculous threatening letter the FDA sends to alternative doctors explaining why they can't mention the health benefits of non-patentable virgin coconut oil, the best fat for high-heat cooking.)
3) Is he another commercial doctor just trying to make a buck? I don’t think so, though I can’t say for sure. The site has definitely grown more commercial in the years I have been visiting it, and he is expert at the long and informative sales letter. But the site itself is a huge and valuable resource, there are not many products, and he is trying to provide wholesome, carefully-formulated products based on the health principles he believes in - which meet the standards of a fanatical health nut. Can’t argue with that… and you don’t have to buy anything to access to information.
This book really is about taking responsibility for your health and taking control of your health. I like it because he covers all the bases and he doesn’t mince words. To be healthy, you need to eat real food, preferably organic. This used to be a given, because that’s all there was. Now the cheapest, easiest food to buy is processed, chemically-altered former food (spiked with sometimes poisonous additives) which is no longer in the biochemical form the human body has recognized as fuel for thousands of years. Grains and especially sugar substitutes are the worst offenders. The fact is, if you want to eat real, fresh food, someone is going to have to be in the kitchen cooking it—probably you. Don’t have time? Look around at the walking wounded—overweight, with multiple minor or major health issues, and you can see the price we are paying.
He introduces his metabolic typing diet, based on Bill Wolcott’s The Metabolic Typing Diet, formulated based on years of experience in his clinic with other typing diets. He gives credit to other doctors and researchers from whom he learned the theories and facts that he uses in all his recommendations, which is refreshing. He covers the sticky issue of what fats are good fats, the importance of raw food, water consumption guidelines, how to plan meals, who should be juicing, the value of interval-training exercise (confirmed by my physical therapist/yoga teacher and my integral doctor), why we should NOT avoid the sun, energy therapies for emotional health (one of the few nutritionally-oriented doctors who includes this invaluable tool), sleep, why artificial sweeteners need to drop out of your diet, the largely unknown and scary details about genetically modified food, why soy is not a health food, what you need to know about vaccinations - especially for children, problems with personal care products, plus a chapter on common health myths.
In less than 300 pages, Mercola provides an organized guide that cuts through the vast sea of misinformation and will change your relation to your body and to your health dramatically when you begin to implement it. You can also type the topics listed above into the search engine on his site to get more information.
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