Healing Spices: How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease

Hands down the best book I have ever read/purchased in my life. Very informative and straight to the point, especially the concise and organized chart categorized from A to Z of what spice (black pepper, cumin seeds, turmeric, etc.) or herb (rosemary, thyme and so on) to cure whatever it is you desire. The book shows you what to consume in your everyday life that can be highly impactful against cancers, tumors, wrinkles, acne, tooth decay, pain, arthritis, diabetes/blood sugar control, stress, insomnia, male infertility, migraines, weight loss, etc. This has everything you can think of! Over 145 neatly organized cures and remedies from pages 294-306. The rest of the book is the origin and evidence for backing up the knowledge in the book and even recipes for these ingredients - it doesn't get better than that! I may seem like I am hyping this up, but once you get it, you'll feel the same way. This is my first ever review and this book was well-deserving of one for how useful it has been. I have purchased other health books such as "Lessons from The Miracle Doctors: A Step-by-Step Guide to Optimum Health and Relief from Catastrophic Illness" by Jon Barron and "Over the Counter Natural Cures: Take Charge of Your Health in 30 Days with 10 Lifesaving Supplements for under $10" by Shane Ellison. "Healing spices" is definitely my favorite and it is very easy to follow. If you want an A to Z cure all book, once you have this one you're going to want to share the knowledge with all of your family and friends. The decision is now yours, but you have seen all of the great reviews on here and I wanted to be apart of that as they encouraged me to give this book a chance with their positive feedback when I clicked on this page and it has truly been a blessing... and if I ever felt the passion to write a review, it is for this book. This one is a game-changer! You won't ever need another health book after this one. Happy holidays everyone and let's spread the love and knowledge.

I have just recently gotten it so I can't be too detailed. I was doing an investigation on curcumin and had contacted the author who is a research figure in that field. He works at MD Anderson in Houston, one of the leading medical research centers in the country. The organization of the book is excellent, with the spices divided into chapters with a discourse on the benefits of each spice. Then there are recipes using that spice. I have only used the curcumin section, but the others look very very good. It is just that 50 spices is a lot and I want to concentrate on curcumin right now. The curcumin molecule appears to have amazing properties, very broad spectrum, and no side effects. Whether the benefits will stand up to double blind clinical trials we shall see. A lot of high-powered research people are working with it. There is a tremendous amount of literature on curcumin, all available on the Web. IMO Healing Spices is a resource that belongs in every kitchen, and then you work your way into it, as I am doing with curcumin. Interestingly, the author is of Indian extraction as you can see by his name. While I am not using curcumin for this purpose, the statistics show a significantly lower incidence of dementia/Alzheimer's in India than in any other country. Curcumin seems to have the ability to remove plaque from the brain and to protect brain cells from the plaque returning. For now, this is more a working hypothesis than a proven fact, but the chemistry fits. Serious research is being done at UCLA for instance. Curcumin is the active ingredient in turmeric, and turmeric is a staple in Indian cooking. To quote Stephen Stills, "something's happening here."

The book, Healing Spices, is an excellent treatise on more than 50 commonly available spices and their vast health benefits. Dr. Bharat Aggarwal, is a world reknown authority on the therapeutic uses of spices at the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In this comprehensive book, Dr. Aggarwal, with the help of Debra Yost, gives a lucid description of the spices including their benefits and use in cooking. The book also includes useful sections on spice mixes and powders from around the world, and techniques to prepare them. A unique feature of the book is a very interesting section that is a guide to the therapeutical uses of spices in which for each health condition(ailment), the authors identify appropriate "healing spices" and the amount of spices that would be suitable for consumption.Another interesting feature of the book is the inclusion of many easy to follow recipes that use different spices. The authors present a number of recipes from another author- Alamelu Vairavan whose book, Healthful South Indian Cooking-Expanded Edition is an excellent guide to the easy preparation of South Indian foods that use many spices.( A disclosure: Alamelu is my wife!).It is great to know that besides making foods appealing and tasty, spices have their own great health benefits. It is time that we in the USA appreciate the value of spices, get to know them better and enjoy healthier lifestyles by using them extensively in our cooking. This book by Dr. Aggarwal and Yost will go a long way in helping the American public understand the value of spices and to benefit from the increased use of them.

