Forward by Phillip Bonnet MD Amazingly, in Natural Medicine, Bonnie Camo MD raised the bar by providing a tool whereby people can, with lifestyle changes, nutrition, and homeopathy, become their own physicians, and not only restore themselves to health, but prevent illness in the first place.Dr. Camo alerts us to a greater threat to our existence than President Eisenhower's warning of the military-industrial complex's threat to America's democracy. Corporate interests, she writes, in their soulless pursuit of profit, are destroying not only our health but also life on this planet as we know it. We are teetering on the brink of disaster. Natural Medicine (a treasure trove of pearls of wisdom, physical, psychological, as well as spiritual), with its alert to the danger and the beginnings of a solution, arrives well past the 11th hour. Starting with the introduction, she engages us with her success in overcoming her training as an allopathic (mainstream) physician, and utilizing homeopathic as well as other holistic interventions, by listening to her patients. The pharmaceutical industry's success in brainwashing, first the medical establishment, and now the general public, into believing that it is sensible to think that the question is "which is the best drug to suppress this symptom," rather than " what is this symptom telling us about the underlying problem," is referenced throughout. Early in the book she provides documentation of many dangers from processed food and corporate farming, with topics as diverse as the obesigenic effect of pesticides, to the inflammatory dangers of excess omega-6 fat. The healthy balance of equal amounts of omega-3 and 6 has deteriorated in some American diets to twenty times more omega-6! Dr. Camo's work is not merely a diatribe against food additives and processed food. She also offers helpful solutions. The notion that healthy eating is "boring crunchy granola" is brilliantly dispelled in the mouthwatering chapter 8, "The Real Mediterranean Diet."Homeopathy is a system of medical therapeutics first discovered by Dr.Samuel Hahnemann in the late 1700's, coming into use hundreds of years before we understood the scientific principles (quantum mechanics) necessary to comprehend how it works. In the beginning of Part Three, Dr. Camo offers an exquisite explanation, comprehensible to any intelligent reader, as to how homeopathy works. Natural Medicine is organized both to be a good introduction for any intelligent layperson and enriching reading even for a practicing homeopath. Here, as throughout, Dr. Camo provides an excellent bibliography for any student to go much deeper.In The Biotypes of Alcoholism, Dr. Camo shares her research in the utilization of nutritional intervention in alleviating this affliction. I found her comments on the "dry drunk" very helpful. You may know someone who has managed to stop destroying their life by no longer indulging in alcoholic intoxication, but who is still irritable, depressed, hypercritical, and otherwise unhappy. Who would have thought that a problem this persistent could resolve with proper use of nutritional supplementation?To summarize, Natural Medicine provides a warning as to the threat to our health and our environment, the necessary information to start a healing process, and resources to proceed further.
