Jeff Rediger - Cured: The Remarkable Science and Stories of Spontaneous Healing and Recovery

Dr. Jeffrey Rediger is an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and medical director for the McLean SouthEast Adult Psychiatric Programs. He has a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and publishes in the fields of medicine, psychiatry and spirituality.

I dedicate this book to Rachael Ann Donalds, a magnificent source of color in my life, and to those whose stories dont yet have a voice.

Cured is a rare glimpse into the mysteries of human health and disease. Why do some people with incurable disease suddenly heal? This phenomenon has been ignored by medicine rather than investigated. Dr Rediger finally asks what we can learn from these cases of spontaneous remission and how can we activate the power of the human body using the mind to harness our bodys own healing systems Mark Hyman, MD, director of the Cleveland Clinic for Functional Medicine and the number one New York Times bestselling author of Food: What the Heck Should I Eat?

I believe Dr Rediger is the perfect person to write this meaningful and timely book, which shows us a new paradigm of healing from physical illness. His unique documentation of the traits and strategies of individuals who have manifested their own medical recoveries, against all odds, will offer not only hope but also genuine insight to anyone facing a medical crisis Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, neuro-anatomist, spokesperson for the Harvard Brain Bank, and author of the New York Times bestseller My Stroke of Insight

Dr Redigers work adds enormously to the growing body of work willing to take on the medical establishment and show that we may have far more control over our health than most physicians, researchers and the lay public realize Ellen Langer, PhD, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of Mindfulness and Counterclockwise

Cured is a book for everyone. This new pathway to healing is potentially life-changing, both for those with a terminal diagnosis and those who simply want to live the healthiest life possible. In these illuminating pages, Dr Rediger gives medicine a much- needed push toward a science of health and hope Daniel Friedland, MD, former chair of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, CEO of SuperSmartHealth and author of Leading Well from Within

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isnt true. The other is to refuse to believe what is true.

Sren Kierkegaard

In 2008, the road ahead looked smooth for Claire Haser. At sixty-three, shed settled into the rhythm of her life, easily weathering its ups and downs. The map she had sketched out for her future was unfolding just the way shed drawn it: she and her husband were a couple of years away from retirement. Their kids were grown and doing well, and they had a posse of healthy grandchildren. For most of their adult lives, theyd lived in Portland, Oregon, with its soft rain, vibrant green parks, and red brick. And for most of her career, Claire had been a health-care administrator, sitting at a desk all day in a fluorescent-lit room, buried under paperwork.

Claire and her husband adored Portland, but their dream was to retire to Hawaii. Theyd been saving and planning for it for years, and now it was just around the corner. And then, the axis on which Claires contented, ordinary life was spinning started to tilt. Worrisome but vague symptomsincreasingly frequent nausea, a stabbing pain that ricocheted through her abdomensent her to the doctor. Concerned, her doctor recommended a CT scan. Claire lay on the slab of the CT machine, arms over her head, trying to breathe normally, hoping that the powerful magnetic field her body was passing through would find nothing. But the scan revealed a mass on her pancreas, about two centimeters in diameter. A biopsy dashed her last hopes; the mass was malignant, meaning cancerous. Claire was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the pancreas, a brutal and incurable form of pancreatic cancer.

Cancer is a loaded word in our culture, a modern bogeyman, associated more than many illnesses with damage and death. However, the truth is that every cancer varies in regard to the possibilities of a cure and the likelihood of remission. Some cancers are not fatal, and in those instances, one dies not from the cancer but with the cancer, which can live quietly and unobtrusively in the body for many years, until the person passes away from other causes. Some cancers grow slowly but steadily; others wax and wane for a number of years. Many cancers are deadly when left alone but are highly responsive to treatmentwhether that be surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. Certain cancers will even go away by themselves, while others are not responsive to treatment at all, so any treatment the patient receives is palliative and provided only with the hope of slowing down symptoms. And there are many cancers that live between all these categories, in varying degrees of severity.

Heres what we know about Claires cancer, pancreatic adenocarcinoma: it is the most lethal form of pancreatic cancer that exists. It is rapidly progressive and leads to a brutal death. Approximately forty-five thousand people are diagnosed each year in the United States, and twice as many in Europe. Most are dead by the end of the first year. It is the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in both men and women and is projected to soon be the third.

A diagnosis of pancreatic adenocarcinoma is a death sentence. The question is not if you will die from the disease but when. Why is pancreatic cancer so deadly? In the early stages of the disease, there are no symptoms. The cancer progresses silently, stealthily. By the time the first signs emergeloss of appetite, weight loss, back pain, sometimes mild jaundice, a faint yellowing of the skin and eyesits already too late. At that point, the cancer has typically metastasized to other parts of the body. Treatment can prolong a life but not save itthe vast majority of pancreatic cancer patients (96 percent) die from the disease within five years. Most succumb much sooner; the typical post-diagnosis survival estimate is three to six months, with treatment. By that standard, Claire was lucky; her doctors gave her one year.

The future Claire had seen laid out before herher garden, Hawaii, a quiet retirement with her husbandvanished overnight. Cancer swept through like a hurricane and ripped it all away.

Claire had to wait two weeks after her diagnosis to meet with a surgeon. Her family and friends were aghast when they heard she had to wait that longshe had aggressive pancreatic cancer! Didnt she need to get it out as soon as possible? How could she go on like this for weeks, knowing that it was inside of her, possibly getting worse, possibly spreading? But she was glad for the pause. She needed to get her feet under her. Receiving a terminal diagnosis had made everything seem like a bizarre dream; her life suddenly had an end point, train tracks running off a cliff right before her eyes. It was unreal. Adding to that was the way she was treated by her doctors: as a box to be checked, a body to be shuffled along to the next procedure. As a patient in the medical system, Claire had a sense of being trapped in a kind of machine, an assembly line that moved her relentlessly from one station to the next. It felt predetermined, impersonal, routine.