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The Autoimmune Epidemic
![The Autoimmune Epidemic]()
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List Price: $15.00
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Manufacturer: Touchstone
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 616
EAN: 9780743277761
ISBN: 0743277767
Label: Touchstone
Manufacturer: Touchstone
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2009-02-10
Publisher: Touchstone
Studio: Touchstone
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Editorial Reviews:
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From the foreword by Dr. Douglas Kerr, Director, Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis Center "The Autoimmune Epidemic by Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an astounding book....It is the kind of book that will rivet you and scare you. It will make you angry. It will amaze you with the courage of some of the people described in the book...The Autoimmune Epidemic is every bit as compelling as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle...It is also every bit as necessary as An Inconvenient Truth.... You will leave this book with no reservations about the veracity of the conclusions: put simply, there is no doubt that autoimmune diseases are on the rise and increasing environmental exposures of toxins and chemicals is fueling this rise. The research is sound. The conclusions unassailable.... Reading The Autoimmune Epidemic is a necessary first step. Reading The Autoimmune Epidemic is a life-altering event. It needs to be."
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The smoking gun? The canary in the coal mine?
Comment: What is causing the unprecedented and alarming increase in the number of people with autoimmune diseases in recent years? What is causing the frightening rise in the number of children with autism? In this painstakingly researched and thoroughly documented book, Donna Jackson Nakazawa makes the case that pollution is the culprit. She argues convincingly that levels of pollution below those allowed by government standards enter our bodies and confuse our immune systems into attacking our own cells.
The case is not however proven by scientific standards. Although the circumstantial evidence is persuasive, it may take many years for the scientific proof to manifest itself. But you and I do not have to wait that long. A question that might be asked is, what else can it be? The rise in autoimmune disease is clearly correlated with the rise in man-made and man-delivered chemicals into the environment. What we need to do now is elect representatives who will enact legislation that will sharply reduce the number and amount of chemicals being dumped into our rivers, streams and oceans, that will stop the feeding of noxious substance and hormones to our animals, and that will switch from burning fossils fuels to more sustainable and non-polluting alternatives. We need to make the transition from Big Agriculture with its pesticides and its weed killers to small cooperative organic farming methods. The health costs to our people are now enormous and growing. We cannot expect bottom-line driven corporations to voluntarily give up besmirching the environment and poisoning our children. They have to be stopped through the force of law.
Meanwhile, we as individuals need to reject highly processed foods and being super-sized. We need to reward close to home organic farmers and think slow food, not fast food. We need to stay away from MacDonald's and the Burger King. We need to give up the automobile and embrace mass transit and the bicycle. We need to leave the asphalt jungle and return to the Garden of Eden. We need stop stock-piling armaments and use our resources to fight disease and poverty. We need to reduce the sheer numbers of humans on this planet and allow not only more open space but more wild and agrarian space. We need to wake up in the morning and look out over greenery and clear, flowing waters, not concrete and steel, asphalt and the brown haze.
But wait. How can we do this? We can't. At least we can't do it anytime soon. It will take a gargantuan effort, greater than the resources put into World War II, into the space race, and into the Cold War combined to bring about the kind of changes that will stop the epidemic. First we will need to educate the general populace about what needs to be done. The vast majority of people have no idea what is happening. Most of us are living in a kind of willful ignorance about what we are doing to the planet and ultimately to ourselves. We need to get the short-sighted to see the world through the eyes of their grandchildren. We need to wrest power from pathological corporations, and put it in the hands of people who care.
Again, how do we do this?
It is a race between understanding and ignorance, between the side of human nature that uses its intelligence to see the present objectively and to imagine the future, and the side of human nature that is blind and fearful, that yields to the authority of special interests and wallows in ignorance.
Can we win this race? Nakazawa thinks we can and presents a strategy in the concluding chapter for shielding our immune systems from noxious chemicals and from stress and negative emotions. But what about that dark cloud drifting over the Pacific Ocean from the coal fires and the dust storms and chemical dumps in China? What can we do about THAT?
We, to our shame have elected know-nothings like George W. Bush, who has installed in his government legions of people dedicated to the increase of pollution and the wanton use of weapons and armies and gas-guzzlers to continue the destruction of the planet. We can only hope that our children and their children do a better job at governance, because at most we have perhaps two generations left before the world falls into a kind of horror of nature out of balance and of people at each other's throats to save what little is left for themselves.
