This book is more like a "travelogue" through Ms. Pepe's brief (5 year) journey with MS than a useful tool in comparing alternative therapies. She flits around between different therapies and theories and doesn't inspire much confidence in her choices. For example, she rejects Dr. Swank's low saturated fat diet and I can surmise that it's only because she misses eating butter and red meat too much. After all, this is a nutitionist who is used to eating steak and eggs for breakfast! When she abandon's Swank's diet, she buys 2 lobsters to celebrate. In her bibliography, she lists the 1987 edition of Swank's book which is the same one I read. It allows lobster in any quantity. Must be the butter she wanted to celebrate with!
Most people interested in alternative medicine show at least a smattering of compassion towards animals. Not Ms. Pepe. She ingests a disturbing amount of pig myelin which seems dangerous considering things like mad cow disease, and she uses bee venom therapy which kills perfectly innocent (and nearly wiped out) honey bees. I was an inadvertant recipient of bee venom therapy at age 12 when a bumblebee flew up the leg of my pants and stung me 6 or 7 times on the knee. I'm not saying bee venom therapy doesn't work, but since my knee only got terribly stiff and a bit itchy I'm not convinced it does anything positive for your joints.
I would love to see a book that did a thorough and dispassionate examination of alternative therapies. I've read of a study that showed regular yoga helping alleviate the fatigue associated with MS. Yoga has helped me and so has acupuncture although it got expensive and rather time consuming. Nutrition and supplements have helped as well. I would love to hear more about MS and meditation. It seems to me that meditation could help greatly with stress and it's exacerbation of MS symptoms.
I often refer to MS as the Mystery Sickness because it is so hard to pin down. Ms. Pepe is one of those irritating people who claim to know it all and be 'cured'. It's a shame really because the does the cause of alternative medicine more harm than good with this self indulgent book of hers.