Book recommendation for learning about natural products?

Question

The pharmacy I work for will be changing it's focus somewhat in the near future. We will be featuring a lot more natural and nutritional supplement products. Unfortunately those of us who already work there do not have a good working knowledge of any these products except as your basic consumer. Can anyone recommend a good book that is a quick read that can help get us up to speed when we open the new store?

Answer 1

1)  Prescription for Nutritional Healing by Balch and Balch, MD.

2)  Earl Mindell's Vitamin Bible, and Earl Mindell's Herb Bible by (you guessed it!) Earl Mindell

3)  Gaia Herbs (and I believe HerbPharm, too) have their own formularies, which are EXTREMELY helpful to anyone professional attempting to run an herbal apothecary, or just trying to give intellingent answers to those consumers who want them.

4)  Homeopathic Medicine at Home by Panos & Heimlich (my personal fav) and Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicine by Dana Ullman, et al.  If you're going to be dealing with and selling homeopathic medicines, you will also want (and need) to get your hands on a Materia Medica at some point and do some further research on homeopathy and Samuel Hahnemann

5)  Staying Healthy With the Seasons by Elson Haas

6)  Food and Healing by Annemarie Colbin (and every other book or article she's ever written\

7)  The Scientific Validation of Herbal Medicine by Mowrey

8)  anything by Diane Stein, (especially All Women Are Healers); Candis Cantin-Packard, Kathi Keville, Christopher Hobbs, Michael Tierra, Michael Moore, Rosemary Gladstar, Susun Weed, and many, many others.

9)  a guide of some type to the Bach Flower Remedies

10)  The Fourfold Path to Healing by Thomas Cowan, MD

11)  Michael's of Texas has AMAZING products, and an excellent product guide to go with those products.  I recommend them both highly.

12)  The Flower Essence Society (FES) out of Nevada City, CA, makes incredible North American Flower Essences.  Their guide is exceptional.  I recommend it to anyone using or even contemplating using flower or gem essences.

13)  Vibrational Medicine by Gerber

14)  The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted Kaptchuk

Answer 2

The people who run quackwatch have direct links to the FDA who will do everything in their power to supress any and all information on alternative treatments that truly work.

The reason there is no scientific evidence for alternative treatments is that they are not highly profitable to big pharma. It is impossible by law for a substance to be considered to have scientific evidence unless big pharma submits it to the FDA,and they will only submit things that are very very profitable to them. So the many thousands of studies of natural substances that have cured or treated cancer are ignored by our government because they were not done under the control of big pharma.

Since most alternative cancer treatments are very inexpensive and non-patentable,they do not provide the cancer industry with a single penny of revenue so they are relatively obscure.

Answer 3

Jordan Rubin's book "The Maker's Diet" gives an overview of a lot of different approaches to alternative health.

Answer 4

You might look at Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, Revised Second Edition by Pizzorno.  and The Natural Pharmacy Revised and Updated 3rd Edition by Gaby.  There are also sites like http://www.cncahealth.com/health-notes.h... and http://www.pdrhealth.com/home/home.aspx

Answer 5

I am sure you will be able to get some of these books in your country too, maybe on-line at Amazon. I include the links because they contain excellent suggestions:

http://www.altmeduniversity.com/products...

http://www.healingbooks.co.uk/links.html

I think a book on Bach Flower Remedies is a good place to start. “Essential Writings of Edward Bach - The Twelve Healers & Other Remedies/Heal Thyself” is a pretty famous book.

It was newly published in 2005, and contains his own description of the 38 remedies and what each is used for.

Most pharmacies in Australia sell Bach Flower Remedies. They will also have a naturopath consultant on their staff or a naturopath consultant who visits once a week. Maybe you might need to consider this, especially in the early days of setting up.

I have heard the book "Common Sense Health and Healing" by Richard Schulze is good.

Maybe you could become a member of a company like Blackmores – they have on-line naturopaths that you can consult:

http://www.blackmores.com.au/Advice/Faq....

I am sure there would be something similar in your area.

I would also suggest getting some books to sell (around $10 each) on the importance of food and health (i.e.) health benefits of juicing

EDIT: I was pretty shocked to read the answer from the first poster. I say congratulations for having the foresight to offer your customers a wide range of healing tools and modalities. It will bring in new customers and make more money for the pharmacy. Yes there are “bad” and “quack” supplements on the market but most pharmacies sell top quality stuff – like the Blackmore range or Bach Flower range. A qualified naturopath will stear you in the right direction.

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Answer 6

Prescription for Nutritional Healing and Prescription for Herbal Healing both by Balch and Balch MD.

Answer 7

I'd like to know what pharmacy is doing this so that I can boycott them. They're going from medicine with scientific research behind it to stuff wtih either no research or research suggesting there is harm in using it.

I suggest you learn more about supplements and natural remedies at www.quackwatch.org

It is too bad your pharmacy is doing this. There is a decent body of literature out there in the journals that shows vitamin supplementation is mostly harmful barring one or two exceptions.