cover image The Oxygen Breakthrough: 30 Days to an Illness-Free Life

The Oxygen Breakthrough: 30 Days to an Illness-Free Life

Sheldon Saul Hendler. William Morrow & Company, $18.95 (271pp) ISBN 978-0-688-08113-3

Hendler, a researcher and private physician, adopts a fresh, optimistic approach to debilitating and degenerative diseases, from the nonspecific Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) to chronic asthma and AIDS. His ``breakthrough'' focuses on a central but oft-forgotten fitness mechanism: proper breathing. Fatigue and immunosuppression, he points out, are often caused and always aggravated by poor oxygenation, both through the lungs (``outer breathing'') and through the cell membranes (``inner breathing''). A few sensible breathing exercises will help readers understand and correct their outer breathing; frank, sensible discussions of diet and vitamins address microscopic oxygenation. But while Hendler provides valuable anecdotal advice on breathing, eating, exercising and managing stress, his enthusiasm for medical progress leads him astray when he introduces readers to lab tests and experimental drugs properly utilized (as he sometimes notes) only by professionals. Much of the book summarizes parts of Hendler's Complete Guide to Anti-Aging Nutrients . Illustrations not seen by PW . (Apr.)