Mind Body Medicine: How to Use Your Mind for Better Health. This item is unavailable.Mind Body Medicine: How to Use Your Mind for Better Health

Combining consumer-oriented pragmatism with solid research, a guide to using the mind as a healing tool discusses the connection between stress and disease; various mind/body approaches; and the mind's role in a variety of diseases.

Does stress cause diabetes or aggravate arthritis? Are you sick because you want to be, or healthy because you have a good attitude? Gurin and Goleman acknowledge that many of the popular claims made for the power of the mind to heal the body are distorted or inflated. To be sure, there are connections between the body and the mind, and in this series of well-written, easy-to-understand articles, physicians, psychologists and researchers discuss some of them. They include the mind's role in, among others, pain management, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and even skin problems such as psoriasis. Also discussed are the ways in which thoughts and emotions may affect the immune system, as well as the need for patients to become active partners in their own medical care. In addition to helpful charts on how and where to seek professional help, the authors give counsel on relaxation, hypnosis, biofeedback and stress management. Although many questions still remain unanswered about the relation between the body and the mind in health, this is an excellent, well-researched look at it. Gurin is the science editor of Consumer Reports ; Goleman is a former editor of Psychology Today .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Written almost exclusively by M.D.s and Ph.D.s, this collection of essays takes a calm and serious view of alternative medicine without endorsing all its ideas. The authors clearly explain how a person's thoughts and feelings affect disease, discussing the latest scientific findings on such subjects as the placebo effect, mind and stress, and how the immune system is affected by emotions. They examine techniques like meditation and exercise in relation to specific medical conditions. The essays are comprehensive, objective, and practical (one includes 16 tips for becoming less hostile), depicting the new techniques as complements to rather than replacements of standard medical therapy. Highly recommended for all libraries.
- Natalie Kupferberg, Montana State Univ. Lib., Bozeman
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.