The Complete Patient

I’ve been doing a lot of driving over the past few weeks, so have been passing the time listening to one of Dr. Andrew Weil’s early books, “Spontaneous Healing”.

Even though it’s been a dozen years since the book came out, it still sounds fresh in its assessment that the medical profession is too heavily focused on treating disease than on maintaining health. In the process of focusing so heavily on disease, doctors dispense powerful pharmaceuticals that, at best, temporarily relieve symptoms and, at worst, drive diseases deeper into the body tissues and organs, only to re-emerge in ever more dangerous form.

I bring up Dr. Weil’s book because I think it reflects on the discussion about "Who's Nuts?" a few days ago, and attitudes about food. Dave Milano points to interesting statistics on the large number of people who consult with alternative medicine providers. His take: many of these people are among the nutcakes like Elizabeth McInerney, Lisa Imerman, myself, and others, who are ridiculed or ignored by friends and family for their whole-food focus.

I suspect that the correlation Dave Milano would like to see between an interest in alternative providers and commitment to nutrition has weaknesses. Dr. Weil’s book provides an inkling.

Much of the book is devoted to case examples of so-called “spontaneous healing”—people who healed from seemingly debilitating illnesses via mega-doses of vitamins, bee stings, visits to Lourdes, hypnosis, and various other such techniques. He even describes examples of how his wife’s back pain during pregnancy and his own skin infection were healed after single sessions with a hypnosis-like technique.

While Dr. Weil does advocate for diet and nutrition, the clear implication of many of his examples is that the patients who turned away from traditional care found ways to tap into the healing power of their bodies. I think there is a lot to say for that message. However, there is still a ring of “magic” and “miracle” in his tone.

I sense that many people who consult with alternative providers do so not because they have seen the light, but because they have given up on conventional care for a particular ailment and will “try anything” to ease their pain. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

That willingness to “try anything” can be positive—the beginning of a realization that the existing medical system fails to provide answers to many serious health problems. It doesn’t necessarily translate, however, into an appreciation of the huge role diet, nutrition, and other lifestyle factors play in determining health.

Several people mentioned a while back that fully acknowledging the misinformation that government and the scientific/medical establishments have foisted on us requires more of a shift than many people are willing to make. The reason is that it means admitting the major authority figures in our lives—parents, teachers, doctors, and government—all were either misinformed or were lying about a major component of our daily lives. That is difficult to internalize.

Part of the problem is that the reasoning associated with health-diet issues is difficult to understand. I can remember feeling total confusion, and resistance, a few years back when a nutritionally minded uncle of mine tried to explain to me why sugar and artificial sweeteners are so bad for us. One of my internal questions: why would these things be so widely available and promoted if they were bad for us? Even though I tend to be cynical, this was something fundamental, almost existential, that was so hard to fully accept, and it took me many years to truly say yes.