Natural Recovery
How to understand your illness, conquer it and recover perfect health
Several years ago, Elyane Brightlight contacted Legionnaire"s Disease. As a natural therapist, she had always treated patients with illness, but she had related to them as the Queen of Health. Her own experience of illness meant that suddenly she had a new understanding of what it was like – the pain, the fear that she would never feel well again and the depression that often accompanies ill–health were all experienced by her in a new way.
It is from this experience that she has written Natural Recovery. At some time in our lives we will all know someone who is ill, or develop an illness ourselves. Natural Recovery is about regaining perfect health and providing strategies to help us cure ourselves from illness. Illness may take many forms, from the most serious, to the feeling that we are walking around with a general sense that all is not well with our bodies. Elyane examines all issues associated with illness by looking at specific conditions and developing a series of "good health principles". Her aim is for us to, no matter what our condition, recover perfect health.
What Reader's and Patients Think of NATURAL RECOVERY
"This is a glorious book. Elyane Brightlight, its author, is a naturopath whose natural charm, energy, and joie de vivre have been enchanting her wide circle of friends and patients for years. And it is one of the exceptionally rare do-it-yourself books on health that I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone in search of sound advice. Racy, funny, at times hard-hitting, it spells out key truths about the recovery of good health for those stricken by maladies as diverse as pneumonia, depression, asthma, IBS, HIV, cancer and arthritis.
From her long experience, Elyane deals with each briskly and authoritatively, spelling out, too, just which nutritional supplements or healing herbs might be lifesaving, explaining why and suggesting exact doses. But first things first, she insists: before you even start thinking vitamins and herbs, clean up your gut, and get your breathing act together.
Along the way she demolishes a number of popular myths about healthy eating. And she makes some controversial suggestions. A toxin-free life may not guarantee you immunity from illness. Asthma may be an iatrogenic (induced by doctors) disease. Candida is no big deal. If you wear high heels, expect back problems in later life.
But this is much more than a comprehensive how-to-manual for those struggling for better health. It is also the painfully honest saga of a three-year battle for survival by a naturopath who had once believed herself invincibly fit, healthy and energetic, and who, in 1994, was unexpectedly felled by a mysterious bug.
I read it in one gulp like a good thriller and I am certainly going to make it my personal health bible."
Barbara Griggs is the author of the classic herbal bestseller: Green Medicine (1981, 1997)
---
"Thank you so much for writing this book. I thought there was something wrong with me psychologically because I could not get better; but you made me understand that I was not going mad, instead your book is showing me how to look after myself."
Steve Roberts (reader)
---
"I am not very good at reading at night but I couldn't put your book down, it is entertaining as well as informative. The chapter relevant to my condition made me feel like you wrote it especially for me."
(Patient)
---
"I can't believe how much information there is in your book. Finally I am starting to understand a lot about diet. Thank you for smashing so many myths and making things clear."
Georgia McDonald (reader)
---
‘Natural Recovery’ is the only health book I’ve ever come across that left me feeling empowered rather than vulnerable. I must confess I’ve never been hot on ‘self-help’ books but this one, this rich source of advice, is so way beyond the genre; it deserves its own classification.
Read it and know that above and beyond Brightlight’s acknowledged expertise in her field, her book is further enriched by life-enhancing elements. Empathy, commonsense and humour are all here, home-grown out of personal experience. She is wise and tough and I trust her implicitly.
Nova Saunderson (UK reader)
---
I just finished reading the chapter "Icarus and the black hole" and it's like you wrote this for me (although I would never repeat that to any of my family or friends). Thank you for writing this book. I think I can say someone really understands.
(Patient)
---
I just finished reading the chapter "Icarus and the black hole" and it's like you wrote this for me (although I would never repeat that to any of my family or friends). Thank you for writing this book. I think I can say someone really understands.
(Patient)
---
"Just wanted to tell you that I took Natural Recovery with me on our recent boating holiday and re-read great swathes of it. It was the only reading matter on board other than maps and the like. I cannot commend you highly enough for writing the most rational and inspiring book on physical and mental health that I may ever have read. Here's a secret though: Your ability to reach inside this reader has been so profound that for the second time you made me cry (as you referred to the loss of your daughter). That might not be an unusual reaction in general but for me it was radical since I more-or-less gave up crying when I was about seven years old. It shows, I think - more than anything else - that you have been able to dip into my mind and breach some of my oldest defences and that, in both the short and the long term, has to be a good thing. This rare occurrence also has to be a pretty good gauge of my trust in you as a health professional, or even as a teacher."
(Reader)