[.ca] The Body Ecology Diet: Recovering Your Health and ... (ISBN 0963845829)

Finally - A Book/Diet that Covers it ALL:
For those of us who have suffered autoimmune disorders along with the accompanying chronic candida/parasites that go along with it - this book is a treasure. After my own personal journey of 10+ years with CFS/FM, Lupus and MPS I can say that for me, this book was the final 'piece' to my health puzzle. I had been dealing with Chronic Candida problems for years - I had colon cleansed, liver cleansed, gotten off all prescription drugs but still "hit a wall" in my health, and was not able to completely get well. In working with many people on candida support groups over the years, and in my own health I have discovered that most grains are detrimental to digestive problems and indeed can stop complete recovery. Most people suffering from auto-immune and Chronic Candida disorders are suffering from malabsorption - and have Leaky Gut syndrome. Eating Grains, dairy and most fruits - which are recommended by many book authors can make one sicker, and go into deeper distress. Donna is *right on the money here*, she knows and understands these complications and tells the reader "straight" - right from the beginning. I have *never* found the Anti-Candida Diet popular amongst those seeking to reclaim their health. This book is no different - and the negative reviews are possibly because people are looking for a 'quick fix', or a magic pill to get well. Chronic health problems do not happen overnight - and one will not get better overnight either. Donna covers some of the most important aspects to complete health recovery - an example is "Food Combining" rules. This is vitally important to recovery and as she says: "eating foods that are not compatible in the stomach causes fermentation. This fermentation produces alcohol and sugars and yeast feed off these sugars and multiply rapidly, creating more toxins in the body." and also - "People with candidiasis have weak digestive tracts. Improper food-combining further weakens the digestive tract by causing it to work inefficiently until it slowly breaks down." Colon cleansing and liver cleansing are also important aspects of this book and this is also sound truth for recovery. Though Donna does promote her own supplements/products - if one is truly interested in living the lifestyle recommended in the book - kefir, cultured vegetables, coconut(s) (their oil and meat) can ALL be found elsewhere - very inexpensively. We make our own cultured vegies, kefir and kombucha for pennies a day, without the promoted 'starters' in the book. Too many people are sick because they don't want to get down to business and take responsibility for their own health - this book challenges the politically correct health folks out there and really gives answers for those who are SERIOUS about getting well - for good. This book has helped change my life and I highly recommend it. WendyJM1

Great content, poorly organized:
This book needs a good editor. For example, there is no clearly defined section on getting started with the diet. Instead, the authors force you to read the whole book and extract a sentence here and a paragraph to assemble your own list of "dos and don'ts" when first starting on the diet. If you are suffering symptoms, this "forced" research project can be torture, and cause you to make painful mistakes early on if you haven't read the entire book cover to cover, AND highlighted and underlined relevant passages, AND compiled those marked passages into an action plan for yourself first. There is a lot of great information in the book, but it is organized so badly that it forces the reader to finish the editor's job and make their own outline for getting started. I'd pay \oagain\c for this book if they would do that for me.

This book is THE BEST I've seen, and I've seen a lot:
I am really surprised by the negative reviews of this book! I have to agree with the other 5 star review, totally. Perhaps this book resonates more with those of us with healthcare and nutrition training, and therefore we don't need it to be "all spelled out" perfectly. Also, "being forced" to slog through the content could be very useful-in our "give it to me now" world, nobody wants to do any work anymore, but if one would discipline oneself to LEARN the material, it might make a difference in the RESULTS one gets. I've studied marcobiotics, the raw food diet, fitness nutrition approaches and have paid much money for "certifications" to teach these, have a medical background, and TONS of holistic healthcare training, including some osteopathic medicine. I also have moderate candida related health problems like allergies, asthma, eczema, intermittant constipation, mood swings, sugar cravings -oyvey! THIS BOOK is the FIRST time I have seen the gut-immune system connection SO CLEARLY Pointed out to the point that I can REALLY GET IT now. I am SO grateful for this book. I have been practicing it for 2 days and already my colon is cleansing on it's own, my energy is WAY up, my skin looks much clearer and my brain fog is lifting. For anyone who suspects they have candida overgrowth (probably MOST people), or has children with health or behavoral problems, you really owe it to yourself to read this book and explore the subject extensively. This message is very important to creating TRUE health. The book is EXCELLENT.

What an over priced peice of crap:
I was completely annoyed by this book, its lay out was less then intelligent, its content was mostly telling you how useful the diet, which was never laided out in an understandable way, was going to be, and the diagrams were pointless. The only perk to this book was a large number of helpful recipies in the back, but all in all, I thought this book was useless mumbojumbo about 'inner ecology' that was no use to me. I have candida and have chosen to take Nystatin and change my diet, and this book gave no provisions for that or even seemed to consider there might be another way of controlling yeast. What I was looking for was a comprehensive book about what can be done, what specifically to avoid, something that made me understand better what I needed to do to get healthy. Instead this book pushed its products and life style on me in an uncomfortable and obnoxious manner. I would most certainly NOT recommend this book, I would recommend doing research online and deciding for yourself what will work, instead of taking this load of crap at face value.

Good idea, but poorly executed:
This book is typical of its type. It's written and produced by a well-meaning individual (who, by the way, also has a slew of products to sell) who has good information not available in the mainstream, has no formal scientific or medical background and is not a professional writer. While the basic premise is sound (I was introduced to a version of this diet 15 years ago), the book falls short in many areas. For the price, there are too many loose ends, too many instances when a sufficient explanation for an assertion or diet recommendation is lacking. For example, I can't find recipes for some dishes (Baked Eggs, for instance) mentioned in the text and also the menu. The recipe section appears haphazard. Also, the author says she's against sesame seeds, but offers no explanation for avoiding them. There's a warning against eating nightshade vegetables (peppers and tomatoes are mentioned) but the author promotes eating "new potatoes" (another nightshade vegetable) which I take to mean red potatoes, but I'm not sure. She also extoles the virtues of kefir and claims it's superior to yogurt for people with candidias but doesn't really tell us why. Both contain beneficial bacteria. Kefir, she says, also features yeast but there's no information on why kefir works better or if this yeast is safe to eat. All she says provides is that kefir "more nutritive value" than yogurt. Another suggestion I take exception to is the recommendation to eat califlower and cabbage. These vegetables are known gas producers (whether raw or cooked) and for people with sensitive digestive tracts, I can't help but wonder at the logic here. There are too many instances where crucial information is placed further in the section or chapter when it needs to be stated right up front. For seven pages we hear how wonderful kefir is, but don't find instructions on when to introduce the stuff until the eighth page. Her attitude on juicing also follows a similar and confusing path. Because there is so much information flowing through nearly 300 pages, uou have to be really dedicated to slog through this book and extract a workable program for yourself. This method of healing has real merit, but the authors would do themselves and their readers a real service if they took the manuscript to a professional book consultant and went through the book page-by-page, edited, rewrote and clarified much of the text and beefed up the index. I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to produce a book like this, but when a book -- no matter how many editions or revisions it's gone -- needs more work, it's time to put the ego aside, roll up the sleeves and get to the business of making it as good as it can be.