The body can heal itself. Spontaneous healing is not a miracle but a fact of biology - the result of the natural healing system that each one of us is born with. Drawing on fascinating case histories as well as medical techniques from around the world, Dr. Andrew Weil shows how spontaneous healing has worked to resolve life-threatening diseases, severe trauma, and chronic pain. Weil then outlines an eight-week program in which you'll discover:

• The truth about spontaneous healing and how it interacts with the mind

• The foods, vitamins, supplements, and tonic herbs that will help you enhance your innate healing powers

• Advice on how to avoid environmental toxins and reduce stress

• The strengths and weaknesses of conventional and alternative treatments

• Natural methods to ameliorate common kinds of illnesses

And much more!

A MAN whose lungs are filled with cancer is sent home to die, having been told that medicine can do nothing for him. Six months later he reappears in his doctor's office, tumor free. A young woman - diabetic, a heavy smoker - lies unconscious in a coronary care unit following a bad heart attack. Her doctor anguishes over the fact that her cardiac function is rapidly declining and he is powerless to save her. But the next morning she is awake and talking, clearly on the way to recovery. A neurosurgeon tells grieving parents that their son, who is in a coma following a motorcycle accident and severe head injury, will never regain consciousness. The son is now fine.

Most doctors I know have one or two stories of this sort, stories of spontaneous healing. You will uncover many more of them if you seek them out, yet few medical researchers do. To most doctors, the stories are just stories, not taken seriously, not studied, not looked to as sources of information about the body's potential to repair itself.

Meanwhile, modern medicine has become so expensive that it is straining the economies of many developed nations and putting itself beyond the reach of much of the world's population. In many countries politicians argue about how to pay for health care, unaware that a philosophical debate about the very nature of health care has been ongoing throughout history. Doctors believe that health requires outside intervention of one sort or another, while proponents of natural hygiene maintain that health results from living in harmony with natural law. In ancient Greece, doctors worked under the patronage of Asklepios, the god of medicine, but healers served Asklepios's daughter, the radiant Hygeia, goddess of health. Medical writer and philosopher Rene Dubos has written:

For the worshipers of Hygeia, health is the natural order of things, a positive attribute to which men are entitled if they govern their lives wisely. According to them, the most important function of medicine is to discover and teach the natural laws which will ensure a man a healthy mind in a healthy body. More skeptical, or wiser in the ways of the world, the followers of Asklepios believe that the chief role of the physician is to treat disease, to restore health by correcting any imperfections caused by accidents of birth or life.

Political debates about how to cover the costs of medical care mostly take place among followers of Asklepios. There has been no argument about the nature of medicine or people's expectations of it, only about who is going to pay for its services, which have become inordinately expensive because of doctors' reliance on technology. I am a dedicated follower of Hygeia and want to interject that viewpoint into any discussions of the future of medicine.

Let me give an example of how these different philosophies lead to very different courses of action. In the West, a major focus of scientific medicine has been the identification of external agents of disease and the development of weapons against them. An outstanding success in the middle of this century was the discovery of antibiotics and, with that, great victories against infectious diseases caused by bacteria. This success was a major factor in winning hearts and minds over to the Asklepian side, convincing most people that medical intervention with the products of technology was worth it, no matter the cost. In the East, especially in China, medicine has had a quite different focus. It has explored ways of increasing internal resistance to disease so that, no matter what harmful influences you are exposed to, you can remain healthy - a Hygeian strategy. In their explorations Chinese doctors have discovered many natural substances that have such tonic effects on the body. Although the Western approach has served us well for a number of years, its long-term usefulness may not be nearly so great as the Eastern one.

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© 2000 by Andrew Weil, M.D.

Tags: Healing, Alternative Medicine

About the Author

Andrew Weil, M.D. is the author of ten previous books, including Spontaneous Healing, Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, Eating Well for Optimum Health, and, with Rosie Daley, The Healthy Kitchen. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he is clinical professor of medicine and director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. He writes Self Healing, a monthly newsletter, and maintains the Web site DrWeil.com. More