“It is very important not to fall into the belief that anything alternative is good and anything conventional is bad,” writes author and naturopath Shady S. Srour in SECRETS OF HEALING THE BRAIN. Yet he presents pretty much every alternative treatment as efficacious and goes on to warn about the health dangers of electromagnetic fields, even though no evidence has been found linking standard EMs to diseases. Paradoxically, the author also prefers wired connections over Wi-Fi—though the former emit EM radiation, too.

To his credit, Srour does list many scientific papers to back up some of his claims. The first of the book’s four chapters, “Herbal Medicine and Neurological Health,” is an extensive list of various herbs, from garlic to saffron, with many studies cited. However, some of these studies contradict Srour’s recommendations. For example, he cites green tea for helping prevent Alzheimer’s or treating symptoms, but the paper referenced actually concludes that “the sample size of these studies was relatively small (<100 individuals) and results of randomized studies were not consistent.”

He also writes that cinnamon can help prevent and treat Alzheimer’s because it prevents beta-amyloid aggregation, yet fails to mention that a 2022 article in Science magazine states the original paper was “doctored to inflate the protein’s role in the progression to Alzheimer’s.” Srour also cites studies on the efficacy of Ginkgo biloba for memory, but The Cochrane Review, which conducts meta-analyses, concluded that “evidence that Ginkgo has predictable and clinically significant benefit for people with dementia or cognitive impairment is inconsistent and unreliable.” In the meantime, Srour’s advice for dealing with various neurological and health conditions is the same in every case: “An organic, whole-food vegan diet with zero added sugar, added oil and zero added salt should maximize the likelihood of preventing and reversing vascular disease.”

This approach may indeed be good for overall health, but Srour is offering this advice based on ideological beliefs—not science. He even goes so far as to claim that human beings evolved to be vegetarian, when the anatomical evidence shows that we are omnivores. The reader can rest assured, however, that nothing Srour recommends is physically harmful. Only emotionally—as he may provide false hope to people trying to reverse their loved ones’ incurable conditions (such as autism, Parkinson’s Disease, and multiple sclerosis). Readers will need to pick sense from nonsense in this book, which has nuggets of good advice that might not be worth the rest.

While author Shady S. Srour does not reject conventional medicine like most naturopaths, his research is so sloppy that some of the papers he references don’t even support his claims. SECRETS OF HEALING THE BRAIN is half-ideology, half-science, so readers will have some challenges separating one from the other.

~Kevin Baldeosingh for IndieReader