In the next two weeks, my book Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World will be coming out. Three years in the making, it first tells the story of how my daughter Tasya has dealt with epilepsy and how this battle has driven me to research the effects of toxicity on human health, especially children. It is a guidebook that hopefully will have people understand how important it is for us to clean up the mess we are making, if not for us than for the coming generations. Here is a review from a friend, Dr. Robert Zieve, an MD from Arizona.
Mark Schauss has written a very important book, a book that needs to be required reading for all practitioners. The title, “Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World” wakes us up to the reality that we live in a toxic world. While we sit around and debate whether our world is toxic, or watch media headlines about lead poisoned toys from China, headlines that soon disappear, the volume of toxins that are affecting our daily lives and especially the lives of our children, continues to grow in both amount and in harmfulness.
Mark begins his book with his personal story of his daughter’s neurological illness, and how this led to his commitment to this work. Our stories are what makes us most human. They enable others to see into our lives and conflicts, and awaken our heart’s interest and need to continue reading. Mark’s story does just this, so that we do not become overwhelmed with statistics.
He then moves on with “Today’s Toxic World,” and he does not mince words with the title “The Loaded Revolver Theory of Toxicity.” It is important today the we use words that remind us of what is at stake; we have a gun to our heads, with toxins that threaten our lives much more than any foreign terrorist. Mark provides specific and simply organized guidelines for the reader to steer his or her way through the maze of information that we now have access to about the severity of effects these accumulated toxins are having upon our health. Even more important, he informs us of what specifically we can do about each of these toxins.
Mark has listed the important labs that must become commonplace in every practitioner’s work with patients. Testing for the presence and concentration of these toxins in our bodies, and testing for the adverse results of the presence of these accumulated toxins, such as Mark has outlined with depth and simplicity simultaneously, must be part of our health care system. I would venture to say as a practitioner that the results of these tests provide more useful information in developing effective therapeutic programs than many of the routine CT scans, PET scans, ultrasounds, and MRI’s that are done today. These tests show the results of the accumulation of toxins that Mark has detailed here.
There is a huge denial today about the magnitude of the effects of these toxins upon our health. They are scarcely mentioned in any medical training, in any product advertising, or by medical doctors in their work with patients. And yet, as we can clearly see in this well-organized and humanly written book, the health effects of these toxins are at the foundation of virtually all of our current illnesses. After reading this book, I wondered what good it is to even discuss health care from any political or economic perspective without placing the topics in this book at the center of the discussion of how
we develop a system of effective and affordable health care for everyone. The reasons this has not happened are due to many factors, which include the financial strength of corporations that make these toxic products and promote them in warm, fuzzy advertisements, and our general resistance to changing our lifestyles. The only way to end denial is to name the realities and claim responsibility for these realities. This book enables us to do this.
Much of what causes illness, and much of what an effective practitioner does with patients, is common sense. Towards the end of his book, Mark provides very good Common Sense Tips that the reader can take and put into activity.
If our commitment is to healing, this book must be part of our core reading program. It really should be part of core political discussions in the halls of those who are outlining sweeping plans for health care reform. It should be discussed at Grand Rounds at major medical centers. It should part of the central dialogue in local communities throughout the United States. And it needs to be discussed in the highest echelons of the corporate business world.
We must have the courage to look with clarity and purpose at the fundamental causes of our epidemic of chronic disease today. It is an epidemic that has as one of its fundamental causes, our toxic world. We can no longer afford to shy away from discussing the effects of today’s toxins in our lives and health.
Robert Zieve, M.D
Pine Tree Clinic
Prescott, Arizona
