H. Robert Silverstein - Maximum Healing: Optimize Your Natural Ability to Heal

Copyright 2010 by H. Robert Silverstein. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327
Berkeley, California 94712

Cover design by Suzanne Albertson
Cover images iStockphoto.com/Wojciech Gajda; iStockphoto.com/Joe Biafore;
iStockphoto.com/ALEAIMAGE; iStockphoto.com/Elzbieta Sekowska

Maximum Healing: Optimize Your Natural Ability to Heal is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is his or her sole responsibility.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Silverstein, H. Robert.
Maximum healing : optimize your natural ability to heal / H. Robert Silverstein.
p. cm.
Summary: Combining conventional Western and holistic medical approaches, Maximum Healing presents a complete guide to improving the immune system including a thirty-day program designed to reestablish health through diet, exercise, and stress reductionProvided by publisher.
eISBN: 978-1-58394-478-3
1. ImmunityNutritional aspects. 2. Holistic medicine. 3. Alternative medicine.
4. Healing. 5. Health. I. Title.
QR182.2.N86S55 2010
616.079dc22

2010000621

v3.1

T his book is dedicated to all who strive with, or against, the current of what seems to be common knowledge and usual behaviors. It is truly dedicated to Denis Burkitt, Nathan Pritikin, Bill Spear, and Dean Ornish, MD, who saw that most diseases have preventable or correctable origins, when viewed through the lens of what are the basic requirements of our human biology.

M aximum Healing is a collaborative effort that would not have come to fruition without the help of talented, dedicated, and highly skilled people.

First and foremost, I wish to thank Tom Monte, an established and sought-after medical writer and researcher, for providing much of the scientific data and the literary approach for this work. His efforts serve as an effective backdrop to the anecdotal evidence of the healing successes of many of my patients.

I wish to acknowledge my patients for continually inspiring me. I am their enthusiastic partner in the quest to optimize their innate ability to heal. Although the case histories in this book are inspired by actual events or a combination of patient events, patient names have been changed in order to protect patient privacy and doctor-patient confidentiality.

Thanks to Elizabeth W. Preston, MA, for her computer and formatting skills as well as Jacqueline John. I wish to thank Diane Dadiskos, MS, (a patient who has been cancer-free for six years) for her creativity, unbridled enthusiasm, strength, persistence, and, repeatedly, the finest judgment in facilitating the publication of this work.

Lastly, none of this would have been possible were it not for Jill and her sister Jackie, my office managers, who maintained my busy office practice while all the meshugas of writing this book was happening.

W hat is it about this book that makes me, a very busy, practicing board-certified pulmonary specialist, conclude that its messages are extremely important and demand our very careful attention? Also, what is it about this book that made me ponder the fact that I have probably been off course regarding how I have managed the care of my patients for the past twenty-seven years? It is time for me to confront the uncomfortable truth about what I have been doing every day on the job.

I consider myself a typical American doctor practicing traditional Western medicine. Ive taken care of thousands of patients the best way I know how, and I almost never questioned my methods or my beliefs because thats the way I have been taught. I always thought that the actions that I have been trained to carry out must be correct because science says so. My teachers told me so. The medical journals told me so. And drug companies told me so. Patients believed in my methods. And I was smart enough to get into medical school! So of course, we doctors must all be right about what weve been doing in healthcare for decades.

We American physicians emerged in an era in which we were trained to fix things that were broken. Its our way now. From the time we enter medical school, we learn about diseases, what causes them, their appearances under the microscope, the biochemistry and microbiology of damage, and then we are trained to do things that will make the damage go away. If we cant treat with medicines, we try to operate the damage away with bypasses or resections. Or burn it away with radiation, or poison it away with chemotherapy. Its how weve done things in the Western medical model for decades. In fact, the responsibility for illness has frequently been thought of as the fault of the patient and not the physician.

So, really, the question that confronts medical practice in the new millennium now and that needs our most careful attention is just this: Do we American physicians really do everything we can do to fix the problems facing health care in America? And at least in my mind, and certainly in Dr. Silversteins book, you will find that the answer has to be a resounding NO.