Title:  Healing Our Children: Sacred Wisdom for Preconception, Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting

Author:  Ramiel Nagel

ISBN - 13: 978 - 0- 9820213 - 1 - 6

How we feed and raise our children ultimately determines the future health of our society.  In this modern culture we have traded the importance of our children for the importance of materialistic goals.  Our world is currently reflecting this tragic shift in priorities.  Sally Fallon , who wrote the foreward to the book, provides us with an excellent analogy to explain the reasons for our modern illnesses and discomforts.

Healing Our Children is very comprehensive in it's scope....covering just about every issue that one can think of in relation to a child's health and well-being.  The preparations begin even before a child is conceived. In order to have a well formed healthy child, the parents themselves must have an exceptional diet for a period of time before conception and this superior nutrition must be continued during pregnancy and throughout childhood.

The author, Rami Nagel, shares with the reader how the observations of Dr. Weston Price are still relevant today. Dr. Price traveled throughout the world comparing the diets of indigenous peoples who ate only their native unprocessed foods to those who lived in the more populated areas and consumed factory made foods. These devitalized foods were stripped of their nutrients and laden with sugar.  He found that those eating the natural foods bore children who were well formed, robust, cheerful and rarely sick.

Dr. Price observed that those who obeyed the natural laws of diet expressed more of the Divine nature and possessed a higher form of manhood.  Those who ate the modernized diet produced sickly deformed children who grew up more prone to pain, unhappiness and crime. The communities which followed their native unprocessed diets experienced little crime and had no need for jails. Rami explains it this way....."We were not thrown out of the Garden of Eden, represented by good health and a happy life, but rather, we have forgotten how to nurture and maintain that garden, which is a dormant potential within each one of us."

The author stresses that we must take back the responsibility for our children and that it is our duty and our privilege to fully nourish, nurture and protect. Parents who take the time and effort to do this will be richly rewarded by children who are happy, healthy and bright.  Our society will then reflect this rich inheritance.

Nagel thoroughly discusses the types of foods that are important for preconception, pregnancy, and later in the book he talks about the nourishing foods needed by growing children. Many adverse conditions of childhood can be prevented or healed through proper nutrition.

Rami encourages parents to understand and respect their child's stages of development and to not expect more from them than they can comprehend. He and his partner Michelle speak of how important it is for parents to be available to their children, to carry them close when they are young....to provide a sense of connection and security. They try to relay how crucial it is for the mother to stay home with her child, if at all possible, and that this is what will help to foster true happiness and close relationships.

Healing Our Children is a refreshingly unique and helpful book.  The author covers all facets of raising a healthy child.....the emotional, the spiritual, the nutritional and the practical. I was very impressed.  However, there may be some advice given in the book that may sound radical or impractical to some parents.  I thought about this for a bit and came to the conclusion that the reason some of the suggestions seemed impractical was because we have come so far from a natural way of living and have created lives which are increasingly artificial.  Due to the fact that we live in a modern society, it is realized that everyone may not be able to accomplish everything suggested in this book. This is why Rami encourages parents to take from the book what most feels comfortable for them.  Rami does not present a 'one size fits all' protocol.  He shares the options and allows the reader to decide what is best for their individual circumstances.

I found the section on vaccines to be especially powerful and motivating.  Rami presents the facts and shows us why vaccines are not helpful but in fact can cause deaths, lower immune function and many chronic diseases.

There is also an excellent section which reveals the true purposes of public education and how children are negatively molded by society/government. Mainstream schooling does not appear to be fostering individualism and freedom.

Rami asks "Where do the ideas of what is right and wrong come from?"  He suggests that we do not have to give our power away to those who have even less of a clue than we do.  He tells us, "We mistakenly believe that those authorities are the ultimate purveyors of truth.  Most people whom we fear are totally ignorant of life.  In a way they are like robots following a set of rules.  They embrace negativity.  But they lack the true source of wisdom and power, so they always fail in the end.  Only truth can survive; all else falls away."

I highly recommend this book to those who want to raise happy, healthy children who will grow up to be self reliant with a compassionate mindset which will positively affect the world we share together.

Rami Nagel's book is a gift to us all.....a gift of love.......of hope.....and of true solutions.