Three Books on Healing

The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing

By Dr. Mimi Guarneri

The Heart Speaks is a beautiful book written by a cardiologist who has a warm heart. Dr. Mimi weaves her life experiences and stories about her patients throughout the book including the childhood tragedy of losing her mother to a heart attack. Her medical school training required her to suppress all her emotions. She learned to do this and for years operated on heart patients but didn’t really know them. She says in the introduction:

“No one spoke of the other layers of the heart that didn’t appear in a stress test or electrocardiogram: the mental heart affected by hostility, stress and depression, the emotional heart that could be crushed by loss, the intelligent heart that has a nervous system of its own and communicates with the brain and other parts of the body. No one lectured about the spiritual heart that yearns for a higher purpose, the universal heart that communicates with others, or the original heart that beats in the unborn fetus before the brain is formed.”

Dr. Mimi learned to listen to her patients in order to discover the correct diagnosis, finding this often more accurate than tests or her medical training. As a result the most puzzling or difficult patients responded and were helped by her.

She offers research to support her use of an integrative approach to her patients. She develops an individual treatment plan for each patient including for example, acupuncture, yoga, good nutrition, and prayer.

My review doesn’t do justice to this marvelous book. This book will be helpful to patients, doctors, nurses and the entire medical community. This approach has and will open and heal many hearts. Perhaps it will even help transform the health care system.

Dr. Lani’s No-Nonsense Bone Health Guide: The Truth about Density Testing, Osteoporosis Drugs and Building Bone Quality at Any Age

By Dr. Lani Simpson

Dr. Lani’s No-Nonsense Bone Health Guide is an outstanding book on the health of our bones and on understanding and treating osteoporosis. Dr. Lani is a chiropractor who has been trained to read dexa-scans and understand these tests. She works closely with a medical doctor. Her research and experience with patients is detailed in the book and is thorough and convincing. She experienced bone loss herself and tells her own story. Dr. Lani says that many of the medications given to promote bone growth actually cause harm. (I have had difficulty with these same medications so was glad for the validation of this.) She also says that often dexa-scans are not accurate and she gives information about how to assure you receive valid tests.

I was most surprised by Dr. Lani’s connecting the health of the digestive system of the patient and the health of the bones. When the digestion is off the body does not absorb the needed nutrients especially calcium and magnesium. (I’ve had digestive problems and never connected this with bone loss.) Instead of giving separate medications or treatment for the bones and the digestion she believes it’s essential to treat the body as a whole and understand what will help it heal. She offers a realistic plan for eating right, taking some supplements and exercising to correct the digestive issues and build stronger bones or at least stop the bone loss from progressing. This is a great reference book with much information here including pictures and diagrams. I highly recommend this book.

Spontaneous Healing: How To Discover and Enhance Your Body’s Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal itself

By Andrew Weil, M.D.

Spontaneous Healing is a fascinating and enlightening book. A friend, who had leukemia at 17 and is a healthy 50 year old now, raved about this book so I bought it. It's in paper back and probably in most libraries as it was published in 1995.

The thesis of the book is that the medical profession only concerns itself with disease. Medical schools teach nothing about prevention or about the ability of the body to heal itself. Dr. Weil, a Harvard Medical School graduate, is not against medical care but tells many ways we can encourage our body’s immune systems to help us heal. He gives many examples of “spontaneous healing.” A chapter near the end of the book titled Cancer as a Special Case gives detailed information about approaches to this disease.

Dr. Weil notes the pessimistic stance of many doctors who predict the worst - which can affect the mind and body of the patient negatively. The book offers many patient case examples of healing through natural means and many of his patients say their illness is a gift which helped them change their unhealthy or dysfunctional life styles. They learned to accept what happened in life. I highly recommend this book. 

These three books have informed my thinking about how to beat disease and I have used much of the information given to boost my immune system and stay healthy.

“Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.” Psalm 103:2-3

Blessings, Dottie