Book Review: "What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You"

Dr. Ray Strand is a practicing physician in South Dakota. This book takes us through his transformation to believing in nutritional supplementation as he dealt with his wife's illness.

As a physician, the author discusses that physicians are disease-oriented. They are trained to look for disease, and pharmaceutically trained to treat disease. Preventative medicine to physicians is simply early detection whether it is via mammograms, prostate exams, etc. Shouldn't preventative medicine actually prevent something?

First you must understand that nutritional supplementation is not alternative medicine, but is complementary medicine. The author calls this cellular nutrition, which enables the body to do what God intended.

Our society is living too short and dying too long! I want to live until I die!

This book covers the war that is going on within our bodies (oxidation) as well as the chronic degenerative diseases it causes. There are personal testimonies throughout the book that really bring all of the points close to the heart.

How do we prevent all of the oxidative stress and inflammation in our bodies? It is through nutritional supplementation of course.

The issues that the author covers are:

Heart Disease

Homocysteine levels

Cardiomyopathy

Chemoprevention and Cancer

Oxidative stress and your eyes

Autoimmune Diseases

Arthritis and Osteoporosis

Lung Disease

Neurodegenerative Disease

Diabetes

Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia

We have all probably heard of someone in a situation where the illness is so severe that it needs treatment, but the patient's own immune system is so weak that they just hope the patient will respond. This shows the importance of having an immune system that is working at an optimal level because without the body's own healing power, medicine is not really that effective.

Dr. Strand's recommendations for cellular nutrition are not based on the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA). Instead, it is to supply all of the nutrients to the cell at optimal levels. This allows the cells to decide what they need and do not need so that they can do their work.

A table is located in the back of the book for the basic nutritional supplementation recommendations. In addition to this he lists the optimizers for each of the diseases.

I highly recommend this book to people who are looking to better their health. Remember that the supplementation mentioned in the book not only helps with these diseases, but the key is that it can prevent them. It is refreshing to read a book authored by an actual physician who became a believer in nutritional supplementation.