Books for Empowered Patients
Book Title:
How to UnBreak your HealthBook Author(s)::
Alan E. SmithMy Review
Alan Smith makes the correct assumption that our health and western medicine do not effectively meet the needs of the population. Most of us are indeed broken in terms of connecting with our own mind-body-spirit unity and path toward wellness. This book provides a comprehensive path toward identifying the options available for health and wellness promotion, for mending broken perceptions and body parts, for uniting our spirit and energy with our minds and bodies. Alan provides a sensible approach to the personalized pathway to hope, healing, and wellness in non-technical language, empowering the reader of information and options about which he may not have been aware.
What I most appreciate through this journey is the emphasis of the power of natural healing abilities; our bodies and minds and spirits want to be well. Whether we employ modern western medicine or any of the numerous options of alternative and complementary therapies presented in this book, we have more power to heal ourselves than we may have realized. What a tremendous gift of hope Smith provides; and like Dorothy standing before the great wizard, we have only to realize our own innate power, to click our heels and find our way ‘home’.
Smith takes us on a personal expedition, providing a “map to better health” for which each of us may find an individualized path according to our specific inner GPS. The choices are clear and concise, comprehensively providing ways to find our own balance, our own chi, for which we must take time to consider. This is not a book with a one-size-fits-all checklist, which may be frustrating to some in an immediate gratification society. Smith provides a roster of therapies and wide-ranging resource list from which we can begin our own course of healing and health betterment.
What was the most important information you learned?
Many insurance providers do not recognize alternative therapies in the course of their denial management. Smith provides guidance in how to deal with the insurance situation, what questions to ask, and how to proceed with denied claims.
What information was missing?
Knowing that nutrition is a huge component in health practices, I would like to have seen more about it, but understand that comprehensive coverage was impossible. Smith provides sources to begin a search about nutrition, which wisely places the responsibility of discovery on the reader.
What questions would you like to ask the author?
Gazing into your crystal ball (and Tricorder), and based on your extensive research, do you think that integrative medicine will topple the giants of drug companies and old-school medicine in the next generation … or generations to follow?
Who will benefit most from reading this book?
Everyone can benefit from this easy to read, comprehensive journey through options available for wellness and health promotion. Those with natural curiosity about health and knowledge beyond the 7-minute doctor’s visit will appreciate this very reader-friendly guide to taking control of our destiny.
Additional Comments
Nursing taught me how to respond to illness and injury, and health promotion is often, in emergency medicine, an afterthought; we do not have time to teach about alternative therapies unless they prescribed by a doctor. If I could recommend one book to my patients, How to UnBreak your Health is it.
Tell us about you.
Paramedic, RN, Diplomate, American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stess.
