Cured: The Power of Our Immune System and the Mind-Body Connection

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Throughout the book, Rediger explores the mind-body connection, and how our perception of the world and our stress response has a profound impact on our immune and nervous system, altering how our body functions on a deep cellular level. Rediger believes that along the journey to health, individuals need to confront those unconscious, often self-limiting beliefs that we carry about ourselves and the world, which are deeply ingrained in our psyche, and often developed through traumatic childhood experiences. Also, an acceptance of one's own mortality is an incredibly important part of the healing process, relinquishing individuals with chronic and life threatening illnesses from their fear of death, allowing them to live their fullest and most authentic lives possible. The message that I took from the book was that to survive a fatal diagnosis you should change your diet (what you change it to is not really explained as it seems that all the people did something different, however, the overriding message was to eat Vegan as that will save you), live as stress free as possible (one person took up daily yoga sessions and has completely and utterly built her entire life around this, while another cut off her family completely on the advice of spiritual guru at a retreat), do the things that make you happy, and for some individuals praying or visiting faith healers. Cure is for anyone interested in a readable overview of recent findings in mind-body phenomena, a reliably enthralling topic… A rewarding read that seeks to separate the wishful and emotion-driven from the scientifically tested.” Washington Post

As Taylor explains in his book, if you have increased your BMI by three units or more since you were in your early 20s, you are at risk. It doesn’t matter how slim you look to other people. “People imagine that if everybody says they’re slim, they won’t get type 2 diabetes, but in fact that’s not true. Our present research involves people who are not obese, and indeed, have a normal BMI.” I wish Lol had had more to say about each of the Cure albums he chronicles, but I’m guessing these details are scant due to the ravages of time on memory, to his ubiquitous inebriation during those years, and to the fact that he probably contributed little to the making of those albums, Lol’s contribution to The Cure being more about brotherhood and being a key strand in the tendrils that connect band members (maybe like Andy Fletcher in Depeche Mode?).

Through many case studies and medical research studies, Dr. Rediger also examines such healing factors as diet, chronic inflammation, good and bad stress, stress triggers, mindfulness, reframing problems, the vagus nerve and vagal tone, micro love, immune cells influenced by social interactions, beliefs effecting the body/the double slit experiment, self-expectation and self-validation, the default mode network (DMN) and how to interrupt it, redefining identity, and facing death to get more out of life. With such comprehensive and diverse information, Cured proceeds logically and is very readable, even when it dips into highly technical areas. Moreover, this is not imaginative literature. It's filled with stories of people like you and me who did the impossible without doing anything special. Their stories are narrated in detail with scientific explanations wherever necessary. The writing style is lucid and exudes a certain warmth. Each chapter touches on a different aspect of healing. The best part about the book is that it makes a lot of sense. The exact crux of the book is hard to put into words, but I'll try to give it a shot. The Cure, 1984 (l-r): Clifford Leon Anderson, Lol Tolhurst, Paul ‘Porl’ Thompson, Robert Smith. Photograph: Brian Rasic/Getty Images This is popular science writing at its very best.” Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery Visualize yourself confronting the situation head-on and then walking out the other side. And then do it. Once you walk toward a problem, it may turn out to be not the tiger you thought it was but a shadow on the wall that looked like one.

Robert doesn’t play half-heartedly; when he plays his songs he has to inhabit them for them to work. I remember some tours where he would literally collapse after the gig and lie on the floor for thirty minutes to recover from the effort he put out.” For as long as I've known Robert people have been out to get him. On stage, in the pubs, or on the street, he's always been a target. I've never seen Robert instigate a fight, yet there's something about him that provokes people." I think that this is where I have the problem with this book because it leaves you feeling like if you or someone you know gets given a terminal diagnosis then you should do all these things and if they don't work then you clearly didn't do them well enough or want to be better badly enough and I think that that is quite a dangerous message to give. This is a point I felt that was hammered home by the inclusion of a pair of twins with the same diagnosis - one wants to recover and live a normal life so, low and behold, they just get better, while the other feels that the condition is too bad and that there is nothing they can do and they continue being constrained by their illness. I understand that state of mind is important in medicine as some patients can just surrender to their conditions, however, I felt uncomfortable that this book might make people feel that they just didn't want to get better enough and that they had somehow failed. As there are no explanations behind the miraculous recoveries, it felt like a lot of emphasis was put on things that these patients did that could be a complete coincidence and not actually "the cure". A trip to Brazil, changing your diet, or even just having the mindset of 'wanting to get better' - we are told that the people who were miraculously cured did these things and somehow got better. I worry that it could make a reader who has a terminal diagnosis (or even loved ones who have passed from a terminal condition) have feelings of guilt/negativity because they aren't doing good enough or haven't changed their diet. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because I felt it was just a bit too long. The last few chapters each felt like a conclusion and it could have been a lot shorter.

A pioneering Harvard psychiatrist uncovers the lost connections between the mind, body and immune system Andrew Marr discusses the relationship between mind and body with science journalist Jo Marchant, games designer Jane McGonigal, philosopher AC Grayling and actor Simon McBurney On our first day of school, Robert and I stood at the designated stop at Hevers Avenue with our mothers, and that's when we met for the very first time. We were five years old." The author is a qualified doctor, specializing in psychiatry, who became interesting in investigating instances of so-called spontaneous remissions from often potentially fatal illnesses. This book is an account of his investigation with a sprinkling of autobiographical material that details his own early years, which he credits with being responsible for some of his own health problems. He suggests that many of those who with ill-health trajectories throughout their lives are also those who have suffered from adverse childhood experiences.

This book is incredibly underrated. The beginning makes it sound like another sensationalist book or perhaps a book that just makes wild claims. And then the author sets the tone for his research methodology - wow! I can't believe this is a physician - more like an engineer/researcher. Brilliant thinking, brilliant writing, and absolutely relatable and entertaining. From retiree Claire, diagnosed with a violent form of pancreatic cancer and given weeks to live, to 23-year-old Matt, given a 2 per cent chance of surviving a lethal brain tumour. Both rejected chemotherapy and radiation, and went home to try to prepare themselves for acceptance and a peaceful death. Both are alive over a decade later, their bodies absent of all tumours. That was all more than four decades ago. Today, at the age of 64, Tolhurst’s hair is silver-grey and only mildly ruffled on top. But he has not lost his enthusiasm for the saturnine, or his southern English accent, as he enjoys a flourishing goth afterlife on the west coast.When it comes to spontaneous healing, skepticism abounds. Doctors are taught that "miraculous" recoveries are flukes, and as a result they don't study those cases or take them into account when treating patients. Cured is not only the first insider account of the early days of the band, it is a revealing look at the artistic evolution of the enigmatic Robert Smith, the iconic lead singer, songwriter, and innovative guitarist at the heart of The Cure. A deeply rebellious, sensitive, tough, and often surprisingly "normal" young man, Smith was from the start destined for stardom, a fearless non-conformist and provocateur who soon found his own musical language through which to express his considerable and unique talent. those with remarkable recoveries are the heroes in self-care, who have achieved something unusual because they see ability and opportunity where others see disability and disease.