Subscribe via RSS Feed

Category: Health, Mind, & Body

Review: Special Diets for Special Kids by Lisa Lewis, Ph.D.

[ 5 ] September 22, 2011

Reviewed by Alyssa Katanic

For a little over a year now, our family has been shifting our eating habits in order to deal with various health issues including digestion problems, ADHD, and allergies/ food sensitivities. It has already been quite a journey, and we are still just beginning! There is so much to learn and it can be hard to figure out, “Okay! So what CAN we all eat and enjoy?” Thankfully, there are authors like Lisa Lewis, Ph.D. who have “Been there! Done that! Wrote the book!”

This version of Special Diets for Special Kids is actually a compilation of the previous volumes 1 and 2 with updated information and recipes from more recent research. It is an informational book and cookbook in one, and also includes a CD of over 200 Gluten-Free/Casein-Free (GF/CF) printable recipes!

What is “Gluten-Free/Casein-Free” any way? Lewis does a great job of walking readers through the meaning behind this term, and how and why such a diet has been beneficial for children with issues such as Autism, ADHD, allergies, and more. She also outlines a few other variations of the diet for those who are affected by different food sensitivities such as the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), the Body Ecology Diet (BED), and the Low Oxalate Diet (LOD).

If you are just learning about how your child(ren)’s (or your own) medical challenges can be helped through diet, Special Diets for Special Kids is a great starting point. If you already follow a GF/CF diet or variation, Lewis’ book is a great refresher course that will also add to your recipe choices. Lewis includes a variety of recipes to choose from (including four different pancake recipes!) to suit different tastes and sensitivities, as well as a range of cooking and baking abilities and level of cooking interest. Special Diets for Special Kids is full of resources and recommendations for other books, organizations, websites, and helpful and delicious products and where to find them.

Special Diets for Special Kids by Lisa Lewis is an excellent resource for dietary intervention. It is well designed and organized, and full of great information and good eats!

Rating: 4.5/5

Alyssa is a wife and stay at home, homeschooling mother of five, with two boxers, two cats, a soft shelled turtle named after Bob the Builder, and 7 frogs (admittedly a homeschooling project gone froggy). In all her spare time, she loves to read and believes that there is no such thing as having too many books!

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Future Horizons and Sensory World. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Review: Eat Naked by Margaret Floyd

[ 6 ] September 21, 2011

Reviewed by F. Scott

This book does not contain any pictures of nude people eating or doing anything else. In fact, there are no pictures at all except for the cover. Quel dommage. What Eat Naked, by Margaret Floyd, does contain is very sound advice on what to put into your body. A nutritional practitioner in Los Angeles, Floyd paints processed foods as the enemy—and they are. Essentially, these are “foods” found outside of your produce section at the supermarket.

Floyd as a self-confessed and reformed “junk-food vegetarian” tries to steer her readers away from unnatural and harmful foods that constitute what we all know as the Standard American Diet, or SAD (she herself doesn’t mention this term). Junk-food vegetarians or vegans are a common phenomenon among those ideologically opposed to consuming animal products. Instead, they eat all manner of stuff simply because “no animals were harmed in the making of this food.” But you can relax because Floyd’s book is intended for omnivores.

So, we’re talking about unprocessed, natural, whole, and organic foods, and Floyd tells us about why they’re better, why to eat them, and where to find them. Our fruits and veggies are full of pesticides, so one must be careful, she says. Buy organic. (I say just eat the damn fruits and vegetables however you can get them.) Beef, poultry, eggs, fish, and dairy products are all okay—provided they come from the right place, which is not your average commercial farming operation or your average corner grocery store.

Animal products come full of things like antibiotics and growth hormones. Other toxins find a home in the fat that always accompanies animal tissue. Grass-fed beef, cage-free chickens, wild fish, and raw, unpasteurized dairy are what you want to look for. The problem is that these things can be hard to find—and expensive, if not illegal.

Floyd’s presentation is in two parts: (1) the basics of eating naked and “What is naked?” and (2) how to get naked. (I’m sorry but this whole “eat naked” thing must be some marketing person’s idea of how to sell books; it is repeated ad nauseum. It is all just a bit too girly rah-rah for this man. And all those exclamation points really increase the value of the book, too.)

