Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Advice mixed with too much Marketing
Review: It's simply amazing how people love to criticize. To me the information in this book is as valuable as it gets. The only challenge I have is I don't much like the extra marketing hype.
But, I guess that does go with the territory when one is trying to sell products. As someone else has said, just find similar products elsewhere. Nothing is really new, but the common sense of allowing our bodies to heal themselves is priceless.
If given half a chance, most folks, who are overweight, or have one or more ailments, can readily heal themselves --- without drugs or surgery.
1/3 of our cellular structure is designated for immune functions of one sort or another. So we have ample fighters working to protect this body of ours. The key is to support these cells, so they can help us heal and live productive energy filled lives.
It's the A-B-C of good living.
A - Activity Level
B - Best Food and Water
C - Cleansing Internally
The challenge today is listening to all these experts clamor on about this diet, or that exercise program, or these supplements --- and the list goes on.
Self reliance healthcare is a virtue in today's world. Become your own expert on your own body. If we can spend the time to clean our homes and change the oil in our cars --- then we can take care of our own body too.
My wife's sister was diagnosed with sinus cancer last year and advised to prepare for final arrangements. Then she met a doctor who put her on daily coffee enemas, a strict diet of only pure and healthy foods and supplements. Within 6 months, her cancer is in complete remission, and she feels better than she has in years.
Of course she lost 30 lbs, which she needed to do, and she spends time on herself daily, which she never used to do. Just from that first hand experience, both my wife and I learned that we really need to take the time to take care of ourselves --- on a daily basis.
Now, we focus on eating right, drinking lots of pure water, cleaning out often and going for long walks.
Rating: 
Summary: Book = Product Brochure
Review: Let me start bottom side up...I have suffered from crohn's for the past ten years, I'm 6'1', I weighed 185 pounds when i was 17 (10 years ago), within a half year from when this disease struck me I weighed 142 pounds - life was miserable - I could not be between people, for I didn't know when my gut will strike me next. Where ever I would go, I first would locate the nearest bathroom... To make the story short - since then I have been on and off prednisone and asacol and pepcid for 10 years, with my docs constantly threatening with surgery. I was hospitalized 2-3 years ago with severe problems. 3 months ago I had another attack, I didn't want to go through all the medical procedures in order the doctor should let me get back on to steroids - so I went on to news groups - seeking for alternative treatments - someone recommend me that I read this book. I read the book in it's entirety - I got really hooked on some of the products - specifically "primal defense" & "omega-zyme" and all I can say is "it's a miracle - it basically took 4 weeks, and most of my aches and pain began to subside - I am finally starting to feel my normal life again. I am a true believer in his products. You might ask why I only rate it 3 stars - simply because I look at it as a product brochure - with very little usefull information beyond his personal story and his product (per se - "patient heal thyself" hmmm with my products)
Rating: 
Summary: A Remarkable Nutrition Book
Review: Let me start by saying that I have never written a review for Amazon before but I believe that this book is so important that I felt that I needed to come out in defense of it and give it my highest recommendation.
It's hard for me to believe how cynical some people can be when they read a book such as this, and pass judgment on it without even trying the recommendations put forth.
It's obvious that the people who have slammed this book and given it one star haven't really tried anything that the author recommends. Too bad for them.
But it's also too bad for people who might be looking for something to either cure themselves or cure others--and this book might have just the information they need--are turned off by people who are irresponsibly critical.
Yes, he does have a supplement company and some of the products are a little pricey and yes you can find similar products a little cheaper. But that doesn't negate the fact that the book is full of useful, backed-up-by-research information that will make a radical difference in a person's diet and health.
One doesn't have to buy his supplements to get full use of this remarkable book, anyway.
He does have one supplement though, Primal Defense, which are the Healthy Soil Organisms that cannot be found anywhere else as far as I know, which created the major turning point in his being cured of Crohn's disease. We all need these healthy probiotics and if you read the book you will understand why. (If you get this in the powdered form it ain't that expensive anyway.)
I have a cousin who had been sick with Crohn's Disease (a supposedly incurable disease) for years. She had been wasting away, could barely eat any food and the doctor's had given up on her. She had tried everything from doctors and drugs to alternative therapies.
A few months ago I found this book in the health food store and sent her a copy. She now no longer has Crohn's disease. Yes, a disease she had had for years that medical science calls incurable she has cured herself of in just a few months by eating the diet and adding some supplementation that this book recommends.
She is now gaining weight, is free of pain and is feeling better than she has in many many years. She credits my sending her this book with saving her life.
I follow the diet myself and take some of the supplements and have much more energy and my aches and pains in joints and back are gradually subsiding. Nothing I have tried before has made the difference that this way of eating and supplementation has made.
(And if you are looking to lose weight you will find nothing better than the information in this book to help you do that. Atkins is great, this book does it one better.)
I have been studying nutrition for many years. This information is by far the most common sense and logical and in many ways revolutionary.
Please pay no attention to the cynical nay sayers. Get this book, used if you have to, read it, apply it then judge for yourself.
A few bucks is all you have to lose, optimal health for life is everything you have to gain.
Rating:
Summary: Good Info
Review: My mom had suffered from IBS for decades and was cured rather quickly by taking Rubin's Primal Defense. I got this book when ordering Primal Defense online, and received it for free. It's a very informative book but most of all, it's a very detailed, well-written product brochure. I found the information quite useful but I don't think they should charge $20 for it. After all, you don't want to pay for advertisements, do you? Also, it has a section on the Maker's Diet. The author is coming out with a new book called Maker's Diet which I haven't read, and I guess you can just buy the new book instead since a lot of information will be repeated.
