8 Weeks to Optimum Health: A Proven Program for Taking Full Advantage of Your Body's Natural Healing Power

by Andrew Weil

Overview

Now expanded and updated–the #1 New York Times bestselling book in which one of America’s most brilliant doctors shares his famous program for improving and protecting your health

Eight Weeks to Optimum Health lays out Dr. Andrew Weil’s famous week-by-week, step-by-step plan that will keep your body’s natural healing system in peak working order. It covers diet, exercise, lifestyle, stress, and environment–all aspects of daily living that affect health and well-being. This revised edition includes the most up-to-date findings on such vital subjects as cholesterol, antioxidants, trans fats, toxic residues in the food supply, soy products, and vitamins and supplements, together with a greatly enhanced source list of information and supplies. Inside you will learn how to

• develop eating habits for greater health and well-being
• start an effective exercise program based on walking and stretching
• work with breathing patterns to decrease stress and improve energy
• solve sleeping problems
• eliminate toxins from your diet
• minimize environmental hazards in your daily life

Plus–programs tailored to the specific needs of pregnant women, senior citizens, overweight people, and those at risk for cancer.

“If there is a heaven, sixtysomething Weil is headed there, but if he practices what he preaches, probably not for some time yet.”
– London Times

“Dr. Andrew Weil is an extraordinary phenomenon.”
–The Washington Post

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345498021
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/28/2007
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	179,785
Product dimensions:	6.07(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Andrew Weil, M.D., has worked for the National Institute of Mental Health and for fifteen years was a Research Associate in Ethnopharmacology at the Harvard Botanical Museum. He has traveled extensively throughout the world collecting information about the medicinal properties of plants, altered states of consciousness, and healing. He has written for the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine and other national publications. He is under constant demand to lecture and appear on radio and television. He is currently Associate Director of the Division of Social Perspectives in Medicine, and Director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he practices natural and preventive medicine. Eight Weeks to Optimum Health is his seventh book.

Hometown:

Tucson, Arizona

Date of Birth:

June 8, 1942

Place of Birth:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Education:

B.A. in Biology, Harvard University, 1964; M.D., Harvard Medical School, 1968

Website:

http://www.drweil.com

Read an Excerpt

From Chapter One:

You have in your hands a tool for changing your life, an Eight-Week Program for improving your health and gaining access to the power of spontaneous healing in your body. I will guide you through this program step by step, explaining the changes I will ask you to make in how you eat, how you exercise, how you breathe, and how you use your mind. I will recommend vitamins, minerals, and herbs you can use to protect your body's healing system, and I will give you ideas about how you can change long-standing patterns of behavior that impair optimal health.

The Eight-Week Program consists of small steps that build on each other until, but the time you complete it, you have laid the foundation for healthy living. You can then decide how much of the program you want to maintain on a permanent basis. I assume that you want to make changes in your life — otherwise you wouldn't be reading this book. I see my job as pointing you in the right direction. I have no doubt that you can change, because I know from my own experience that people can do so if they really want to.

In moving files recently, I came across a yellowed clipping from The New York Times of August 12, 1971, with the headline: "Meat-Eating 230-Pound Doctor Is Now 175-Pound Vegetarian." The story concerns a twenty-nine-year old physician in rural Virginia who gave up animal foods except for dairy products, with a resultant increase in energy, well-being, and overall health. There is a photograph of the doctor in his kitchen preparing fresh corn. He has a full black beard, is wearing blue jeans and a work shirt, and looks content. Next to the picture is his recipe for a rich corn soup containing milk and butter, and another recipe for a barley-and-vegetable casserole that calls for a quarter-cup of peanut oil. According to the article, the doctor's interest in consciousness led him to experiment with yoga and meditation, and "since yoga calls for a vegetarian diet, he gave up meat 'in order to really do it right.' He has been a vegetarian ever since, to the amazement of his friends, who remember him as a voracious meat eater and a fat person while at Harvard ... In one year on his new diet he has reduced from 230 to 175 pounds. His recurring colds and allergies have vanished..."

My beard is no longer black, and I have not been able to maintain my weight at 175-pounds. I am still mostly vegetarian (I have eaten fish for the past 10 years), though now I don't make rich soups with milk and butter , use oil in such quantities, or ever cook with peanut oil. I think I am wiser with age and in general feel much happier now than I did when I was twenty-nine.

I will try to accomplish three things in the pages that follow. First, I want to try to share with you my vision of the body's healing system and encourage you to rely on it in all matters concerning your health. Second, I want to convince you of the importance of developing a healthy lifestyle and the possibility of doing so quickly and easily. Third, I want to give you very specific suggestions about those aspects of lifestyle I consider most important to health and healing. I know that I cannot motivate you to undertake the Eight-Week Program — you must do that yourself — but since you have read this far, I believe you are already interested in moving forward, and I will assume that you now want to know what moving forward entails and how to do it.

Table of Contents

The Capacity to Change
People Can Change     3
An Overview of Health and Healing     16
A Healing Story: Defying a Prognosis     25
The Whole Picture     27
A Healing Story: The Spiritual Roots of Health     32
A Healing Story: Better Breathing     35
Why Eight Weeks?     37
The eight-week program
Week One     47
A Healing Story: The Value of Supplements     66
Week Two     67
A Healing Story: Seeing Better with Carrots     87
Week Three     88
A Healing Story: Effects of Breathing Exercises     106
Week Four     107
A Healing Story: Giving the Liver a Chance     121
Week Five     123
A Healing Story: The Power of Ginger     138
Week Six     140
A Healing Story: A Testimonial to Ashwagandha (and Ayurveda)     158
Week Seven     161
A Healing Story: The Power of Intimacy     175
Week Eight     177
A Healing Story: A Couple Follows the Program     187
A Healing Story: Mind over Back Pain     189
A Healing Story: Report from Michigan     191
A Healing Story: K.G.'s Adventure     193
Week Nine and Beyond     196
A Healing Story: Selected Elements of the Program     198
A Healing Story: Report from a Barber     199
A Healing Story: A Patient with Multiple Sclerosis     201
A Healing Story: Peripheral Neuropathy     203
The Customized Plans
For Those Over Age Fifty     207
For Those Over Age Seventy     211
For Those Under Age Twenty     216
For Men     220
For Women     224
For Pregnant Women (and Those Considering Pregnancy)     229
For Parents of Young Children     233
For Those Living in Big Cities     241
For Those Who Travel Frequently     244
For Those Who Are Overweight     249
For Those at Risk for Cardiovascular Disease     255
For Those at Risk for Cancer     261
Acknowledgments     267
Finding Information and Supplies     169
Notes     281
Index     293

Editorial Reviews

If there is a heaven, sixtysomething Weil is headed there, but if he practices what he preaches, probably not for some time yet.”
– London Times

“Dr. Andrew Weil is an extraordinary phenomenon.”
–The Washington Post

From the Publisher