There is a ground-breaking book of this title by Dr Jeff Rediger that should be essential reading for us all, and especially for all doctors to help re-establish a more rational balance between modern medicine and the natural healing powers we all have.

I shall try to summarise this brilliant scientific treatise on how to activate the inherent superior healing powers we all have, but which have been overshadowed by our reliance on modern medicine. I hope this short article will be a simple DIY guide to anyone wanting to either improve their general health or to improve their chances of defeating any known disease. 

I trained as an osteopath and joined a therapy team that established the first holistic natural health clinic in Kent in 1981. Since then I have tried to promote natural healthcare and to encourage my patients to take more responsibility for their own health.

It is incredible that we have become do so reliant on modern medicine to the neglect of our inherited natural immunity to disease and the body’s inherent ability to fix itself, from the minor scratch to “untreatable diseases”.

So here are the key lifestyle changes you need to make. They all seem incredibly simple but may be very challenging for most of us.

We Are What We Eat

The stories of spontaneous healing and recovery from what are regarded as incurable diseases has been the research work of Dr Rediger for over fifteen years. In his book he has tried to identify the common elements in all these stories that could have accounted for the amazing outcomes. 

One of the most important factors has been the change in a patient’s eating habits. One could discuss this topic at great length and still not cover all the ground or encapsulate much of the essence of this powerful medicine in a simple one-line recommendation, “shift your diet to a high nutrient density diet, that means a diet based on whole plant foods, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, pulses, nuts and seeds with small amounts of other foods”. 

When you realise that most people in our advanced industrialised countries eat a diet of processed, fast food that lays the foundation for most of our chronic diseases, this simple advice makes good sense. Surely no one would fuel their car with low grade fuel mixed with substances that could gum up the engine and cause serious long-term problems? Why should we not ensure that the “fuel” we put in our mouths is of the highest octane, the highest nutritional value? 

Dr Fuhrman created the aggregate nutrient density index, or ANDI. The ANDI ranks many common foods based on how many nutrients they deliver to your body for each calorie consumed. It also helps you visualise how nutrient dense green vegetables are and how foods compare with one another. 

Foods are rated on a scale of 1-1000. He has given us a simple formula to guide our choice of food H=N/C, where “H” is health, “N” is the total nutrient content and “C “is the calorie content, with a scale from I to 1000. For instance, kale and watercress score 1000, peppers and cabbage 400, beans and oats 50, but olive oil and corn oil only score 2!  Please click here for a fuller list

Your Body Care

We service and check our cars every year at least. You wouldn’t dream of driving around with any major structural problem with your wheel tracking or your brake efficiency, though when did you last have your body structure and physical function checked and fixed? 

We are made for movement, so ensure you get adequate physical exercise, maybe just stretching and walking or whatever you enjoy doing. If your “chassis alignment” is out, you can always check this by lying down and looking at your feet! If your pelvis is twisted and not level, you will see your right foot rolling out more than your left! (The DIY structure test!) 

My advice would be to see a structural therapist, then keep your pelvis in order with my daily thirty-second exercise. Listen to this on my free podcast to learn how: The Pisa Pelvic Exercise

A Contented Mind

Maintain a positive mental outlook, with a sense of gratitude and hope. 

Dr Rediger refers to “Love Medicine” as a way to increase the calming effect of the vagus nerve system. It is the vagus nerve that pours out anti-stress hormones and is stimulated with all love connections with friends and family, as well as deep breathing when fully relaxed. 

Recent research suggests we have three “brains” – the head brain, heart brain and gut brain. The vagus connects all three. Every friendly human contact, however seemingly insignificant, stimulates the vagus nerve and its powerful healing impact.

Meditation

“It is better to believe than to disbelieve; in so doing you bring everything to the realm of possibility” Albert Einstein 

The medical profession is so careful not to give “false hope” to patients that it often destroys hope entirely. The truth is no one is wise enough to know our future, not even the highest qualified professional doctor who relies on statistics to guide his advice and therapy. 

My university training was originally in Economics and Statistics, and what I learnt was that individual people are not statistics! There are millions of “outliers”; the ones who defy the statistics! 

Mainstream medicine often dismisses the “placebo effect” when their patients start to get better without good medical reason, but Dr Rediger’s research made him aware that there are powerful healing resources in the mind and heart that medicine was leaving untapped. 

I have seen the adverse impact of the “nocebo effect” on a patient and friend who had breast cancer, and had an oncologist who could not support her whenever she began to feel better in herself. 

So, beware of the hope-destroying, gloomy prognostications from anyone. They do not help your health and survival.

Make time for short sessions of quiet mindfulness with calming breathing exercises. My experience teaching the Buteyko Method – a breath training system developed by a great Ukrainian doctor, Professor Konstantin Buteyko – to hundreds of patients is that most of us breathe badly. We have a habit of over-breathing or hyperventilating. 

Stress increases this problem and even though breathing is a totally automatic, unconscious activity, we can re-educate ourselves to return to normal healthy breathing with a little effort and perseverance. I have produced a free DIY podcast that provides the full training course. Visit: Better Breathing Means Better Health

Community & Environment

Work on building close community friendships and caring family contacts. All the evidence suggests we all need support from fellow humans for a healthy life. 

We are now discovering the severe long-term damage to the nation’s health that “lockdown” produced, especially among the elderly and children. Only history will show whether the enforced isolation was a net health benefit or not.

We not only ingest food, but we also ingest our environment, physically as air pollution, water pollution and industrial toxins, but also psychologically from noise, fear of our safety, our workplace stresses, and the constant feed from the media of disasters or crimes. Try to protect yourself from these stressors in any way you can. 

The above is only a snapshot of the full content of Dr Rediger’s book. If we all tried to make a few minor changes in our lifestyle as outlined here, there can be only one outcome:  a healthier, happier, and longer life!

Words: Michael Lingard BSc. DO