Nevertheless, Eat Naked is as good a place as any to start transforming your eating habits and in the process your body and your life. I find just about everything she says to be sound and accurate advice. Plus, the information she presents comports with my own dietary changes and experience over the last 10 months. However, I still don’t believe that drinking distilled water will leech my body of essential nutrients, as she claims.

Floyd directs you to her Web site, which I haven’t seen yet, so even more ideas await the reader there. That second part of the book, by the way, contains recipes, but they all seem to me to have too many ingredients. Thus, I offer you one of mine: Get an avocado. Cut it in half. Scoop out the green stuff. Eat it.

Rating: 4.5/5

F. Scott drinks a blended green smoothie every day containing kale or collard greens, two bananas, one apple, grapes, strawberries or blueberries, and two cups of distilled water.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Planned Television Arts. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Review: The Passionate Mind Revisited by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad

[ 2 ] September 11, 2011

Reviewed by Lauren Cannavino

The Passionate Mind Revisited is an interesting and fresh way for one to look at what drives each and every one of us. The interesting part about the book lies in the fact that most of the messages speak of heightening not only a new personal awareness, but also strengthening an awareness that encompasses a much larger social scale. In a world where importance often lies on only helping ourselves, The Passionate Mind Revisited is a vital read for anyone who is interested in branching out a bit.

The basic message that Kramer and Alstad are trying to relay to the reader is essentially summarized in one brief passage near the beginning of the book: “What we believe determines much of what we think and do: the way we move, the way we respond to people, how we think of ourselves, how we see the world in general” (28). Everything is connected and much of that connection stems from thought. And through the belief in the individual, people collectively need to believe in much more.

One interesting perspective that the book presents is the idea that while thought is the basis for so many energies and outcomes in the individual and the world, one must be cautious to not spend too much time trapped in thought. It is clearly very easy to be lost in one’s own mind, but Kramer and Alstad make a point that one must live in the “energy of the moment” and not spend too much time or energy on automatic thinking and routine.

The Passionate Mind Revisited is an in depth look at the structure of the individual, the mind, and how both can raise a new level of social consciousness. There is no clear or predetermined path for anyone to take, it must be found. The book is long and at times a bit wordy, but the ultimate message to take a step back and look at the world with a new perspective is clear. It does not read like a self-help book, but instead almost as a scientific manual for an enlightened or novice reader to follow. However, one may want to first read the first book in the Passionate Mind set, The Passionate Mind: A Manual for Living Creatively with One’s Self by Joel Kramer, before they tackle this book.

Rating: 3/5

Lauren Kirk is a graduate student, freelance writer, wine lover, and avid reader. Random musings can be found over at www.goldiesays.com.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by North Atlantic Books. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Review: I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl by Kelle Groom

[ 5 ] September 5, 2011

Reviewed by Jodi Horsley

I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl, a memoir, was not an easy read by any means. The narrative flows from point in time to point in time with regularity between past and present. The book tells the story of an alcoholic, through her treatment and multiple relapses. Kelle Groom shares how far into the abyss she fell and how difficult it was to climb out.

I Wore the Ocean begins with Kelle giving birth at the age of 19 to her son Tommy. She gets to hold her son two times before she hands him over to her aunt and uncle who adopt him. Since Kelle discovered alcohol at 15, she has been in no shape to take care of herself, let alone a baby. At nine months, Tommy is diagnosed with Leukemia and dies when he is only 14 months old. Most of Groom’s narrative involves her son and her desire to reconnect with this missing part of her self which directs her actions throughout her life.

Kelle goes into intimate detail about her downward out of control spiral and her insatiable desire to know her son. The kind of child he was, his likes, dislikes and even his death. After losing her son a second time (to death), Kelle continues her struggles with alcohol and self-destruction – showing up late to school drunk or skipping it completely and blacking out at bars. Luckily, Kelle does seek sobriety. She drops her drinking buddies and finds employment where she makes new supporting friends. She completes her bachelors and even continues on to graduate school where she majors in creative writing. However, there is still an ever present sadness – which is one of the reasons she wrote this book, in hopes that it will bring her some solace.

I Wore the Ocean was a difficult book to read, although it was also a great book. It is beautifully written and it is easy to see the poet coming through. Groom’s words are honest and raw, and her amazing will to survive to tell her story is inspiring. It is inspiring not only to others who are facing their own descent into a personal hell, but for those who know loved ones who are also in the tight grip of substance abuse. There is some skipping around in the timeline which can make it a little confusing at times, but it certainly does not take away from the intensity of the story.

