Out of Date?

This five year old PDR Family Guide to Nutritional Supplements, first edition, Dec. 2001, is an excellent consise book and easy to read. However it is out of date when compared with PDR Health on-line. To get started this book is good. To get the latest information from PDR one has to go on-line and combining the two can be confusing. I'll not order until the second edition is released.

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I use it in my healing practice, and nursing practice

Note: First of all, there are 2 natural remedy PDRs, one for Nutritional rRemedies and Supplements, and another specifically for Herbal Remedies. You will NOT find herbal info in the nutritional PDR, nor nutritional supplements in the Herbal PDR.

I have subscribed to the PDR for Nutritional Supplements, as well as the PDR for Herbal Remedies, since they first were available. The Nutritional supplement volumes seem to come out with editions more often than the Herbal Remedies, probably because there are simply a limited number of herbs, and their uses have been well-documented for centuries, if not millenia. The updates of those volumes contain more updated research, and more information about side effects and interactions. The Nutritional Supplement volumes require revision sooner due to the greater amount of research into so many of the newly identified nutrients and their effects on the human body.

As a holistic practitioner who engages in multiple natural healing modalities, in addition to earning a Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree, I use natural healing methods in treating my own medical disorders, and have successfully assisted clients to control blood pressure, reduce harmful cholesterol, eliminate allergic responses, quell the bouts of asthma, promote improved respiratory tract function, improve intestinal function and elimination, and restore restful sleep, as just a small sample of what can be achieved using natural methods, nutritional and herbal remedies.

My scientific background and training in nursing makes me especially cautious of overinflated claims about certain remedies, but it is wonderful to have the research listed in a respected and responsible publication, such as the PDRs, to provide allopathic physicians, among others, with the rationales and research that provide the basis for using the nutritional and herbal supplements in a holistic regime for healing.

I certainly do also keep up with the research and information from leaders in the natural health care field, but in presenting information that will be convincing to allopathic practitioners, and win them over to the side of the benefits of natural remedies, the information that comes from the PDRs holds a lot of weight, as it is a resource most physicians are used to depending upon.

I am now ordering the latest Nutritional PDR, and passing on my older volume to a nurse practitioner who is another formerly strictly allopathic practitioner to be won over to the side of natural interventions. This was due to the inability of one of her indigent clients to be able to afford the medication the NP was prescribing for her, and in desperation she was looking for someone well-versed in herbal or natural remedies. This person typically was presenting with blood pressures in the vicinity of 200/130, very very high. Someone referred her to me, and after careful assessment and medical history-taking, she was placed on a regimen of Omega-3/6/9 capsules, CoQ10, milk thistle, hawthorn, and a good multivitamin. By procuring this regimen online, at a low-cost site, the entire monthly regimen cost her less than $40, a fraction of what the pharmeceutical medication would have cost her. Within one week her blood pressures were in the range of 120/70, and stayed in that range. I provided both the client and her NP with thorough information supporting the use of every nutrient and herb, and much of it came from the PDRs.

(...)


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Brim Full of Information

Tired of getting your supplement information from the vitamin shop clerk? This is state of the art stuff. Finally here is a book that both the lay person and the physician can safely turn to. The author has no axe to grind. He neither overstates nor understates, but is carefully objective in his presentation and allows the evidence to speak for itself. Dr. Hendler brings to his subject an open mind, wide ranging intelligence, and a rigorous training in all of the relevant disciplines. He refuses to be a shill either for entrenched medical orthodoxy or starry eyed alternative approaches. The result is a cornucopia of information.

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