Words matter. These are the best Andrew Weil Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
As any doctor can tell you, the most crucial step toward healing is having the right diagnosis. If the disease is precisely identified, a good resolution is far more likely. Conversely, a bad diagnosis usually means a bad outcome, no matter how skilled the physician.
The world is beset by many problems, but in my opinion, this hijacking of our brain’s reward centers by electronic media is potentially one of the most destructive.
As an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1960s, I was fascinated by my visits to psychologist B.F. Skinner’s laboratory.
Citizens must pressure the American Hospital Association, the American Public Health Association, the Centers for Disease Control and other relevant governmental agencies to make greening our hospitals and medical centers a top priority so that they themselves don’t create even more illness.
It’s rare – too rare, I have to say – for botanists to become doctors.
Insurance companies, whether private or government owned, must be compelled to pay for health-promoting measures. In turn, this will encourage physicians to offer such treatments in earnest.
We’re all affected by music. It has the power to inspire, uplift us, change our moods, and even alter consciousness.
Even low-calorie diets and vigorous exercise fail to work in the long term for at least some people.
Short naps are good. Given modern workplace demands, this is not possible for many people – but if you have the option, try napping for ten to twenty minutes in the afternoon, preferably lying down in a darkened room.
The ways that my dogs can make me – and my visitors – happy constantly amazes me.
I have argued for years that we do not have a health care system in America. We have a disease-management system – one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest rather than giving our citizens simple diet, lifestyle and therapeutic tools to keep them healthy.
In the world at large, people are rewarded or punished in ways that are often utterly random. In the garden, cause and effect, labor and reward, are re-coupled. Gardening makes sense in a senseless world. By extension, then, the more gardens in the world, the more justice, the more sense is created.
In my view, the best gift is one that benefits both the receiver and the planet.
Millions of Americans today are taking dietary supplements, practicing yoga and integrating other natural therapies into their lives. These are all preventive measures that will keep them out of the doctor’s office and drive down the costs of treating serious problems like heart disease and diabetes.
Human beings have survived for millennia because most of us make good decisions about our health most of the time.
The bottom line is that the human body is complex and subtle, and oversimplifying – as common sense sometimes impels us to do – can be hazardous to your health.
Each day as I travel through downtown Tucson, I am amazed at how quickly the most ancient of human behaviors have changed. For as long as there have been Homo sapiens – roughly 200,000 years – people have filled their lives principally with two activities: talking directly with other people, and doing physical things.
Excess exercise tends to be counterbalanced by excess hunger, exemplified by the phrase ‘working up an appetite.’ A few people with extraordinary willpower can resist such hunger day after day, but for the vast majority, weight loss through exercise is a flawed option.
Genuine happiness comes from within, and often it comes in spontaneous feelings of joy.
I am a particular fan of integrative exercise – that is, exercise that occurs in the course of doing some productive activity such as gardening, bicycling to work, doing home improvement projects and so on.
Human beings and plants have co-evolved for millions of years, so it makes perfect sense that our complex bodies would be adapted to absorb needed, beneficial compounds from complex plants and ignore the rest.
Clearly, America’s dysfunctional food culture must bear some of the blame for our excess pounds, but it’s likely our walking-averse lifestyles contribute as well.
The most common objection that I hear to walking as exercise is that it’s too easy, that only sweaty, strenuous activity offers real benefits. But there is abundant evidence that regular, brisk walking is associated with better health, including lower blood pressure, better moods and improved cholesterol ratios.
Pay attention to your body. The point is everybody is different. You have to figure out what works for you.
Fitting a walk into a busy life can be challenging, so I suggest walking rather driving to work or to run errands as often as you can – in other words, think of walking as alternative transportation.
Get people back into the kitchen and combat the trend toward processed food and fast food.
Massage therapy has been shown to relieve depression, especially in people who have chronic fatigue syndrome; other studies also suggest benefit for other populations.
Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.
Anyone who knows me will attest that at any time during the day, you are most likely to find me picking tayberries, ‘deadheading’ peppermint, or succession-planting shallots. There is almost nothing, really, that I would rather do.
A beautiful bouquet or a long-lasting flowering plant is a traditional gift for women, but I have recommended that both men and women keep fresh flowers in the home for their beauty, fragrance, and the lift they give our spirits.
Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist.
I am not against all forms of high-tech medicine. Drugs and surgeries have a secure place in the treatment of serious health conditions. But modern American medicine treats almost every health condition as if it were an emergency.
The World Health Organization has recognized acupuncture as effective in treating mild to moderate depression.
Shorter daylight hours can affect sleep, productivity and state of mind. Light therapy, also known as phototherapy, may help. It uses light boxes emitting full-spectrum light to simulate sunlight.
I’m still not comfortable recommending that people eat saturated fat with abandon, but it’s clear to me that sugar, flour and oxidized seed oils create inflammatory effects in the body that almost certainly bear most of the responsibility for elevating heart disease risk.
I’m not against high-tech medicine. It has a secure place in the diagnosis and treatment of serious disease.
You’ve got to experiment to figure out what works.
American businesses are struggling to pay outrageous, exploitive insurance bills for their employees, hampering our ability to compete globally.
Meditation while walking has a long, noble history in ancient spiritual disciplines.
We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation.
