For Women Only!: Your Guide to Health Empowerment

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In For Women Only!, authors Gary Null and Barbara Seaman address women's health both from curative/preventive and historical/contextual perspectives. The first half of the book discusses a wide range of concerns, from addiction and sexual abuse to menopause and mental health, and offers an arsenal of the most effective or promising strategies for preventing, coping with, or curing them. The second half takes an inspirational approach. Drawing on the writings of Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, Erica Jong, and many others, the book puts women's medicine in perspective, covering topics ranging from the early history of women as healers to contemporary activism, from self-help gynecology and motherhood to women's health in the 21st century. Contributors include Barbara Ehrenreich, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Naomi Wolf, and many others.

Reader Reviews:

Don't let the sexist title put you off -- this is an important book for women ... and the men (and women) who love 'em. Leading alternative health advocate Gary Null and Barbara Seaman have pulled together the first social history of its kind, a chunky, crammed-with-facts compendium that addresses women's health from a preventive/curative perspective as well as a historical/contextual one. It's as much a reference book as it is a hands-on activist's handbook, with advice, essays and interviews from the country's top alternative practitioners, thinkers, writers, doctors and sociologist. A weighty -- and welcome -- addition to everyone's library.After choosing, at random, and reading a few different articles I was very alarmed about the information being given out. It seemed that their cure-all for everything is take an herb. I also noted that the authors have no medical degrees. From reading the information about the authors,one has a Ph.D. in nutrition and the other has no degree. I will be returning this book. If you do read and plan to try their remedies, PLEASE get a second opinion from a licensed medical professional.When I first picked up this book, my first inclination was to find/read the health information on uterine fibroids. In doing so, the misinformation presented (poor alternative health care advice based on erroneous fibroid information) disturbed me a great deal. Gary Null's attempt to push out yet another health care book -- this one beyond his true knowledge of ALL the subject matter included -- was not a "good" attempt at all. Although I too enjoy reading Prevention Magazine from time to time, I hardly think it a journal to quote from in support of presenting medical information regarding disease, diagnosis, and treatment options. Unfortunately, far too much of Null's "research" begins and ends with Prevention Magazine and there is no Bibliography whatsoever to support his many quotes of medical research. Whatever happened to reading the medical literature first hand before writing a work like this as well as listing those resources so others could read the information first hand as well?

However, while initially annoyed over the medical information presented in the first half of this book, my opinion quickly changed and I was won over by reading the "Health Empowerment for Women" writings pulled together by Barbara Seaman. What a collection. Incredible details regarding the history of the women's health care movement that includes excerpts/writings from Elizabeth Cady Stanton ("Motherhood"), Sojourner Truth ("Ain't I Woman"), Elizabeth Siegel Watkins ("Informed Consent"), Shere Hite ("The Sexuality Questionnaire"), Gloria Steinem ("If Men Could Menstruate" -- a true classic written in 1978 that I remember reading when I was in college!), and many, many more.

On fibroids and hysterectomy, check out page 1126: "So You're Going to Have a New Body!" by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Gripping essay that is worth the price of the book alone. In fact, this essay is so powerful that I would firmly recommend you hit the bookstore or library to read it even if you can't afford the price tag of the book. It's an absolute "must read" for every woman diagnosed with uterine fibroids who has received the recommendation of hysterectomy.

There's more. Much much more. What I can't figure out, is why these ~900 pages pulled together by Barbara Seaman were ever published with Gary Null's ~600 pages. Doesn't make any sense at all to me. Quite frankly, if I could rip out the first 600 pages and keep the rest, I would. Maybe the publisher would consider a new edition containing just the collection of works pulled together by Ms. Seaman? I'd buy that version in a heartbeat -- and I'd definitely send my daughter a copy too. To sum Ms. Seaman's half of the book up, a quote from Sojourner Truth (p. 675):

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them."

..."For Women Only" contains a wealth of information for women like myself who want to know their options.

When I face health problems or other dilemmas, I do not take the first solution presented because I have found by hard experience that many of the answers that the so-called experts offer do not work. I am grateful to the authors of this book for presenting so many valuable alternatives.This book blows away all the literature on the subject that I have come across.
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