The Immune Power Personality: 7 Traits You Can Develop to Stay Healthy - Softcover

Dreher, Henry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452275466 ISBN 13: 9780452275461

Publisher: Plume, 1996

Synopsis

What is the secret to good health? We've all known those who enjoy robust health even with sky-high stress levels; others seem to succumb to every cold or flu that comes along. The Immune Power Personality explores how and why some personalities are so resistant to disease while others are more vulnerable. Serialozed in Redbook, Family Circle, and Shape.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Dreher (Your Defense Against Cancer), a proponent of the body-mind connection, suggests that adopting traits that are characteristic of healthy people can lead to improved health. He believes the pivotal psychological factor in illness is not stress itself but how we cope with stress. Drawing on research by psychologists and physicians who have explored mind-body relationships, Dreher offers seven key factors that appear to encourage an improved immune system and better health: the ACE Factor (the ability to attend, connect and express); the capacity to confide; hardiness; assertiveness; the power of love; helping others and self-complexity (having many interests). Dreher cites his own freedom from expected colds and flu resulting from his incorporating these traits into his own lifestyle. Although the mind-body connection still draws much skeptical response, readers may be inclined to experiment to see if a change in attitudes will make them feel better and strengthen their own resistance to disease.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Health and medicine writer Dreher promotes "a leap forward in mind-body medicine" that moves beyond stress reduction. He first chronicles the psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) breakthrough constituted by the discovery that brain chemicals in the bloodstream can alter the behavior of immune cells, then details the research of psychologist Gary Schwartz on the healing power of the "ACE factor" --that is, our capacity to Attend, Connect, and Express. Techniques such as meditation, biofeedback, and guided imagery, Dreher says, engender attention; record-keeping of symptoms can facilitate the opportunity to connect bodily manifestations with corresponding levels of being; a clear understanding of objectives can help people recognize symptoms, seek the best available treatment, procure emotional support from friends and family, and express sadness and anger. Tricked out with ACE exercises and case histories, Dreher's book makes a good case for this "harmony of balanced biochemistry." Whitney Scott

Edition details

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452275466
• ISBN 13: 9780452275461
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384