I felt some satisfaction in knowing that Groom does comes to terms with what happened to her – overcoming alcoholism, surviving devastating things like rape, the loss of her son and the sadness that enveloped her life.

Rating: 5/5

Jodi lives in the western suburbs of Illinois with her husband, her elementary school daughter, and preschool boy/girl twins. She is an avid reader and loves losing herself in a good book. She has a Master’s in Information Technology and has been a WAHM mom for 4 years now.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Free Press. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Review: The Tenth Door by Michele Hebert

[ 5 ] August 26, 2011

Reviewed by Poppy Johnson

In The Tenth Door, Michele Hebert relates her journey to finding spiritual openings. She details and highlights the nine physical openings in the body, specifically focusing on the spiritual opening at the crown of the head which is considered the tenth door.

Hebert starts off with descriptions of growing up in Cleveland. She had a harrowing childhood event and escaped a near death experience. It made her realize that life was to be lived completely and that she should not fear death. She later moved to California, and began working in a health food restaurant. She learned to be open to the ideas regarding personal and spiritual enlightenment and connected with fellow yoga students, as well as Walt Baptiste, who became her spiritual guide.

Hebert used her spiritual beliefs to help open a spiritual retreat in El Salvador and it was there that she discovered her inner being and the things that would eventually make her happy in life. Her experiences are written in diary form as she explains her discovery of “mindful attentiveness” to the practice of yoga and find ways to free her mind. Hebert shares the ways to discover the ultimate in meditation, and The Tenth Door is a guide for developing ideas on leading a more open life.

The Tenth Door is less a description of the author’s journey as it is homage to Walt Baptiste. Hebert’s journey is interesting and readers who enjoy these types of books will likely find ways to enrich their lives based on the author’s discoveries. The Tenth Door is also somewhat of a travel diary, and many readers will enjoy that aspect of Hebert’s writing. I would recommend this book to readers who like spiritual journeys and writers/authors willing to show their most vulnerable side on the road to spiritual fulfillment and development.

Rating: 3/5

After a decade of working in several NYC law departments and teaching, Poppy decided she enjoyed writing full-time. She currently works as a freelance writing consultant, and lives with her husband and sons on the East Coast.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Author Marketing Experts. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Blog Tour & Giveaway: The Rules of the Tunnel by Ned Zeman

[ 82 ] August 21, 2011

Please join Ned Zeman, author of The Rules of the Tunnel, as he tours the blogosphere with TLC Book Tours!

Reviewed by Jill Arent

The Rules of the Tunnel is author Ned Zeman’s story about his “brief period of madness” – otherwise known as his lifelong experience with depression and anxiety disorders seasoned with his stint with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

By all appearances, Ned had it all – a writer for Vanity Fair who divided his time between book/magazine parties and celebrity interviews, lived in New York City and Los Angeles-adjacent Canyons, and experienced more than his share of the so-called endless party lifestyle. But inside, he was a veritable ocean of insecurity and anxiety. He spent many a day self-medicating and self-therapying – on top of many a year of professional medicating and therapying. What did he have to show for it? Well, a host of articles, a slew of ex-girlfriends, and a rather impressive collection of missing memories. The missing memories are due to the ECT, Zeman’s last-ditch attempt at becoming “normal” – or whatever approximates normal in the modern world.

His story is engaging but often very disjointed. At first, I thought this was a failing of the story or writing style. As the book progressed, I changed my mind. I think it was intentional – an attempt to translate the workings of his head (or, perhaps more aptly, the non-workings) into print as a means of demonstrating what it felt like to live inside that head. If so, Zeman’s head must have been a disturbing and disconcerting place – and it’s amazing he was able to live there.

The Rules of the Tunnel isn’t a self-deprecating tale of redemption. It is a slog, difficult to read not because of the writing but because of the subject matter. I don’t know that I learned anything new, other than that Zeman should thank his lucky stars that he was surrounded by the people he was, with the resources at his disposal that he had. Many others with similar affliction have been far less lucky and had to do far more with far less. Maybe, in the end, that is where Zeman occasionally lost me, empathetically. He had a tale to tell, and he did. And if it wasn’t pretty to read, well, it certainly sounds like it wasn’t pretty to live either.

