The Nature Cure: A Doctor's Guide to the Science of Natural Medicine - Hardcover

Michalsen MD, Andreas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525561277 ISBN 13: 9780525561279

Verlag: Viking, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

“Informative . . . I recommend it to practitioners and patients alike.” —Andrew Weil, MD, author of Eight Weeks to Optimum Health and Mind Over Meds

International bestselling author Dr. Andreas Michalsen uncovers the natural cures that will transform your health and change your life

Sunlight. Forest bathing. Fasting. Cold-water baths. Bloodletting. Leeches. Cupping. These ways of healing have been practiced in different cultures around the world for centuries. But as a cardiologist working with the most high-tech medical tools, Dr. Andreas Michalsen was taught that these practices were medieval and outdated, even dangerous. As he saw surprising results in his patients, however, Dr. Michalsen explored more deeply those seemingly "outdated" methods of healing. The more he researched, the more he was convinced by the power of natural medicine--naturopathy--to heal the human body.

Over the past few decades, Dr. Michalsen has published the most cutting-edge scientific research on the efficacy of natural medicine. At the prestigious Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Dr. Michalsen has successfully treated thousands of patients using elements found in nature--sunlight, water, nourishing foods, medicinal plants and animals. The culmination of years of research and clinical knowledge, The Nature Cure explains how and why naturopathy works. Dr. Michalsen breaks down the science behind natural ways of healing and shows how we can incorporate these methods into our everyday lives to trigger our body's self-healing mechanism.

Thoughtfully written and filled with science, history, case studies, and practical guidance, this illuminating book shares knowledge that has changed the lives of thousands of patients, teaching you what your body needs to heal--without medicine riddled with side effects or invasive procedures. Discover methods of healing that don't just cover up your symptoms, but actually address the root cause of illness.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Andreas Michalsen, MD, PhD is professor of clinical complementary medicine at the Charité University Medical Center Berlin, the largest university hospital in Europe. He is also head of the department of internal and complementary medicine at Immanuel Hospital Berlin. Dr. Michalsen is board-certified in internal medicine, emergency medicine, nutritional medicine, and physical medicine and rehabilitation. He has published over 200 scientific articles in top medical journals and has collaborated with Stanford University, Harvard University, USC, the Mayo Clinic, and many other institutions.

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Chapter One

The Basic Principles of Naturopathy

Boosting Self-Healing Powers Through Stimulus and Response

The basic principle of naturopathy-and of all traditional therapies-is the interplay of stimulus and reaction.

For example, let's say you are suffering from a cold. Your doctor is worried that a bacterial pneumonia could attach to the viral infection you already have, so he prescribes an antibiotic as well as an antipyretic. It's his intention to kill the pathogens and to relieve your fever. Maybe you'll also receive a mucolytic-to thin mucus-and zinc or vitamin C to strengthen your immune system.

What approach would naturopathy take?

You would receive a cold, damp chest compress, wound tightly around your body. You would then be wrapped in layers of blankets. This treatment will cool your feverish body down to the point where you might start to shiver, but shortly afterward you'll feel nice and warm, because your body's regulatory systems will have started to fight the cold impulse intensively-and not only locally, i.e., on the surface of the skin, but also on a cellular level. If your temperature continues to rise, leg compresses can be used to counteract the fever. To induce sweating, you'll be given linden blossom and elderberry tea to drink.

Stimulating the Human Body

Many stimuli operate in an "unspecific" manner-meaning one particular stimulus can elicit a variety of different reactions in different people based on their individual nerve reflexes and hormone levels. That reactions can differ so greatly on an individual basis-depending on a person's physical constitution and the intensity and frequency of the stimulus-leads some conventional practitioners of medicine to believe that naturopathic treatments don't work. But they're misjudging the principle: While conventional medicine eliminates disease from the outside and often attains quick (but short-lived) successes in doing so, naturopathy works by teasing out our self-healing powers. It aims at stimulating the human body so that we regain our health on our own.

This requires patience. Through deliberately placed and well-dosed stimuli, the body is given a wake-up call to heal. To continue our example from earlier, a patient undergoing a naturopathic treatment for his cold would have to endure his fever (within reason). By doing so he gives his immune system the chance to fight the pathogens itself. He might drink linden blossom tea, which induces sweating. And instead of taking vitamins and antibiotics, which wouldn't help against a virus anyway, he might have a slow-cooked vegetable soup and drink a ginger-turmeric smoothie. Ginger and turmeric contain the best micronutrients in their natural state, which is why they can be more effective than pills.

