Asian Health Secrets: The Complete Guide to Asian Herbal Medicine
by Letha Hadady
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Book Reviews of Asian Health Secrets: The Complete Guide to Asian Herbal Medicine
Book Review: Excellent resource for helping to restore balance
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the best things about this book was its attention to the many ways we can make positive, healthy changes in our whole lives, not just in diet. The cleansing diet it tells about is wonderful. My whole family went on this diet for 3 weeks. I ate all of the natural, wholesome food that I wanted, and still lost 20 lbs, and felt energized and renewed. However, one of the best things about the diet was the fact that it did not ignore the need to do the same kind of work on the mental and spiritual levels. To give a good example, one of the activities in the detox diet (in addition to the healing baths and guided visualizations/meditations) was to clean out your closets of old clothes and give them to charity. Few diet or self-help healing books incorporate such things into their advice and programs, but they are equally important for success.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the use of diet, herbs, and other healthy lifestyle changes. About the only downside to it is the inability to find some products, if you live in an isolated area like I do, where you have no access to many of the ingredients the book mentions to use. This does not make it impossible to do the diets or anything, just restricts your choices of the things you can eat, while still sticking to the diet. It was still very good, though.
Book Review: New Frontiers
Summary: 5 Stars
I had the very good fortune to meet Letha in SoHo a few months ago for her guided tour of the herbal markets in neighboring Chinatown. She radiated with wisdom and was most informative on the huge and complex subject of Asian medicine. I was honored to finally meet her, as her book Asian Health Secrets, had helped transform my health three years ago.The book was given to me by a close friend in Phoenix who had witnessed my suffering with chronic fatigue syndrome. I had been to many Western MD's who prescribed anything from Prozac to muscle relaxers. Nothing worked. I was told many times, my illness was in my head. But I knew better. As a last resort I read Letha's book and followed her advice. I also started yoga. Within six months my body had healed.
Of course I now have a special affection for the book, which started my personal transformation. I have recommended it to many friends. It is an excellent read, informative and addresses many health concerns of men and women. It is wonderful that there are alternative ways of looking at health, that often provide better and more lasting results than the standard Western model. Thank you Letha, for a wonderful book!
Book Review: Ten Stars
Summary: 5 Stars
What can you say about a classic? This book was given to me by an MD friend who likes herbs. Now I even travel with it. It is heavy - over 500 pages, but I always make room for it in my luggage.
It has chapters on ginsengs and other herbal tonics that are a life saver for active, athletic people. Also lots of chapters on preventing and treating everything from colds and flu to depression. It's like a visit to your naturopath or herbalist, but better because Hadady gives you the tools you need to observe your own health improvements.
I always felt that herb choice and dosage ought to be individualized. The book gives you the traditional tools (like tongue diagnosis) to decide which food/herbs to use, when to use them, and when to stop their use.
I used Yunnan Paiyao (an entire chapter in the book is devoted to this super powerful herbal capsule) and it saved my face. I was robbed and battered. After I took this herbal pill, (also used by the Chinese army for gunshot wounds) my healing was fast and scars minimal.
Everybody should own this book.
Book Review: Helpful...to a degree
Summary: 4 Stars
Honestly, to start, I was torn with how to rate this book. I'll begin with the positives: there is a LOT of helpful information here. The facts, picked out, are solid and very informative, and as a whole the book is a great guide to Asian medicine.
The main negative, as I see it, is that the beneficial information is scattered throughout the book in such a way as to frustrate the first-time reader. If you aren't familiar with many of the basic concepts of Chinese medicine, such as warming/cooling herbs, you don't really gain an understanding of these things until about halfway through the book. There is no time spent in early chapters to acquaint the novice with the things that the author takes for granted.
On the whole, it's a great book with a lot of good info, if you've got the patience to read it a few times - which, really, with a good reference book, you want to do anyway. Personally I do say it's worth it, but I wouldn't treat this book as a simple reference to have on the shelves - it's for someone who either has deeper knowledge or is looking for it.
Book Review: Handy Reference Book
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a complete introduction to herbal medicine for the novice. Asian Health Secrets offers practical advice on how to use a variety of herbs, teas, extracts, and pills as safe and inexpensive alternatives or complements to Western treatments. In this informative guide to herbal medicine, Letha Hadady, D.Ac., presents simple yet thorough diagnostic methods that will allow readers to evaluate their well-being to prevent illness, boost immune strength, and promote health. Through case studies and step-by-step instructions Hadady reveals ancient cures for a variety of ailments that were, for centuries, known only to Eastern healers. This is the kind of book that becomes both an invaluable reference and a source of enjoyable reading as you browse again and again, picking up valuable nuggets of helpful hints about how to get well and stay well. It's a helpful book but if you're interested in Eastern medicine, you should see a doctor who deals with this type of medicine before self-diagnosing yourself. It's a good book to keep around.