The Total Guide to a Healthy Heart: Integrative Strategies for Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease

Cardiologist Baum, who combines modern technology and alternative healing approaches in his treatment of patients at the Baum Center for Integrative Heart Care in Boca Raton, Fla., demonstrates how these approaches complement each other. While he presents technology as an enabling, life-saving intervention in a crisis, he recommends alternative measures not only to help prevent problems from developing, but also as effective therapies. With simple diagrams, drawings and photographs, Baum explains how the heart works, what can go wrong and procedures for assessing and correcting specific problems. He includes many patient anecdotes, but much of the information is tabular: for heart attacks, one table lists current drugs and procedures, another, lifestyle modifications (stress reduction, exercise, dietary modifications) and natural remedies (vitamins, minerals, herbs). Science, Baum contends, is overrated, and instinct is medicine's most powerful tool. While he acknowledges the demonstrated success of Dr. Dean Ornish's program in reversing heart disease, his own dietary recommendations are based on his and his wife's personal experience with Barry Sears's ""Zone"" diet for men and Phillip Lipetz's serotonin-enhancing regimen for women. Although Baum argues persuasively for an integrative approach, the particulars of this one are debatable. (Sept.)