Integrating Therapeutic and Complementary Nutrition

Consumers look to health professionals for guidance on how to integrate complementary and alternative (CAM) therapies into their lifestyles, yet most health care professionals are trained only in conventional practices. Integrating Therapeutic and Complementary Nutrition provides the scientific foundation necessary to understand CAM nutrition practices and how they are being integrated into conventional care. Working within a framework that examines complementary and alternative therapies alongside conventional nutrition practice, the authors examine controversial issues surrounding CAM practice. Integrating Therapeutic and Complementary Nutrition replaces popular myths with fact based and verifiable information from nutritionists, professors, researchers, and industry professionals.

Each chapter describes in detail the underlying process involved in both healthy function and dysfunction of each organ system and disease state to provide the necessary background for the comparison, contrast, and conjunction of conventional and alternative therapy. Paying particular attention to determining which therapies might be appropriate for which conditions, including which supplements, in what amounts and from which manufacturers, this book uses scientific data, considered opinions and case studies to weed out the beneficial from the harmful. While aware that there unanswered questions exist, the editors provide a much needed reference to the information currently available, clearing the confusion between what is known and what is not; what is proven and what is, though well-intentioned, just wishful thinking.

Consumers look to health professionals for guidance on how to integrate complementary and alternative (CAM) therapies into their lifestyles, yet most health care professionals are trained only in conventional practices. Integrating Therapeutic and Complementary Nutrition provides the scientific foundation necessary to understand CAM nutrition practices and how they are being integrated into conventional care. Working within a framework that examines complementary and alternative therapies alongside conventional nutrition practice, the authors examine controversial issues surrounding CAM practice. Integrating Therapeutic and Complementary Nutrition replaces popular myths with fact based and verifiable information from nutritionists, professors, researchers, and industry professionals.

Each chapter describes in detail the underlying process involved in both healthy function and dysfunction of each organ system and disease state to provide the necessary background for the comparison, contrast, and conjunction of conventional and alternative therapy. Paying particular attention to determining which therapies might be appropriate for which conditions, including which supplements, in what amounts and from which manufacturers, this book uses scientific data, considered opinions and case studies to weed out the beneficial from the harmful. While aware that there unanswered questions exist, the editors provide a much needed reference to the information currently available, clearing the confusion between what is known and what is not; what is proven and what is, though well-intentioned, just wishful thinking.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Dale A. Schoeller, PhD(University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Description:This book, intended for use in the education of health professionals, emphasizes the integration of therapies that include mind and lifestyle with disease-related healing along with the use of nutritional supplements and nutritionally rich foods.
Purpose:The book provides current introductory information and detailed, literature-based analysis of the use of nutritional supplements in the prevention and treatment of human disease with an emphasis on chronic disease. The individual chapters are written by multiple authors who are experts in the field.
Audience:Because of the breadth of material, this book is useful for both trainee and experienced health professionals.
Features:The book's 19 chapters cover the topics by life stage with respect to healthy individuals, and organ system with respect to nutritionally related disease. These chapters cover the value of complementary nutrition in an evidence-based manner. The chapters are written using the same structure and thus well coordinated with very little overlap between them. A small number of black-and-white illustrations and many useful tables dot the text. Eight useful appendixes cover general dietary considerations, herb-drug interactions, surgical and dental issues, and bioavailability.
Assessment:Although the introductory chapters are a little biased towards the nonpharmacological approach to medical treatment, the remainder of the book provides a very even-handed review of the literature regarding complementary nutrition.