The autoimmune epidemic is the canary in the coal mine. Unless we change our ways, it's going to get worse, much worse, so that on a clear day we will be able to see the smoke along Lincoln County Road as it leads to Armageddon.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: An eye opening book
Comment: As a person with an autoimmune disease I thought this book was very interesting and thought provoking. It is a read for everyone, to see how our environment can affect our health, and steps we can take to help our bodies stay healthier.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is the book I want my Rheumatologist to Read + Layperson Suggestions
Comment: This is a well researched book giving the scientific explanation about what is happening regarding our immune systems.
The reason for the 4 Star rating - I considered to whom the information would be most useful.
For physicians, healthcare persons: I give this book 5 stars
For lay persons: I give it 3 (see bottom of review for other reading suggestions)
Best Audience: Physicians and others wanting the technical information behind autoimmune disease.
Additional Audience: Lay person wishing a more in-depth knowledge behind autoimmune disease.
Nakazawa uses engaging case studies to illustrate her points.
Chapter One: The Red Flag Disease
Discusses the rising statistics of autoimmune disease diagnosis
Chapter Two: The Invisible Invaders: The Driving Force Behind This Epidemic
Links our increased exposure to man-made chemicals to the increased diagnosis of autoimmune disease.
Chapter Three: Dirty Little Secrets: Cluster Epidemics from Buffalo to Texas
Details the struggle of area residents and concerned citizens to the high rate of lupus cases that cropped up near a toxic site. Also shows the difficulties of proving a cluster.
Chapter Four: A Potent Package: Viruses, Vaccines, and Heavy Metals
Ties together the role of global warming with autoimmune inducing viruses.
Also covered: The role of heavy metals and vaccines
The autism-autoimmune connection
The Allergy Connection
Chapter Five: The Autoimmune Disease Detectives: Era of the Mavericks
Focuses on predicting the likelihood of autoimmune disease onset. Mostly high-tech or pharmaceutical solutions.
Chapter Six: Shielding Your Immune System: Rethinking Food, Stress, and Everyday Chemicals
I consider this last chapter to be most useful: Mentioned are steps to take to prevent and/or treat autoimmune disease.
First and foremost is the food connection. Most important: how to find out what foods are triggering you Autoimmune disease symptoms.
Finally: simple everyday suggestions are included such as green cleaners (home and body) and basic hygiene.
With the exception of the 6th (and last chapter) - this is not a how-to book.
For more detailed help with autoimmune disease I recommend the following:
1)The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Anti-Inflammation Diet (Complete Idiot's Guide to) - 2006
2)The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book: Protect Yourself and Your Family from Heart Disease, Arthritis, Diabetes, Allergies - and More by Jessica K. Black, ND; P - 2006
125 recipes with suggested substitutions
Examples of foods to eat and foods to avoid
Week of sample menus for summer and winter
3)Diet for a Pain-Free Life: A Revolutionary Plan to Lose Weight, Stop Pain, Sleep Better and Feel Great in 21 Days, ADA...sound nutritional advice...do-able, delicious..a godsend to pain sufferers. by Harris H. McIlwain - 2006
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wake up and smell the roses (no pesticides please!)
Comment: As a holistic physician, I wanted to see how the author made her argument that the increasing number of people with autoimmune disease is due to a toxic environment. She interviewed a number of respected scientific researchers whose research links the various toxins we all have in our body with the diseases that afflict so many people today. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to begin to understand how they may have come down with their illness. The good news is that a educated and committed patient and a physician who looks for the causes of these illnesses can develop treatments that enable healing to occur. The use of pharmaceutical drugs to suppress symptoms of the illness should be temporary because the underlying problem is not being corrected. The toxicity of the drugs is an additional burden on an already dysfunctional body. One take home lesson from the book is that we all can reduce our exposure to toxins by looking for and buying nontoxic body care and home care products.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Medical Professionals Please Read This Book
Comment: In my health care practice, I look for the toxins that throw our bodies out of balance as Donna so aptly describes in her book. We live in a sea of chemicals and if a health practitioner chooses to go looking for them, they will find them in a patient's body. Just look around at the average American today. It is obvious the medications that simply treat symptoms are not enough.
It seems so basic to clean up our bodies, our environment. Thank you, Donna, for writing such a comprehensive, truthful book about our state of affairs in health and industry today and its impact on all of us.
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