Sound Mind, Sound Body: A New Model For Lifelong Health

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, 1995 - 320 pages
In this dramatic new approach to understanding personal health, Dr. Pelletier shows how lifelong good health is far more dependent on a positive, purposeful life orientation than on aerobic workouts and rigid low-fat diets. He challenges the medical community's long-accepted focus on the "disease model" and proposes a positive new health paradigm.

Sound Mind, Sound Body examines the lives of people who are rarely ill, who manage aging successfully, or who cope extremely well with both acute and chronic illness -- and describes how they do it. Among Dr. Pelletier's fascinating findings:
-- People who overcome serious illness or physical trauma in childhood are often actually strengthened -- not debilitated -- by the experience.
-- People who enjoy a sense of belonging and a real connection with others generally pass through periods of intense stress and remain untouched by illness.
-- Altruistic work is closely related to the ability to overcome life-threatening crises and disease.
-- There is a healthy way of being ill, which can help a person manage such chronic problems as arthritis and heart disease.

In addition, Sound Mind, Sound Body offers practical, effective techniques to help anyone achieve physical, mental, and emotional equilibrium and enjoy a lifetime of optimal health.

From inside the book

Contents

ONE If You Dont Know Where Youre Going
11
TWO Broken Bones Heal Strongest
37
FOUR Sound Mind Sound Body
102
FIVE Friends Can Be Good Medicine
136
SEVEN Doing Well by Doing Good
198
EIGHT Where There Is No Vision
231
Acknowledgments
277
Index
309
Copyright

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About the author (1995)

Dr. Pelletier is a Clinical Professor of Medicine, Dept of Medicine; Dept of Family and Community Medicine; and Dept of Psychiatry at the University of California School of Medicine (UCSF) in San Francisco

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