Chapter 1

The New Supplemental Safeguard for Your Good Health

Here's a double health to thee! — Lord Byron

If you're now reading these words, chances are you take your own health, and that of your loved ones, very much to heart. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates called health “the greatest of human blessings,” a sentiment that has been echoed by poets and philosophers throughout the ages. Health is today, as it has always been, the only currency whose presence or absence can make the poor rich, and the rich poor. “Give me health and a day,” declared Ralph Waldo Emerson, “and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.”

Never before in human history has mankind understood so much about the multiple processes that preserve our well being, or rob us of it. From genetic engineering to pioneering brain research to potential cures for cancer, we stand poised at the threshold of a new era, a time when countless scourges that have so long afflicted our species are finally beginning to yield to unprecedented scientific investigation. Researchers the world over are increasing the knowledge base at an exponential rate. Sometimes it almost seems as if disease itself has become an endangered species.

But the same technological revolution that, with its right hand, forges new hope for cures is, with its left hand, foisting upon all too many of us the need for such cures. Consider this: For our ancestors in antiquity, food was rarely plentiful and obtaining it almost always required great physical effort. Modern life, on the other hand, has put the “ease” into disease. Today, we can lie on the sofa, TV remote control in one hand and cell phone in the other, and dial up a double-cheese pepperoni pizza for speedy home delivery.

The seductiveness of fast food, employment that requires long hours in sedentary pursuits, daily stresses for which the age-old “fight or flight” response can rarely be exercised without inviting trouble, a surfeit of cigarettes and alcohol and various drugs that are all too easily obtainable: These are but a few of the hallmarks of industrialized society for which our hard scrabble evolution as a species has ill prepared us. No wonder that so-called lifestyle disorders - heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, diabetes, many forms of cancer, and so on - continue to fell so many of us every year.

Make no mistake: These are hardly overhyped conditions that only target “the other guy.” An astonishing 7.5 percent of all American adults alive today have suffered a heart attack or periodic chest pains from heart disease. That's one out of every thirteen adults!

Even as medical researchers look for new ways to undo such damage once it's been wreaked, others look for ways to intercept disease before it's sunk its harpy claws too deeply into our flesh. In recent years, modern medicine has seen a resurgence of interest in integrative medicine-an approach that combines the best of the “fix what's broken” philosophy of conventional modern health care with the “preemptive strike” philosophy long embraced by alternative medicine healers and preventative medicine specialists alike.

About the Author

ROBERT FRIED, PH.D., is the director of the Stress and Biofeedback Clinic at the Albert Ellis Institute, New York City. He is also a senior professor of biopsychology at Hunter College, CUNY.

WOODSON C. MERRELL, M.D., is an assistant clinical professor at Columbia University Medical School, an executive director of Beth Israel-St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospitals' new Center of Integrative Medicine, and a board member of New York State's Office of Professional Medical Conduct. He also maintains a private practice in Manhattan.

JAMES THORNTON has contributed to The Physician and Sports Medicine and Men's Journal. He received a 1998 National Magazine Award for his health writing, and his articles have been published in magazines and newspapers around the world.