It's important to place the right stimuli at the right intensity. For a healthy child, fever is important training for the immune system. For an elderly person suffering from a heart condition, fever can be dangerous. The relationship between dosage and effect has become a topic of current international research under the term hormesis (from the Greek, meaning "stimulus" or "impulse"). In the sixteenth century, Paracelsus, one of the first pharmacologists of the modern era, realized that a small dose of a poisonous substance can have a positive effect-because the body is introduced to the negative stimulus (noxa) and develops defense mechanisms against it. This same principle is also present in radioactivity, where it's been observed that a low amount of radiation can actually have a positive effect within the body.

However, because there currently just isn't enough data on the exact relationship between dosage and effect of unspecific stimuli, measuring an individual's response is critically important in naturopathy. The most crucial questions about a naturopathic therapy are these types of questions: Did you react well to the broth or the juice cocktail-could you digest it without any problems? Or are your feet getting warm quickly when you're wearing a compress? If the answer is no in both cases, either the dosage or the therapy is not right for you-regardless of whether this dosage or therapy worked on another person in similar circumstances.

Identifying the Patient's Physical Constitution

In naturopathy, deciding what stimulus to use depends less on the illness and more on the individual person and her physical constitution. A person's physique, psyche, and bodily regulation are interrelated in a way that can cause certain symptoms and diseases. Though it's sometimes possible to predict what symptoms or diseases a patient might have based on her constitution, such typifying is helpful mainly only as a point of reference. Most people do not fall neatly into categories. Not every obese person with a round belly (the "endomorph") has type 2 diabetes, just as not every overly thin person with pale skin suffers from depression.

So, I would never prescribe a powerful hyperthermic treatment (such as infrared hyperthermia) to someone who generally doesn't like heat, even if the person in question suffers from fibromyalgia, which is often soothed by such a treatment. By the same token, staying in a cold chamber-two to three minutes at negative 166 degrees Fahrenheit-is not helpful to patients with rheumatism, who constantly feel cold despite their propensity to inflammation.

The Right Dosage: Using the Sun as an Example

Over the course of evolution, two things were extremely important for human survival: sunlight and temperature. We can still observe how dependent we are on these two kinds of stimuli as soon as the days grow darker and the nights grow colder. During the winter, many people find themselves getting tired easily. There is even seasonal depression that manifests itself in the winter months, which can be immediately relieved through exposure to bright light.

The sun is an excellent example of hormesis-the biological phenomenon we discussed earlier-in which a small dose of a stimulus is beneficial, but a larger dose of the same stimulus is harmful. A couple decades ago, dermatologists realized that the risk for certain kinds of skin cancer, especially for basal cell carcinoma, is increased by the sun's ultraviolet light-as is the risk for melanoma. We know that it's not sunbathing in and of itself that causes cancer, but the number of sunburns suffered, though it's still a mystery why melanoma often appears on parts of the body that are hardly ever exposed to the sun, like the soles of the feet. New theories suggest that our immune system constantly fights melanoma cancer cells all over the body, but a sunburn keeps our immune system so busy that cancer cannot be sufficiently warded off in another part of the body.

The popularity of tanning salons is diminishing because of the undisputed fact that ultraviolet light facilitates skin aging and wrinkles and increases the risk of cancer. But scientific studies also indicate that sunlight makes us happier and increases our well-being. Tanning on UV-A sunbeds is enough to achieve this. UV-B sunbeds are even better, but they cannot be found in normal tanning salons. Decades ago, sunbathing was prescribed for patients with tuberculosis or for people who worked underground. Since 1980, it's been known that sunlight has a positive effect even in cases of severe illness: In his research, Cedric Garland, epidemiologist at the University of California San Diego, found that in areas where the sun shines often, many types of cancer occur far less frequently.

Many autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, but also heart attacks, some types of cancer, and diabetes, occur more frequently in areas that lie farther north and at a greater distance from the equator. Taking other factors into account, such as a difference in nutrition...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Viking
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0525561277
• ISBN 13: 9780525561279
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: VIKING; https://www.penguin.com/overview-vikingbooks/; ; Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY; New York; NY; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Zeitfracht Medien GmbH; info-medien@zeitfracht.de; ; Ferdinand-Jühlke-Straße 7; Erfurt; 99095; Deutschland