Book Review: To Feel Well- Improve Your Digestive System
Stacie Deyglio, ND
To Feel Well: Improve Your Digestive System 
Shrouded behind unspecified causes, many clinical symptoms and common medical complaints are a direct result of disturbances within the digestive system. Countless skin conditions, cardiovascular diseases, mental-emotional disorders, and autoimmune conditions can be treated or reversed by noninvasive treatments that support the digestive system. Tolle causam (or discover and treat the cause, not just the effect) is the fundamental naturopathic principle guiding Dr Barlow’s focus of his first book, To Feel Well: Improve Your Digestive System.
Tolle causam is the conducting “light” the reader follows in this book, when being steered to a comprehensive awareness of digestive system function and how this vital system interrelates to all other systems of the body, including overall health and well-being. Recalling days back in naturopathic medical school, one can remember being told “it is not only what you eat [nutrition], it is, more importantly, what you absorb.” The digestion and absorption of food are more crucial than the actual food particles we put in our mouths. For example, a patient may be purchasing and eating a multitude of expensive or exclusive health foods and still feel sick. This is because the underlying cause of the illness has not been addressed; the symptoms do not go away. When food does not get broken down correctly and absorbed within the gastrointestinal tract en route to the bloodstream, all of those expensive benefits go right through the body and literally down the drain.
A first in a series, To Feel Well: Improve Your Digestive System is broken into 8 sections for the reader. Dr Barlow starts off with an explanation of the Naturopathic Medical Approach and then spans to describe How the Digestive System Works. This section bridges to the chapters on The Purpose of Nutrition, Causes of a Damaged Digestive System, and Signs of a Damaged Digestive System. Next in line includes a generous account of the Lab Tests for the Digestive System. This connects the reader to the most important aspect of the book: Natural Treatments for the Digestive System and Nutrition to Heal the Digestive System. Dr Barlow takes the reader from a judicious starting point of digestive system structure and (dys)function, and ends with the naturopathic methods and modalities designed to restore the system back to optimal health: “Good nutrition is limited by the effectiveness of digestion and absorption, which is one of the main reasons for writing this book. The digestive tract is also one of the body’s main lines of defense against the outside world. Everything you put in your mouth must be either absorbed into the body or excreted in your stool. The digestive tract plays a huge role in defending the body against substances it doesn’t want to incorporate.” (pg10)
- Title: To Feel Well: Improve Your Digestive System
- Author: Brent Barlow, ND
- Publisher: Okanagan Institute
- Available from: www.drbrentbarlownd.com/to-feel-well/
- Pages: 135
- Style: Soft Cover
- Copyright: 2012
- MSRP: $14.95
Stacie Deyglio, ND received her baccalaureate degree in biology with a minor in chemistry from the College of Mt. St. Vincent in New York. Her personal health issues paved the way to discovering naturopathic medicine in 1999. Resonating with the philosophy and principles of naturopathic medicine, Dr Deyglio graduated from the University of Bridgeport, College of Naturopathic Medicine in 2003. As a medical student, she was involved in student government, fundraising and the generation of two successful student-run health fairs. Dr Deyglio’s interests include relating integrative therapeutics to the health of pediatric and geriatric populations. Currently residing in Phoenix, Dr Deyglio is an avid bookworm, and is actively creating her practice.
