Someone I follow on Twitter was asking for natural alternatives to pharmaceutical medications for anxiety, and a couple of people responded to her in addition to myself. One of those people was Judy Converse. She mentioned that these suggestions were included in her book Special-Needs Kids Go Pharm-Free: Nutrition-Focused Tools to Help Minimize Meds and Maximize Health and Well-Being
Since I try to avoid prescription medications as much as I can for my children, I was very interested. Honestly though, I have done so much research myself, I really didn’t expect to learn a whole lot. I thought I might get one or two nuggets and that would be it.
I have to tell you that despite all the research I have done, the PhD nutritionist that my son has been seeing for almost a year, and the neuro-immunologist that my son has been seeing the last 6 months, I learned a TON from this book. Maybe it’s because it’s really focused on children with special needs, most specifically autism, asthma, ADHD, allergies and mood and learning problems. I was able to glean several ideas for my sons’ treatments that I had never even heard of, or that greatly expanded on what I already knew.
I think more than anything, I wish I had had this book when my oldest son was first born and was experiencing what I was told was “colic” and that I just had to “deal with it.” It almost made me sad but I realized that this was a book I could give or recommend to parents that I heard were having colic-like symptoms to help them. In fact, I just recommended it to a woman I met this weekend for her infant grandchild who was suffering from reflux.
Ms. Converse covers:
- babies
- colic
- reflux
- sleep
- immunity
- growth issues
- attention/focus
- learning
- behavior
- depression
- anxiety
- going “pharm-free” as she calls it, and
- nutrition-focused tools.
She discusses herbs, amino acids, neurotransmitters, probiotics, Omega-3s and more. If you are parenting children with special needs, I can’t recommend this book enough whether you are just beginning to use natural alternatives or if you’ve been using them for years like I have.
This is a book that I will turn to again and again, and in fact, already have. What are you waiting for?
P.S. As I disclosed I did receive a review copy of this book but I only recommend the highest-quality products and this is one of them.
