The Holiday Sale has been extended till January 10th! It is a great time to stock up on kids birthday gifts for the year!

Happy New Year!

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 18, 2009

Contact: Heather Manley, N.D.

HAWAII DOCTOR PUBLISHES SECOND KIDS’ EDUCATIONAL ADVENTURE STORY

Hawaii Naturopathic Physician, Dr. Heather Manley, announces the release of Human Body Detectives: Battle with the Bugs, the second activity workbook and story-telling audioCD in her Human Body Detectives (HBD) series, on November 18, 2009.

HBD is a series of educational adventure stories for 7-12 year olds where two young “Human Body Detectives,” Merrin and Pearl, magically enter different systems in the body to solve health mysteries. Through action packed fiction stories told on audio CD, listeners learn how the various systems work and what foods best fuel each system. The accompanying workbook filled with games and puzzles reinforces what kids have learned from the story and helps them further understand the importance of maintaining a healthy immune system.

In Battle with the Bugs, while on a family trip to Mexico, the girls are joined by brave cousin Sam on a learning journey through the immune system. They start out in the mucus-filled nose of cousin Max, who is suffering from a bad cold, and proceed to learn everything from what white blood cells do to what causes a fever. Trying to help Max, they even befriend a macrophage warrior named Quickster whom they help fight the bad bug invaders.

Battle with the Bugs follows Manley’s first story, The Lucky Escape, where Merrin and Pearl wind up in their baby brother’s digestive system and narrowly escape his poopy diaper.

HBD stories and workbooks:
• Engage kids in a fun way to learn about how their bodies work
• Encourage kids to make healthy food and lifestyle choices
• Inspire kids to take charge of their own health
• Support parents and teachers by enhancing science/health curricula

As a physician and a mother, Manley believes that if children understand how their bodies work, they are more apt to make healthy food and lifestyle choices. She came up with the idea for the HBD series after discovering a lack of books on the market that help kids learn, in a fun way, about how their bodies work. Manley’s goal is to expand the series to at least five books with corresponding DVD’s. Merrin and Pearl will next appear in the circulatory system, learning about keeping the heart healthy, in HBD: A Heart Pumping Adventure, set for press in spring 2010. Adventures through the nervous and muscular systems will follow.

The activity workbook, audio CD, and DVD packages are geared to serve as tools for families, teachers and home school parents, to supplement current science and/or health curricula. The HBD series is also highlighted on Manley’s website. The site provides a resource for people, especially parents of young children, to learn about preventative health care and taking charge of their family’s health.

Dr. Manley is a naturopathic physician licensed in the state of Hawaii. She is a member of the American Association of Naturopathic Medicine and the Hawaii Naturopathic Medicine Association.

For more information, please visit the HBD site, or email drheather

I am very happy to show you the book trailer for…

Human Body Detectives: Battle with the Bugs!

It was just sent to me and I couldn’t even wait a minute until I could show all of you!

The printing is a little behind but I should have in my hands the last week of October. It will be available on Amazon in November but the book can be purchased on my site now as a pre-order!

Enjoy!

I love how Michael Pollan is educating people about how our food ( at least in America) is grown, produced and consumed. His first book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, was a heavy, tough but highly informative read and most likely missing a very important demographic - kids ( this is my department - teaching kids about health with my series, Human Body Detectives). Now he has written  the same book but in a young reader edition. Brilliant!

In this edition, he has some real-food rules for kids ( but of course their parents too). I am not a fan of rules but these just make so much sense….away of living.

Here they are:

1. Don’t eat anything your great grandparents wouldn’t have recognized as food.

I love this! I sometimes talk to kids about acute and chronic disease and food, and how these things have affected us  - changed us - in the last 100 yrs or so. Kids are amazed with learning and understanding the evolution of acute to chronic disease and the evolution of our diets.

2. Don’t eat anything with more than 5 ingredients, or with ingredients you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce.

This is wonderful! Kids love to look at the ingredients and try to pronounce some of the words. I love kids being proactive and aware.

3. Don’t eat anything containing high-fructose corn syrup.

This is a good ingredient to have kids look for on labels. It will be a fast and easy lesson - it is in a lot of things!

This will definitely be a holiday gift to my kids ( and maybe many others!)

Be well,

I am going to purchase this book although I may not need it but I have some friends who I think do!

I am all about teaching my kids to be proactive and independent in their daily life. I realized early on with my older daughter that they clearly give you signs when they are ready to be “left alone” to do things themselves. It first happened when Merrin refused to wash her hair so I just gave her the shampoo bottle and she preceded to wash her own hair and the second big memory is when she, at 20 months threw her diaper across the room and said, “NO!” That was a little scary for me as we were off to the park but I just went for it and she had very few accidents after that.

Now that the kids are older, the stakes are up. Should I let them walk home from school alone? Or with friends? It is a toughy but the more I talk to the girls and see where their comfort level is, I can see when the time is right. They really need and desire the independence and hard as it is for us to “let go” we need too.

If you entering this stage in life, this might be a great book for you to pick up, read and talk to your kids about.

Be well,