Nothing is more important than our health—except the health of our children. From the time they are infants and through young adulthood, nearly everything our sons and daughters eat, drink, inhale, swallow, or rub on their skin is determined by their parents, often at the advice of a pediatrician. Over the last decade, as the founder and president of the Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center, I have worked to help raise awareness of the dangers posed by toxins in cleaning agents, food, personal care products, medications, vaccinations, and much more. I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve met who are as passionate as I am about the health of our children, and ensuring their physical, mental, and emotional health is a priority. Dr. Lawrence Rosen is one of those people.
Dr. Rosen’s dedication to integrative medicine—to treating The Whole Child, as the name of his pediatric practice implies, and not just the part that hurts—is evident in every page of Treatment Alternatives for Children. Dr. Rosen and Jeff Cohen, a writer and holistic-minded father in his practice, present integrative views of both doctor and parent throughout the book, a nod to the healing power of the doctor-family relationship. I met Dr. Rosen more than five years ago, when we found ourselves on the same side of many children’s health issues. Immediately, I knew I had met a kindred spirit. Information is key to the way Dr. Rosen practices medicine, and this book is chock-full of it. Because approaching medicine from a holistic—rather than reactive—standpoint requires a deep understanding of the way all the various systems and parts of the body work in tandem to create or negate health.
As a pediatrician, Dr. Rosen, who is also the medical adviser to the Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center, is on the front lines of the epidemics threatening our kids: autism; allergies; asthma: ADD; ADHD; obesity; diabetes; premature births; and many other chronic illnesses. He also understands the impact various environmental factors—everything from air pollution to contaminated personal care products—can have on a child’s health. Rather than immediately prescribe a potentially harmful drug for an ailing child, Dr. Rosen seriously considers each unique situation and considers the most practical solution.
In this book, you’ll find a comprehensive guide to treating common ailments in your infant, toddler, child, or teen using natural methods, like oils and herbs and supplements. There are lists of salves for problems at each age, along with detailed lists of likely and unlikely allergic reactions to remedies both conventional and homeopathic. You’ll even hear directly from parents like Jeff about specific remedies that have helped their own kids. Treatment Alternatives for Children is really all you could ever want or need in an alternative treatments guide.
And, as many people have discovered firsthand, Dr. Rosen, whom I like to call a “Green Doctor,” is really all a parent or patient could ever want in a pediatrician. I can understand why Jeff, his holistic co-author, was drawn to Dr. Rosen’s “green pediatrics” approach. He makes everyone feel comfortable from the second they walk through the door of The Whole Child Center. His personality perfectly suits his pediatric patients: by speaking directly to them (and not to their looming parents), Dr. Rosen gets to know his charges and, in that way, takes their wellness personally.
Because what is practicing medicine about, if not wellness? As you will see in this book, the remedies Dr. Rosen and Jeff Cohen recommend are not merely curative—they are preventive, often enhancing a child’s overall health. While many of his colleagues concentrate on treating illness and managing disease, Dr. Rosen focuses on the entirety of his patient. It’s unclear to me when we stopped demanding this sort of attention from our doctors, but if Dr. Rosen is any indication of things to come, then I am nothing short of thrilled for the future of medicine in this country—for us, for our kids, for our health.
Deirdre Imus,
President and Founder of The Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center™ at Hackensack University Medical Center and Co-Founder/Director of the Imus Cattle Ranch for Kids with Cancer.