Safe Home Remedies for Everyone in Your Family

500 Time-Tested Home Remedies and the Science Behind Them: Ease Aches, Pains, Ailments, and More with Hundreds of Simple and Effective At-Home Treatments has remedies for a variety of everyday concerns, including acne, asthma, diabetes, bad breath, bruises, burns, depression, colds, earaches, and insomnia.

The book relies heavily on the premise that food is medicine, so the many of the remedies suggested for various ailments are actually recipes for meals, snacks, or beverages. For example, the book provides recipes for fiber filled bran muffins to prevent hemorrhoids and a sweet spice tea that helps with menstrual cramps.

However, there are also lots of tips for what one might traditionally think of as a home remedy, such as a suggestion that melatonin supplements can help with both insomnia and acid reflux, or advising the use of probiotic supplements to help shorten the duration of diarrhea in children. A brief and easy to understand explanation of the science behind each suggestion is also provided.

Obviously, alternative medicine is not appropriate in every circumstance. Each chapter has a box that explains when you should call a doctor instead of trying to treat yourself at home. This information is especially useful in the sections that relate to children’s health concerns, such as the chapter on diaper rash.

Overall, 500 Time-Tested Home Remedies and the Science Behind Them is a helpful reference for any parent looking for safe and natural ways to treat common health concerns. Author Linda B. White has BS and MS degrees from Stanford and an MD from the University of California, and editor Barbara Brownell Grogan is a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York, so I feel like this is a much better alternative than simply running a quick Google search whenever I have a question.

Disclaimer: A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Photo credit: Amazon