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Modern medicine has made amazing strides toward combating infectious diseases and improving the quality of human life. Sanitation has nearly rid humans in developed countries of exposure to a host of disease-causing bacteria, viruses, and nasty parasites. Vaccines have virtually eliminated many fatal or crippling diseases and have held many others at bay. Advances in medical imaging now enable doctors to look inside the body without opening it up. Anesthesia allows for pain-free surgeries. And through the miracles of modern medicine, many people have had their hearing and sight restored, limbs replaced with robotic prosthetics, and are even walking around with artificial hearts.

Yet something is missing. The steady decline of infectious diseases is matched with a comparable rise in chronic illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, asthma, autism, cancer, diabetes, fibromyalgia, heart disease, obesity, and osteoporosis. And the best that modern medicine can offer in fighting this rising epidemic is a whack-a-mole approach of treating symptoms with powerful prescription medications and surgeries that then trigger other illnesses that have other symptoms that must then be treated. Over time, many patients end up on a half dozen medications (or more), and they still feel lousy.

Natural medicine takes a different approach. Instead of treating symptoms or even illnesses, natural medicine focuses on identifying and treating underlying causes: nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, inefficiency in digestion and absorption of nutrients, the presence of heavy metals and other toxins, food allergies and sensitivities, structural imbalances, and dysregulation of the immune system, to mention a few. Natural medicine not only cures illness, but it also optimizes wellness.

About This Book

Fed up with conventional medical treatments? Welcome to Natural Cures For Dummies, your key to curing illness and optimizing wellness through nutrition, supplements, herbs, lifestyle changes, and other nonconventional treatments that harness the body’s powerful self-defense and self-healing mechanisms.

Organized in an easy-to-access format and presented in plain English, this book introduces you to natural cures and takes you on a tour of common natural cures treatment approaches, including aromatherapy, Ayurveda, functional medicine, herbal medicine, homeopathy, and naturopathy. In addition, you’ll find guidance on dietary and lifestyle changes you can make to instantly improve your health. I also provide natural prevention and cures for over 170 common ailments, explaining which nutrients, supplements, herbs, and other treatments are most effective in addressing the underlying causes of these ailments.

You’ll also find appendixes that cover vitamins and minerals, nutritional supplements, natural hormones, herbs, homeopathic remedies, and essential oils. These vital references can be used time and again as you embrace natural remedies to protect and promote optimal health in yourself and your family.

Although I encourage you to read every single word of this book from start to finish, you’re welcome to skip around to acquire your knowledge on a need-to-know basis and completely skip the sidebars (shaded gray) and anything flagged with a Technical Stuff icon. Although this information may be too fascinating to ignore, it’s not essential.

During the writing of this book, I adopted a few conventions to help convey the content as simply and clearly as possible and highlight important information:

✔ All doses given are for adults unless otherwise specified. See Chapters 3 and 12 for guidance on converting to doses for children and for adults who weight less than 150 pounds.

✔ Doses appear in the unit most commonly used for each supplement, usually grams (g), milligrams (mg), micrograms (mcg), and United States Pharmacopeia (USP). Colony forming units (CFUs) indicate the number of live organisms (bacteria or yeast) in a probiotic that are capable of reproducing to form a group.

✔ When specified, the better form of a supplement appears in parentheses directly after the supplement; for example, “vitamin B12 (methylcobalamin, sublingually in a fast-dissolving tablet).” The better form is more easily processed and used by the body or is best for a specific condition.

Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy – just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

Foolish Assumptions

The fact that you’re reading this book tells me that you’re probably not feeling as well as you know you should feel and that you haven’t had much success with conventional medical treatment. Maybe you’re taking a prescription medication that’s causing side effects that are worse than the illness itself. Perhaps you’re worried about the long-term effects of being on multiple medications. Whatever the reason, you’re not satisfied with what conventional medicine has to offer, and you’re looking for a better way.

Other foolish assumptions I’ve made about you include the following:

✔ You want to optimize health and not merely rid yourself of illness.

✔ You’re committed to making bold changes to your diet and lifestyle to achieve and maintain wellness.

✔ You’re eager to transition from your passive role as patient to a more active role as doctor-patient.

✔ You’re ready to start listening to and learning from what your body is telling you it needs and needs to avoid to function at its best.

✔ You recognize that conventional medical treatment is required for serious physical injuries and certain medical emergencies, including infectious diseases that threaten life or limb.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, icons in the margins highlight different types of information that call out for your attention. Here are the icons you’ll see and a brief description of each.

I want you to remember everything you read in this book, but if you can’t quite do that, then remember the important points flagged with this icon.

Tips provide insider insight. When you’re looking for a better, faster way to do something, check out these tips.

“Whoa!” This icon appears when you need to be extra vigilant or consult your healthcare provider before moving forward.

Occasionally, I feel compelled to delve deeper into the biology or physiology of a given health condition or treatment. When I do so, I give you a heads up with this icon, so you can skip the details and head right to the cure.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the abundance of information and guidance on harnessing the power of nature and your body’s self-protection and self-healing mechanisms, you also get access to even more help and information at www.dummies.com. Go to www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/naturalcures for a free cheat sheet that accompanies this book. It brings you up to speed on natural cure fundamentals, provides a list of junk foods to eliminate from your diet and healthy foods to eat more of, outlines a protocol for maintaining a healthy gut (the key to wellness), and tells you how to combat colds and other bacterial, viral, and fungal infections by enhancing your body’s immune response.

You can also head to www.dummies.com/extras/naturalcures for a few free supplemental articles that I think you’ll find helpful as you begin your journey to optimal health and well-being. Here you find out how to restore healthy gut bacteria after antibiotic treatment, discover ten key supplements to always keep on hand, and come to recognize why taking vitamins and minerals in their better forms is so important.

Where to Go from Here

I structured this book so you could use it in a couple different ways. To get the most out of it, read it from cover to cover so you don’t miss out on any valuable information and insight. You may also use it as natural cures desk reference; when you’re not feeling well, simply look up your illness in the table of contents or the index and flip to the designated page to find the cure for what ails you. The appendixes also provide several quick references to nutritional and natural remedies.

I do recommend, however, that you start with the chapters in Part I. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the natural cures approach to wellness and gets you up to speed in a hurry on the theory behind the practice. In Chapter 2, I recommend diet and lifestyle changes that form the foundation of good health. And in Chapter 3, I take you on a tour of the different treatment approaches that comprise natural medicine, including Ayurveda, chiropractic, homeopathy, and functional medicine.

As you embark on your journey to optimal health, keep in mind that you’re a unique individual. Your DNA, body chemistry, and even the microbes living inside you are all very distinctive, so there is no one-size-fits-all path to wellness. I strongly recommend that you consult with a qualified natural medicine practitioner – a functional medicine practitioner, naturopath, osteopath, chiropractor, or other practitioner who has advanced training in functional medicine and natural cures – for an initial evaluation to identify any deficiencies or other conditions that may be getting in the way.