Massage bodywork therapy: Part II
appointments, and (of course)
choose their own MBT
practitioner?
Book review
Maintaining Health in Primary
Care (360p)
Jennifer R Jamison
Churchill Livingstone Edinburgh, 2001,
ISBN 0-443-07060-1
This book addresses in practical
ways the issue which obstructs
recovery from ill-health in a vast
number of cases, the failure to
introduce and maintain better habits
of diet, sleep, exercise, etc. The target
audience is the practitioner, and
most of the text covers material
designed for the practitioner’s
consumption, not the patient’s
(although patient information is
provided for distribution by the
practitioner in a unique way,
described below). Self-care is the
objective, and the author divides the
text into logical segments; Self-care –
an overview, which is itself broken
into areas dealing with mindset,
safety and strategies; developing
...........................................
Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies (2003)
7(2), 79
r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S1360-8592(02)00082-7
S1360-8592/03/$ - see front matter
J O U R NAL O F B O DY W O R K AN D MOV E M E N T TH E R APIE S APRIL 20 0 3
Note: A complete list of references
will appear with the fourth article in
this series, and can be accessed on
BOOK REVIEW
good habits, subdivided into diet,
food, spinal health, sleep, exercise,
sexual factors and mental fitness;
‘changing risky habits’ addresses
substance abuse, smoking, alcohol,
stress and accidents; disease
prevention covers reducing personal
risk, strokes, ischemic heart disease,
osteoporosis, cancer and obesity.
And finally a long list of patient
handouts (around 200) is carried in
the Appendix – with the novel
approach that these can be
downloaded and printed
(customized to individual
practitioner needs) from the internet
where they reside (i.e. the handouts
are not in the book).
The amount of work that has
gone into compiling this vast
amount of information is admirable.
Even more praiseworthy is the
quality of what has been put
together in this effort to get people
to do what’s good for themselves.
The content is well referenced,
reasonably up to date, accurate (as
far as this reviewers failed efforts to
elicit inaccuracies is concerned) and
very well set out, with highlighted
key-points, checklists, summaries,
79
JBMT’s (website http://www.
elsevier health.com/journals/jbmt).
lists of useful websites for
many topics, and cross
references.
A minor complaint probably
relates to the length of time
compiling the information must
have taken. For example, in the
Spinal Health segment mention is
made of the difficulty of assessing
disability, ‘The challenge of
accurately assessing disability is
currently being addressed by the
development of questionnaires
rating disability in terms of
functional impairment.’
Unfortunately, the current
citation give dates from 1983. To be
sure many citations in this and other
sections are far more
current, and this is a minor quibble,
in what is a marvellous resource. If,
after all this, people still resist self-
care, they probably deserve what
they receive in terms of health
status, and it certainly wont be for
want of trying on the part of the
author.
Leon Chaitow
School of Integrated Health,
University of Westminister,
London, UK