Rating: 3/5

A former corporate attorney and government relations/health policy executive, Jill-Elizabeth walked away from that world (well, skipped actually) and toward a more literary life (equally challenging, but infinitely more enjoyable). If you enjoyed this review, please visit her at Jill-Elizabeth.com, the official home of All Things Jill-Elizabeth.

Giveaway:
I have 1 copy of The Rules of the Tunnel to give away!

Mandatory entry: Please comment here and include your e-mail address.

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via e-mail, follow or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions. (1 entry each)
- Enter another current giveaway and tell me which one you entered (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “Share/Save” button at the bottom of this post (1 entry each)

This giveaway is open to US and Canada residents only. Deadline to enter is midnight on September 2, 2011.

Review and giveaway copies were provided free of any obligation by Gotham. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Review: Glued to Games by Scott Rigby & Richard Ryan

[ 7 ] August 13, 2011

Reviewed by Jessa Larsen

With video games growing in popularity and the strong opinions about their potential vs peril growing right along with them, Glued to Games brings some much needed insight to the table. Glued to Games is the first book/review I have ever seen which offers a balanced view of the pros and cons offered by video games world. The authors offer an easily understandable education on the psychology of what drives us to play games, how games satisfy basic psychological needs, and an understanding of how these factors sometimes lead to violence and addiction.

Filled with examples from a variety of popular games as well as the real experiences of gamers themselves, Glued to Games gets to the center of gaming’s powerful psychological and emotional allure–the benefits as well as the dangers. It gives everyone from researchers to parents to gamers themselves a better understanding of the psychology of gaming, while offering suggestions for healthier, more enjoyable games and gaming experiences.

Glued to Games is written in a manner that is easy to understand even when covering some of the more complex ideas. I appreciated the fact that I could read something educational and still enjoy it rather than being bored to complete tears until I lost all interest. I also liked the fact that so many game examples were used to help make it clearly applicable to any level of gaming whether you’re playing old school arcade games, online/phone apps, action shooter games, or in-depth multi-player games (such as World of Warcraft). Along with a wide variety of examples, Glued to Games made sure to hit on the very positive aspects, the very negative, and everything in between. It was a nice change of pace not to be stuck reading a very one sided, closed minded, opinionated type of view.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Glued to Games and found it very useful, educational, and fun to read at the same time. I would recommend it to gamers and non-gamers alike.

Rating: 5/5

Jessa lives in Utah with her husband, 2 sons, 2 cats, and 2 dogs. She goes to school full time as an English major with a focus in creative writing. She likes anime and reads books and plays video games in her moments of spare time.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by FSB Associates. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

View Post

Review: Bright Light by Dee Wallace

[ 5 ] August 6, 2011

Reviewed by Poppy Johnson

Bright Light is written by Dee Wallace, an actress many will recognize. She has been in many movies (E.T., The Howling, Cujo) and has played in several television series as well. Her book gives the reader insight into developing a creative spirit or light and using it to increase satisfaction and purpose in your life.

Dee had parents and family members who sometimes encouraged, while other times discouraged her from her activities. As she matured, she was influenced more by the people she met in the entertainment industry who taught her how to act and develop a fully functioning creativity that she could call on at will – hence making her a great actress. In Bright Light, she discusses the value of finding an inner light, which is really a type of inner peace. She explains the concepts of your intention, being, developing a high energy that you can call on as needed, not passing judgment on others, developing instincts, receiving the light of others, surrendering, knowing who you are and understanding who you are in the greater scheme of your life.

Bright Light is an examination of Dee’s life, and more importantly her path to finding her own light. The light was not developed all in one day, but rather took years to understand, perfect it and then learn to call it up when needed. The book is a definite guide on finding yourself; there is interesting advice on what to do in situations when other people drain your spirit (whether it is being drained from a friend, relative or boss). Our spirits have to be protected from being abused by others, and we are the only ones who can protect our own spirits.

I’d recommend Bright Light for anyone of any age, but it will be especially helpful to any adult looking for a new beginning. It is a book of hope and one that offers guidance on how to live a better life right now.

Rating: 5/5

After a decade of working in several NYC law departments and teaching, Poppy decided she enjoyed writing full-time. She currently works as a freelance writing consultant, and lives with her husband and sons on the East Coast.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Author Marketing Experts. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Related Posts with Thumbnails
View Post
Page 5 of 15« First...34567...10...Last »