I got this book from the library and then decided to buy it. It has so much information in it that you just need to have it on hand as a reference. Overall, I love it and am grateful to the author for writing it and making all this research accessible to the general public. I agree with someone else here who was annoyed that there are no footnotes, but I decided that given the target audience for the book, that was probably a wise editorial decision. He DOES say, in discussing studies, whether the research was in test tubes, animals, or people, and how big a study it was if it was a human study, so it's not just this vague "has been effective against X condition," which you often see out there. I appreciate that he talks some about the scientific, cell-level dynamics of why something works. And he usually mentions the name of the journal that a study was published in. Each spice's section contains a list of other spices it pairs well with and examples of foods that it goes well with. I don't eat animal products (and there's plenty of medical research supporting THAT health decision, too!) and I wish more of the suggestions and recipes were for vegetarian meals, but I think it's easily enough adapted and even though this is not really a cookbook per se, I do look forward to trying some of the sauces, although I'll be putting them over tempeh or veggies. I think the book would be even more useful if the index were more thorough and the chart at the back where you can look up conditions more detailed. Several times now, I have remembered reading about some spice that's effective against some malady, and I can't remember which spice it was, and no searches in the index or in that chart (which is helpful but not as complete as it could be) have turned it up. So if you actually had a diagnosis of something, you might have to read the whole book all over again looking for that one tidbit you remember seeing! The chart by conditions at the end lists 41 different spices with anti-cancer properties. Most of them have demonstrated effectiveness against one or several different types of cancer. So if you wanted to look up spices you could use to prevent or help fight breast cancer or melanoma, for instance, you'd have to go back through all 41 of those on the list looking for the ones relevant to a particular cancer. So whoever was in charge of making indexing decisions didn't go as good a job on this job as the author did in compiling all this scientific evidence.I appreciate the tips on how to choose and store the spices, too. I wish there were more recommendations about the AMOUNT that you need to consume to achieve these benefits. But since the research is not quite there yet for many of these, he would be over-reaching to have that because in most cases, it would be pure conjecture. He does have recommended amounts when there are relevant clinical trials that have shown results at specific levels.

I bought three of these so far. One for me and two for gifts. I heard a woman speak on healing herbs at an Herb Day seminar and she spoke very highly of Dr. Aggarwai so I searched You Tube for some of his lectures and was impressed with what I heard so ordered this book. I have recommended it to many others. Long and short, we must change the way we are eating if we have any hope to lessen the chances of our bodies getting cancer and other debilitation diseases. This book lists many foods/spices with properties to make your body less susceptible to cancer and other diseases. It is not a book with miracle cures for those people who already have cancer. It has an index in the back that lists certain diseases and food that are beneficial for that particular disease but most of the book is divided up into various spices which are listed in alpahbetical order for ease of finding, a history of that spices, research findings about that food, ways to order a purer form of those spices is also given. Some of the spices I have never heard of but was already aware of turmeric, lemon grass,basil, pepper, almond, all your normal spices like cinnamon and allspice, but it was so great to read about what Dr Aggarwai's research at MD Anderson is revealing about why these spices and herbs that are used all the time in India and other areas may be affording these groups a much smaller percent of cancer and other diseases like arthritis and Alzheimers. If you eat at McDonalds or eat Lean Cuisine for every meal and don't cook, don't waste your money. This book is trying to convince you to start preparing your foods and seasoning them with life-giving spices to improve your health. As a result of reading this book, I now drink a cayenne pepper tea every day for my arthritis. I have worked up to the amount of pepper I am now using and I believe it is helping.