Rating: 
Summary: An Infomercial Masquerading as a Book
Review: This book is a science-free, anecdotes-only printed infomercial for the author's line of exceptionally expensive health care products masquerading as a book. I almost paid for it but the heath store clerk said that that the manufacturer sent them out to the stores for free so she would just give it to me.
The author contends that some nifty (and of course, now commercially available from his company at a per-ounce price approximately equal to gold) soil-based microorganisms cured his horrendous case of Crohn's disease. Dr. Barry Sears asserts that Irritable Bowel Disease (same as Crohn's but not quite so wide spread in the intestine) is simply a deficiency disease due to lack of Omega-3 essential fatty acids compounded by a lack of sufficient dietary fiber. After completely clearing up my own IBD using Sears' techniques, I agree with Sears. Rubin does not talk at all about celiac disease damaging one's intestines. Rubin does not talk about ELISA testing for food allergies that can significantly damage the intestinal linings. Rubin does not discuss either Omega-3 EFA or fiber as contributors to curing Crohn's. Nearly 1/3 the book is a dictionary of ailments with Rubin's recommendations for treatment. Every ailment is to be treated using the almost the exact same list of Rubin's extremely expensive products from the author's company (oh, surprise, surprise). No science presented that these treatments actually work, or that they work better than anything else. The treatments will, however, significantly inflate the author's bank account. This book was worth exactly what I paid for it (zero). Don't bother. Reading this book was a complete waste of my time.
Rating:
Summary: Not just for someone who is sick
Review: This book is great for anyone that is looking to eat right and find out about nutrition from another perspective. It is almost like a collaboration of all the diets out there, including atkins, zone, and south beach. It really takes all the essential parts of them and puts them together with adding some extra points to direct you to the right place.
Rating:
Summary: Patient Watch Thy Wallet
Review: This book was a very VERY thinly veiled sales pitch for "Dr." Rubin's nutritionals, which he claims "cured" his Crohn's disease. He shows no medical evidence that his Crohn's, or anyone else's, was cured using his questionable methods. The book recommends odd nutritional practices, which might not cause a healthy body any harm, but which could potentially really hurt someone with a weakened immune system. My favorite: taking capsules of Rubin's proprietary formula "Beneficial Soil Organisms." What that means in English, folks, is "Germs We Found in The Dirt." Caveat patient.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome thoughts!
Review: This is a great book... you just have to get past the sales techniques for the author's products and focus on the points he's making. I started following his program "generally" without buying any of his brand name supplements and I later found that two diagnosed diseases I had been told I had were gone... Chron's disease and herniated discs. The doctors don't have an explanation. During follow-up testing, both problems were gone. I now buy a few of the author's supplements (primarily because I've learned to trust what he has to say), but I've also learned enough from his book and what God has provided for us in the Bible to augment this author's ideas. In my opinion, this is a must-read. It certainly can't hurt.
Rating:
Summary: When will we see the infomercial
Review: To start off, I think the book has an incredible amount of information that, if everyone followed it to the tee, would bring down the medical establishment as we know it, and return doctors back to what they were meant to do -- find the cause and heal it, instead of writing a script to alleviate the symptoms. That being said, while a lot of common sense and a call for the return to more sensible eating habits that our ancestors followed, I couldn't help feel I was reading a brochure of some kind. All the testimonials and calls for his Garden of Life products had me skipping through a lot of the commercial and getting back to the information I wanted to read. I don't quite buy into the Biblical writings, either. It's obvious he believes his Jewish upbringing, but I'm not convinced that pork is a "dirty" meat. Rather, I believe the principles of the Jewish faith, like those of other religions, forbids certain foods as a way of controlling it's congregations. Just as vegetarianism, cows are sacred, do not eat meat on Friday, and all the other religious dogma exist to riddle the body with guilt, those who have proclaimed these "truths", even back in Biblical times, were living "High off the hog". Recent archaelogical discoveries prove that priests, rabbis and other religious leaders lived palatially, even avoiding contact with the masses of their flocks, all the while eating what they forbade those that they preached to, from eating. The information is worth it, but you can get the book for free right now via Vitamin Shoppe. Like another reviewer, I cannot give out a 5th star for the simple fact of the advertising in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Some good info, but...
Review: Waaaay too much sales hype. Several have mentioned that they got the book for free. Well, DUH. It's sole purpose is to advertise Rubin's expensive products. If that were not the case, he would've been honest, and told everyone what "soil-based organism" product he took in order to regain his health, BEFORE he formulated the Primal Defense product that he says he "needed" to create to help other people.
Why didn't he just tell folks the name of the product or formula he took that helped him restore his health? It wasn't Primal Defense -- that product didn't exist until AFTER he was well. Instead he shamelessly chose to market his own product, for his own benefit.
It should also be noted that several pages of his book are copied directly from information (for example, the parts where he discusses how to balance the immune system) found on websites that were published several years before Dr. Rubin "wrote" his book. I think that's called plagarism?
The two stars are for the overall common sense advice in parts of his book. As for his many extremely expensive products (which last about 10 days at his recommended high dosages), in my humble opinion, they're not worth it. You can find the same benefits in less expensive products.
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