Mommy Diagnostics: The Naturally Healthy Family's Guide to Herbs and Whole Foods for Health

by Shonda Parker

Professional herbalist, Shonda Parker, teaches mothers what can be safely treated at home, how to treat with nutritional and botanical medicine, and when to seek professional help. Traditional medicine has given us shots, pills, and expensive treatments. Shonda provides moms with homegrown remedies that are easily available, inexpensive, and that work wonders! As a revival of interest in natural health care occurs, this book is designed to provide a continuing education class for mothers as family health practioners. Mothers observe, evaluate, and even medicate their children on a daily basis. By nature, mothers become family health practioners, but seek other opinions when appropriate. This book will equip any mother to address her family's day-to-day health needs with confidence and is critical for every mother who is focused on raising healthy kids.

Genres: Health, Parenting

298 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2003

Reviews

[Lauren Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have not read every page of this book, but I have perused most of it. It is so thorough and clear, and especially wonderful because the author is an herbalist with a Christian worldview. Some of the resources are out of date, and I think some of the nutritional information might be out of date— but not much.

This is a book I keep going back to. Takes a really reasonable approach to vaccines as well.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did find the book to be useful and written in an easily understandable way. But there were some significant problems in organization. This book needs an index where you can find out what books have certain words/topics. Allergies has a section where it's by itself, but focusing a lot on anaphylactic issues, and then another section where it's combined with asthma. No entry on itching, but info scattered between childhood rashes, poison ivy, etc. Another case where an index would be really helpful.

She has a handy multi-page chart of the items she'd prioritize getting for the tool chest, spread over the year. But I'm not jumping in on all of that and would like to prioritize further what I want to get now. Again, I need an index where I can find where various herbs/etc are referenced.

There's no entry on muscle/joint aches, though there's a bit of info scattered elsewhere. Also no entry on cuts/wound. To me those would be a higher priority than an entry on kidney stones, liver disease, quitting smoking, and hair loss which are not what I'm thinking of in doing "mommy diagnostics." It's not that I think there is a problem with including that info, but I think some more basic things were left out.

The info on hypothyroidism is a bit out of date. She mentions nothing about Free T3 or Free T4 or about the problems with relying on the TSH as most doctors do. This book is 13 years old, and the natural world's knowledge of these things has greatly grown. Check out the website for Stop the Thyroid Madness.

Some info on vitamins is out of date as well. She says the Vitamin D in a multivitamin plus sunlight is plenty of Vitamin D, which is not true for many women, especially in places that have significant times of year where you can't go outside. Without supplementation especially in winter, I get significantly deficient and have resulting symptoms. She also talks about supplementing folic acid, rather than folate. Both of these areas in which we have a lot more knowledge than 13 years ago.

There are some editing problems. There are a decent number of typos, one place where a header was messed up so that a new main point was a subpoint to the previous one. Etc.

For someone who doesn't have very much herbal knowledge, I did find this book useful in "branching out." But, it could really use some updating, especially the addition of an index.

[Katheryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shonda does a great job of explaining how to take good care of your family with alternative methods.