Woman's Guide to Vitamins, Minerals & Alternative Healing

This book is an excellent resource for women and nutrition. It describes in detail all the vitamins and minerals women should consume either through foods and/or supplements. As it discusses the vitamin or mineral it lists the function of the vitamin or mineral, food sources, recommendations (both RDA and the author's suggestions), antagonists, toxicity, and warnings. It is a very complete look at each vitamin and mineral. I like that it recommends dosage ranges for women over and under 40. These are different from the RDA dosages which are minimums and which I feel should be revised. In addition to vitamins and minerals, they discuss many female health issues (bones, cancer, estrogen/hormone replacement, exercise, fish oils, heart, herbs, pms, skin and aging, weight, etc) and what you can do to prevent or lessen the effect of these issues. The book contains excellent information. I read it all the way through and will also use it as a reference for specific conditions and to help me plan the amounts of vitamins and minerals I will take. I buy a lot of health related books and alternative medicine(especially herbal) books and although this doesn't go a lot in to the herbals, this is a must have for anyone trying to figure out dosages of vitamins and minerals for a woman. This book also has a section on the different types of alternative and traditional health care providers (Herbal and Chinese Medicine, Chiropractic, Osteopathic and Allopathic Medicine) explaining each type of practitioner and the services they offer. Overall, I would say the main strengh of this book is the vitamin and mineral section with the general women's health concerns coming in next. If you are looking for an herbal guide there are many out there more detailed.