The
Stress Cure offers a guide to women to solve their problems with
stress, anxious depression, and other stress related health problems.  It recommends most of the standard
treatments, but puts a strong emphasis on biological factors and especially
promotes DHEA, the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone.  It recommends DHEA as the first step in the treatment of stress,
although it does emphasize that there are many other steps women should also
take, including other supplemental vitamins and minerals, meditation, exercise,
and counseling. Cherewatenko is a clinician himself and so he bases the book on
his own practice. 

If you do a search for DHEA
on the Internet, you will find an amazing array of claims for how the
medication can solve all your problems, and that should be en   ough to put you on your guard. Cherewatenko
himself is much more careful and scientific in his enthusiasm for the drug, but
he does claim that it has the potential for some people to help them with
depression, osteoporosis, diabetes, cancer, cortisol, as well as stress. 

The book is well written and
makes a plausible case.  It discusses
the problems of getting a good supply of the hormone and how to take it, and it
also spells out how to use it in combination with other options.  The essential question is whether its claims
are true and whether people suffering from stress and depression should try it
out.  To decide this, one has to know whether
there is any danger associated with the hormone, how expensive it is, and
whether there are other approaches which are much more effective and make it
unnecessary.  I’m no expert about
complementary medicine, so I am not in a position to make this judgment for
other people.  However, I can say that
this book has raised my interest in this hormone and I might well consider
trying it for myself.  Of course, The Stress Cure is aimed at women, so
I’ll have to find another book to work out how best to take it.

© 2005 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved. 

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of
the Arts & Humanities Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at
Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online
Review.  His main research is on philosophical issues in medicine,
psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Anxiety, SelfHelp