womens health

I was excited to read this book but was very disappointed with the content. It only covered the "top" known auto-immune diseases and did not even mention the others that we suffer from. I am still trying to collect any info I can about mine....Takayasu's arteritis. I was so sad to see that it wasn't mentioned or anything close to it. Alot of the author's comments were the same in each chapter and quite repetitive without much insight.

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.

Written by a psychologist and fibromyalgia patient, Thriving with Your Autoimmune Disorder offers a wealth of excellent tips for keeping autoimmune disease symptoms in line. While Ravicz discusses specific conventional treatment options for only a few of the most common autoimmune disorders, her focus is on the nutrient deficiencies and psychological changes that contribute to symptoms in most autoimmune disorders. Offering dietary tips as well as psychological counseling, Ravicz shows us that there is more to reducing symptoms in autoimmune disorders than prescriptions drugs.