Daniel Redwood Book Reviews

Spontaneous Healing

by Andrew Weil, M.D.
Knopf

Andrew Weil possesses great intellectual strength, wide-ranging knowledge of both conventional and alternative medicine, excellent writing ability, and strong opinions. As a holistic physician occupying a faculty position at a major medical school, he is one of a small but growing number of individuals seeking to build bridges between the often-conflicting camps of alternative and mainstream healing arts. This can be a thankless task at times, but he seems to relish the challenge.

Dr. Weil's central premise is that the human capacity for healing is marvelous and omnipresent, and must be encouraged by all available means. He believes that both conventional allopathic medicine and alternative medicine each have definable strengths and weaknesses, and that each one should be utilized where it is most likely to be helpful. Ideologues on both sides of the divide tend to overlook their own weaknesses and the other's strengths, he asserts, and this polarized state of affairs ill serves the patients who seek their assistance.

Seeking to address this imbalance, Weil lists those areas where he believes allopathic medicine is at its best, including (this is not the entire list) trauma care, acute bacterial infections, some parasitic and fungal infections, immunizations, and certain surgeries. On the other hand, he states unequivocally that allopathic medicine cannot "treat viral infections, cure most chronic degenerative diseases, effectively manage most mental illness, cure most forms of allergy or autoimmune disease, effectively manage psychosomatic illnesses or cure most forms of cancer." His advice is "Do not seek help from a conventional doctor for a condition that conventional medicine cannot treat, and do not rely on an alternative practitioner for a condition that conventional medicine can manage well."

Weil called his book Spontaneous Healing rather than using the more common term "spontaneous remission" because remission implies the likelihood of recurrence and is most commonly used to refer to cancers, which Weil considers to be a special case where the body's healing system has already been severely compromised before symptoms appear. He presents dozens of stories from his own practice, inspiring tales of natural treatment for a wide range of ailments. Taken as a whole, these paint a beautiful, richly detailed portrait of a gifted and knowledgeable healer at work. A recurrent theme is the paramount importance of the doctor's providing both hope and relevant information--Weil's most searing indictment of the medical profession is that most doctors have little belief in healing, and often instill a profound pessimism in their patients.

Weil's approach is one of deep optimism. He calls upon his patients to commit to lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, stress reduction) that provide an essential complement to the herbal medicine, biofeedback, manual manipulation and other professional interventions (some allopathic, most natural) that he either performs himself or refers for. Weil is among the leading medical herbalists in America, and this, combined with his expertise in mind-body medicine (his first book was the classic The Natural Mind) gives him the tools to treat a surprisingly broad range of illnesses that have baffled conventional MDs.

"Faces of Healing," the stories from his practice, are smoothly interspersed with informative and practical sections on each of the primary components of natural medicine and self-care. This culminates in "An Eight-Week Program for Optimal Healing Power," a step-by-step procedure for incorporating the principles and practices discussed earlier. The most unique and controversial component is Weil's "news fast," in which he advises a gradual weaning from listening to the murders, rapes, wars and miscellaneous mayhem that fill the daily newspapers and electronic media. After going a full week without news, he suggests bringing it back in at the pace and in the amounts that you consciously choose. Having periodically practiced such news fasts over the past 25 years, I was heartened to see that I was not entirely alone in seeing their mental health value.

Weil articulates his opinions forcefully, and reasonable, informed people may disagree with certain of his ideas. I have two personal objections. First, in discussing Ayurvedic medicine, he dismisses Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the man arguably most responsible for bringing Ayurveda to the West, as a "Holland-based billionaire." This seems like an unfair potshot that does not represent a balanced view of the contribution he has made to bringing Indian meditation and healing methods to the West.

In addition, Weil's generally mixed-to-negative view of chiropractic concerns me deeply (I am a chiropractor). I have had a few extended one-on-one conversations with Andrew Weil over the past decade, and I know that his viewpoint derives from having seen some chiropractors overtreat, overcharge, and utilize x-rays too freely. Unfortunately, he generalizes broadly from these limited experiences. In addition, he states that while "chiropractic treatment can be helpful in cases of acute musculoskeletal pain, tension headaches, and recovery from trauma; it is less effective with chronic pain syndromes." This ignores solid scientific research such as the landmark Canadian study co-authored by chiropractor J.R. Cassidy and world-renowned orthopedic surgeon W.H. Kirkaldy-Willis, in which chiropractic had excellent results with low back pain patients who had been unresponsive to conventional medical care, and whose average duration of pain was seven years. (Overall, Weil's viewpoint on chiropractic is summed up in his recommendation to "see an osteopath or a good chiropractor."

Despite these reservations, I consider Spontaneous Healing to be an extremely valuable contribution to the contemporary literature of alternative and complementary medicine. Its best-seller status guarantees that many people will be helped by its inspiring contents.

Interview with Andrew Weil, M.D.