I have ALOT of books... I am a bit of an information junky and regardless of the subject, if I can learn something practical from it, I will buy it. I also am VERY discerning (picky?) about the quality of information that is presented and it's basic "information architecture"... in other words: Does it give me real, actionable information and does it do it in a format that is conducive to understanding the basics and as well as being able to use it as a reference later.You can see where this is going... ;-)This book is absolutely wonderful! I have many books on gardening, herbs, cooking, etc. but this book truly fits the description of being a "treasure trove" of information on the subject of spices. Every spice covered has information on its:HistoryUse in healing (both scientifically validated and folk recommendations)Use in CookingHow to grow itHow to process it (for a treatment or for cooking)Storage and shelf life to maintin potencyOther spices that it goes well withTypes of dishes that it is used inAnd even recipes!And it is all written in a clear, understandable style with helpful tables for quick reference and full color pictures for identifcation if picking them in the wild. (Don't worry, this isn't some text book format, it has a textbook level of information but presented in short, easily read sections that don't try and impress you with their high syllable count.)When I see a book as well done as this, I wonder why everyone doesn't use this format and put this much care into a reference book? (Simple, they aren't truly experts or simply are too lazy to mold the information into a clean, clear and useable format that can be enjoyed equally by a novice or an experienced learner.)I could go on but I will stop here and say simply... buy this book if you have ANY interest in herbs and spices for health, cooking, growing or just for historical reference... it will become a well-used friend on your bookshelf.

This is a great book. I found it when sitting at the office of a local healing center and was hooked. It gives good descriptions of different spices, etc and their benefits. I do have Google, but I love having this book too. 😉

I am an experienced home cook who uses some combination of spices nearly every day. I thought I had a pretty good handle on their properties, and what to use when, but this book expanded my knowledge more than I ever thought possible....and introduced me to some new ones I'd never heard of or worked with (kokum, amchur powder, black cumin). The chapters are structured thus: an introduction to and description of the spice, a discussion of its healing properties with actual medical evidence from peer reviewed journals and studies, a listing of what other spices and flavors the spice complements, and ends with a recipe including the spice. The recipes range from the simple (tomato-basil sauce) to the complex (By the Bay Fisherman's Chowder, designed to showcase the bay leaf, which has an extensive list of ingredients), but all are wonderfully delicious. Appendices at the back of the book contain several recipes for custom spice mixes and curries. The Madras curry paste, which contains a whopping amount of coriander seeds, is absolutely superb--I make sure to have a tupperware in my fridge ready to go at all times because it's THAT good. I cannot speak to if I've gotten any health benefits out of this book, but it's a joy to cook with and my copy is quickly becoming dog-eared because I use it all the time. My 1YO son gives it a thumbs-up too, as he wolfed down the chili con carne I made a few nights ago (in the Cumin chapter).I appreciate that the author includes notes throughout certain chapters on other names for certain spices, and what to watch out for. For example, black cumin can be elusive because sometimes it's mislabeled in stores or customers confuse it with another spice like true cumin or curcumin, a substance found in turmeric that has no relation to either. So the author includes a helpful note about the various names you might see for black cumin, like nigella or kolonji--I finally found a bag labeled "nigella seeds" which I wouldn't have found otherwise. He also includes a headnote in the Basil chapter, advising on the differences between various types of basil (everyday basil, Thai basil, tulsi, etc), and a heads-up in the Saffron chapter so that you don't find yourself shelling out a lot of money for safflower instead of true saffron.

Se avete anche solo una curiosità sulle spezie e le loro proprietà questo è un libro di riferimento molto buono.Non è regalato ma ti dura tutta la vita!Io ne sono molto felice.

I already had the sample book and was looking forward to this one, I'm not disappointed, it has everything you need to know about the most current spices. Great gift idea and was delivered in the time it was promised

It's the best book that I have read on this topic so far. It has practical guides, recipes as well as background and historical data which are entertaining to read.

I read an article in the Daily Telegraph about cancer and being a cancer survivor myself was immediately intrigued.It mentioned "Healing Spices" by Bharat Aggarwal as a good source of information. I am always interestedto know about foods that are linked to prevention or help with the many illnesses our world is afflicted with, inparticular cancer. The book is wonderful, full of advice and great recipes for 50 spices. I heartily recommend it.The only gripe I have is that it seems to be aimed at the American market and most of the websites or retailers it recommendsare American-that aside it is a wonderful book that not only helps improve your diet but also your health.

Recibido hoy, parece muy buen contenido.