I love Dr. Axe’s books. They are always filled with very good useful functional medicine information. I learned so much by reading this book about ancient remedies that I never knew.

A massively helpful guide to better health by one of the leaders in the functional medicine/TCM field. I've been a fan of Dr. Axe for years now since I first became interested in Traditional Chinese Medicine. His website provides a lot of cutting edge, practical, helpful suggestions to heal numerous health conditions or to just live a better and healthier life. This book increases the helpful knowledge on his website tenfold.

In this book, Dr. Axe provides a very accessible and well-articulated background for the reader in the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine and functional medicine. One of the things I love best about Dr. Axe is the way he emphasizes the role of nutrition in healing and general health. It sounds crazy to say, but does your doctor ever have in-depth conversations with you about nutrition? Almost never, right? Isn't this something ALL doctors should do? By and large they don't, and Dr. Axe fills in the gaps here with extremely useful info on diet and herbs tailored to your particular situation.

My favorite parts of the book are two sections at the end. First there is a section providing practical functional medicine, herbal and nutrition advice for over 70 conditions, from autism to fibromyalgia to stress. All of Dr. Axe's recommendations here comport with what my own naturopath has recommended over the years and this book contains even more information than my own excellent naturopath has provided. Some of his suggestions are things I am already trying courtesy of my own naturopath, so I know they work -- things like astragalus and bioflavinoids for example. But there's so much more exciting information here and herbs and nutrition ideas that I have not tried.

Another practical and excellent feature of this book is the recipes section. The book has many delicious sounding recipes targeted towards better health based on ancient nutrition principles. I am extremely excited to try these, particularly the pumpkin smoothie with collagen added, the detox shake with spinach and matcha, and the blueberry pumpkin pancakes. (Pancakes: literally what the doctor ordered.) There are also many amazing sounding recipes for soup and stew and other kinds of dinner and meals.

Side note for the skeptical: I am a very fact-based person (annoying lawyer personality quirk) and I used to think functional medicine and TCM (including acupuncture) was useless hokey-pokey or "woo." Then I got sick. When all traditional methods failed, in desperation I decided to try other stuff. The first person to help me, when all my Western doctors ran out of ideas, was an amazing Chinese functional medicine doc and a great acupuncturist. I completely get the skepticism about these kinds of treatments but without them I'd still be in a lot of pain today. If it works, it works. Most of the things mentioned here, particularly the nutrition and most of the herbs, have very little risk or downside to try and may help you as much as they have helped me.

Important note though: you should always make your doctors (both nauturopathic and Western/traditional physicians) aware of any of these remedies you are trying, and ideally discuss them with your doctors before trying. One of the best things I have done for my health is find excellent Western doctors who are also open to trying new things in functional medicine or taking my suggestions about them. Dr. Axe provides a huge wealth of knowledge that can be a great starting point to discuss with your doctors to help in crease your wellness.

Big thanks to Little, Brown, Dr. Axe, and NetGalley for this treasure trove of wellness hacks, which I have already begun to incorporate into my daily life as of today.