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Andrew Weil

Andrew Weil Books

Medical Doctor

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“Technology has a shadow side. It accounts for real progress in medicine, but has also hurt it in many ways, making it more impersonal, expensive and dangerous. The false belief that a safety net of sophisticated drugs and machines stretches below us, permitting risky or lazy lifestyle choices, has undermined our spirit of self-reliance.”

“Your body can heal itself. It can do so because it has a healing system. If you are in good health, you will want to know about this system, because it is what keeps you in good health and because you can enhance that condition. If you or people you love are sick, you will want to know about this system, because it is the best hope for recovery.”

“The desire to transcend one's own ego boundaries, to share completely, even for a moment, the consciousness of another person must be a universal longing. It motivates many of our activities from taking drugs to making love, and lies behind the search for new ways of getting close to one another that is so intense in our society today.”

“I think integrative medicine, something I've pioneered, is the way of the future. Its great promise is that it can reduce healthcare costs by shifting the whole focus of healthcare away from disease management to health promotion and prevention. They can do that two ways: first, by focusing attention on lifestyle medicine, which is very deficient. And second, by bringing into the mainstream treatments that are lower cost because they are not dependent on expensive technology.”

“I tried to change the conventional paradigm, for example, by insisting on the reality of mind-body interaction, by stressing the importance of natural therapies, by focusing attention on lifestyle issues, by looking at worthwhile aspects of alternative medicine. Many people have been threatened by that. Doctors especially tend to think that they know everything about the human body, and don't realize that medical education has really omitted many very important subjects.”

“I think it's worth trying to do something about obvious sources of stress in your life. But even more important is learning and practicing methods to neutralize the harmful effects of stress on the body and mind. There are many possibilities, anything from meditation and yoga to listening to relaxing music. My personal favorite is simple breathing techniques - they're very effective, take very little time, and they're free.”

“As an American, you have a right to good health care that is effective, accessible, and affordable, that serves you from infancy through old age, that allows you to go to practitioners and facilities of your choosing, and that offers a broad range of therapeutic options.”

“Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication.”