Healthy at Home cover photograph courtesy National Geographic Books, copyright 2013.
Tieraona Low Dog's Healthy at Home: Get Well and Stay Well Without Prescriptions draws from her integrative and herbal medicine practice. For those who wish to make and use herbal medicines for the treatment of common ailments such as colds, coughs, headaches, insomnia, and skin and digestive disorders, it's a how-to book on using herbs as an alternative to pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter medications. In the form of a set of health and wellness recipes, it features medicinal herbs, practical cures, healing foods, and lifestyle changes tips. For several years, Tieraona has grown and gathered plants in the Desert Southwest, making homemade ointments, salves, tinctures, elixirs, and teas. She currently serves as the director of the fellowship at Andrew Weil's Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.
"You can take care of the majority of common health problems at home with simple, gentle and effective treatments," writes Tieraona. "Herbal medicines are woven throughout this book because I believe in their health-giving benefits. I have chosen to emphasize commonly available herbs. The recipes provided are those I've used myself and with thousands of patients." Some of these herbs--calendula, peppermint, sage, thyme--can be grown in the garden or in pots, and the medicines can be made from fresh plants or dried herbs. The book is organized by type of illness/condition and by remedy form: infusions, decoctions, tinctures, glycerites, medicinal honeys, oils, salves, and compresses (with step-by-step instructions on how to make them). "These remedies can be used as first-line therapies, allowing you to avoid harsher, more potent drugs until they are absolutely necessary. Physicians, like myself, can certainly be an important part of healing, but they should not be the primary source of your well-being."
National Geographic Books, book release on January 14.
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