Rating: 
Summary: Reasons why this book never caught on...
Review: While well intentioned, this book is a mess. As another reviewer mentioned, his main point, that what works for one person could be very harmful for someone else, is what everyone should remember. It applies to this book as well. Clearly, it has helped some. Nevertheless, a reviewer asked "Why hasn't the press made BioBalance a household word?" Perhaps because it's so poorly written, organized and confusing. The INDEX alone is a disaster: A couple of readers mention a caffeine test, or how you can determine your profile by your tolerance to caffeine. Caffeine isn't even listed in the index, and coffee, even though the word can be found on at least a dozen pages, is listed as being on page 124. Look on 124, and it is nowhere to be found. "Krebs Cycle" is listed as being found on page 113. It is not there. "Dogs", yes DOGS is listed in the index, as being discussed (why?) on page 135. Again, not there. These errors are INEXCUSABLE, and the reason why this book did not catch on. As others have mentioned, he spends way too much time with verbose, complicated case histories, spends 75 pages trashing other's books, when he should be succinctly explaining the details of his program. The author claims you can quickly and easily determine your metabolic profile. Again, not from checking the index. And his list of foods to lower ones acidity includes hot dogs, french fries, heavy cream, fried chicken. Do those sound like alkaline foods to anyone? I was going to resell my copy, but I thought that would be cruel and unusual punishment for the buyer. There has to be better books on the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: 3 STRIKES and YOUR're OUT!
Review: [Rudolf A. Wiley] made it abundantly clear how you can goabout determining your metabolic profile WITHOUT blood tests, and why his acid/alkaline classification subsumes all others currently being hawked by the popular food-mood-health gurus and talking heads. For heaven's sake, my 12 year-old daughter deciphered her profile after reading the book (which took her all of about 1 hour). How much simpler could Dr. Wiley have made it...! At any rate, the fact that BioBalance Therapy has not been given the international name recognition it richly deserves is the real tragedy here. Based upon 1st hand experience and statistics, this tragedy translates into a daily loss of countless lives, and the waste of billions of dollars in make-shift cures, psychotherapy, and other assorted superstitions and ritual mutilations. Who's to blame for this? Surely not Dr. Wiley who has selflessly dedicated the better part of his life thus far to uncovering the rigorous relationship between metabolic function on the one hand, and physical and mental health on the other. One can only blame the media, "the street" (aka the layperson seeking instantaneous enlightenment), and our educational system. How so? STRIKE 1! No, BioBalance Therapy cannot be described as "crisp," "trendy," "pert," "snappy," "hip," "sexy," etc., all terms used in describing the current entourage of the media's darling cash cows. STRIKE 2! Similarly, while Dr. Wiley has succeeded admirably in making BioBalance Therapy comprehensible to a child, its simplicity to date still cannot be reduced to an inane sound-byte ("Don't worry! Be happy!") Alas, the public (i.e., "the street") with its increasingly limited attention span, must have it's sugar-coated sound-bytes. ("Guy, like 3 different metabolic types, each with its own diet! Like, guy, that's just so-o-o weird. Like gag me with a spoon!") STRIKE 3! Our educational system has failed abysmally in training our young people to think either deductively or inductively. Most people don't even know the difference between the 2. Let's face it, if you manage to get through school without shooting a teacher or raping a guidance counselor, you'll get a passing grade. Don't befuddle youth's collective mind with logic, syllogisms, and inductive/decuctive thought. 1st and foremost, we want our young people to "feel good about themselves." Anything else is strictly superfluous. Against such odds, any substantive advance in knowledge such as BioBalance is destined to failure, eclipsed by trendy sound-bytes hawked by the usual array of talk-show hosts, media personalities and talking heads, replete with crying women, and clever parlor tricks. I dread to think where we'd be today if Dr. Wiley's intellectual counterarts like Galileo, Newton and Einstein had lived in the pop-culture climate within which we find ourselves. Let me guess, we'd still be in the Dark Ages, living in what Dr. Carl Sagan called "The Demon Haunted World." As Dr. Wiley so ably points out in his review, read the book, get well, then GET ANGRY! P.S. Dr. Wiley's book deserves 6 stars, but I'm limited to 5 only. END
|
