The Best Guide to Allergy »

Schultz, Nathan D., MD (UCSF); Giannini, Allan V., MD (UCSF); Chang, Terrance T., MD (UCSF); Wong, Diane C. (UCSF)

In The Best Guide to Allergy, medical experts answer all your personal concerns and questions about allergy and asthma in easily understood language. Drawing on their extensive experience in treating both children and adults, as well as on the latest research findings, they offer up-to-date, explanations of the causes, care, treatment, remedies, and prevention of these uncomfortable, often debilitating, and sometimes even life-threatening ailments.

The authors' engaging question-and-answer format responds-simply and directly -to the queries they most frequently get about allergies. These range from something as simple as: What is an allergy? To the more intriguing: Can camomile tea and ginseng help your allergies? Along the way you will learn everything you need to know about hay fever, asthma, allergic skin diseases, food allergies, insect allergies, drug allergies, allergy shots, and more.

This freshly revised and fully updated third edition offers a wealth of new medical facts, including illuminating discussions of such subjects as allergy "triggers," steroids in allergy treatment, alternative treatments, the "sick building syndrome," why you are short of breath even if it isn't asthma, and today's best therapies for each type of allergy. Practical advice abounds, including thorough reviews of every medication-both prescription and over-the-counter-currently in use. There are even sample elimination diets for the self-testing of food allergies.

The Best Guide to Allergy contains the latest authoritative information on allergies and asthma, as well as on all the new medicines and approaches to allergy therapy. With its medically tested advice, you and your family will discover how to take charge of your allergies, how to stop being the victim of your flareups, and how to control your symptoms and live a healthier, richer, and fuller life.

Mary Beth Hogan

This book is the third edition of a text dedicated to describing the field of allergy to the nonmedical reader. The purpose is to explain the scientific basis of the field of allergy to the average layperson. The authors successfully meet this goal. This is a needed resource, particularly for allergy patients. This book is written for patients with asthma and allergic diseases. The authors are allergists who are credible authorities in this field. The book has several illustrations that are sketches. The sketch format has the advantage of being less intimidating to nonmedical readers, but it makes some illustrations difficult to decipher. The tables in this book, especially those in the food allergy chapter, will be particularly useful to the reader. The appearance of the book helps to maintain an easy-to-read format. This book will be of particular interest to those patients who suffer from asthma and other allergic diseases. Some minor points in the treatment of allergic diseases may be overemphasized. However, the book emphasizes and explains mainstream scientifically proven treatments in an easily understandable manner. It also adequately explains the dangers of unscientific "fad" treatments. The book successfully achieves its goal of explaining the scientific basis of allergic diseases to nonmedical readers.