The Most Important Book Written This Decade
In Western Pennsylvania there is a small town by the name of Roseto.
Settled in 1912 by immigrant Italian families coming to the New World it was like a 1,000 other similar towns all over the USA.
Except that is, for one striking detail.
It was noticed in the early 1960’s that the inhabitants of Roseto had strikingly low levels of heart disease and far lower occurrences of heart attacks than surrounding communities.
We all know that not smoking, exercising regularly, drinking in moderation and eating well are amongst the keystones habits to good health, which is what made the findings so puzzling to the scientists pouring over medical records and death certificates.
And it was puzzling because the good folk of Roseto fitted none of the above criteria.
They worked in dangerous conditions in a local quarry often exposed to toxic gasses. They ate a high fat diet with lard being their primary source of fat and they supplemented their high fat diet with lots of carbohydrates.
And all that was washed down with excessive amounts of cheap red wine and high tar unfiltered cigarettes.
The Most Important Book Written This Decade
As I have said here many times, I hate writing book reviews. As a rule I have really got to believe in a book and want to spread it’s message before I’ll drag myself through the torture of trying to compose a post that distills the authors message whilst remaining coherent.
‘Mind Over Medicine’ by Lissa Rankin is the kind of book that makes me want to write a review. I know that it can have a hugely powerful and positive effect on most people’s lives, including mine.
When I was talking about it on Facebook a couple of weeks ago I described it as the book Louise Hay should have written rather than, “You Can Heal Your Life’.
Unfortunately however, Louise Hay isn’t a medical doctor. And in her defense even though I really disliked like the book, there was nothing like the scientific evidence available at the time for her to draw on.
As such, it was full of conjecture and anecdotal evidence based largely on what had worked for her personally.
As you may well know, I’m not a big fan of people presuming that what works for them must then work for others because often that’s not the case.
When Science Meets Woo-Woo And They Both Get On
‘Mind over Medicine‘ isn’t like that.
It’s a book grounded in solid research and whereas it may brush up against the edges of woo-woo on occasions, it does so in such a way as to keep people who are more interested in hard peer reviewed science (like me) interested and engaged.
It it also has instant credibility because Rankin is a medical doctor who was honest enough with herself to admit that her years of training were ill equipped to deal with many issues. That there may be a lot more to staying healthy and self healing than traditional medicine is willing to accept.
I takes guts to admit that your years of medical school, whereas important, only provided part of the picture.
That it’s arrogant (my words by the way, not hers) to ignore not just a massive amount of anecdotal evidence, but a growing body of scientific research being conducted on health.
In particularly, the effects of chronic stress on the human immune system and overall well-being.
Rankin shares a litany of case studies, some I’d heard of before (like Mr Wright who was given a cancer drug that didn’t work, but who went into remission) and many I had not such as the heart-breaking story of a dying young boy who went into short-term lymphoma remission when he thought he was about to see his estranged father.
Unfortunately, his father never showed up and the boy died shortly after. Kudos for Rankin for not naming the guy (although I presume she couldn’t really) because I feel sure an axe and pitch fork wielding angry mob would have hunted him down by now if she had. I sure wanted to.
The Power Of The Human Belief System
I talk a lot about the human belief system and it’s incredible (usually untapped) power. This book only further entrenched my belief that we are on the edge of something incredible when the medical community get this all figured out.
A decade or so after they started to study the town of Roseto something weird started to happen. Heart disease and the damage that can cause started to rise dramatically, but why?
The locals were still eating poorly, drinking too much and smoking, so in that regard nothing had altered.
Except something more subtle and insidious had changed.
Prior to then Roseto had been one huge community in every sense of the word. People would socialize on a daily basis including eating meals together in the evening after a hard days work..
Neighbors were friends who would wander in and out of each others homes without thinking twice about feeling the need to be invited.
To coin a modern but appropriate phrase, everybody had each others back, and were happy to do so.
There was a strong sense of belonging, community and low levels of stress. But was this enough to account for for their amazing cardiac health?
The Start Of The Decline
Apparently yes, because as the town became more Americanized the socializing started to abate and the same sense of community and belonging was no longer the same.
Suddenly and with no other changes of any consequence, Roseto was no longer an outlier of good health.
It became blighted by the same health concerns of any other town who’s inhabitants did very little right when it came to looking after their health.
The Roseto story recalled by Rankin (and also talked about in the excellent ‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell) was a giant unintended experiment into the effects of community and low stress on human health, and the conclusions are incontrovertible.
Rankin posits that lowering chronic stress can have a greater medical benefit than quitting smoking and/or drinking. How many doctors do you know who would be ballsy enough to throw that idea out into the public domain?
Especially when you realize doctors are at the very top of the tree when it comes to high stress. As such, all sorts of cognitive biases and denial would creep into even admitting it to themselves never mind discussing it with colleagues or risking personal and professional ridicule.
As a side note, what do all the following doctors/scientists have in common?
- Edwards Jenner – the father of vaccinations
- Ignaz Semmelweis – the doctor who suggested doctors not washing their hands was causing cross contamination
- William Harvey – the man who discovered that blood circulates the body
- B. Marshall – the physician who insisted helicobacter and not acid caused stomach ulcers
- Josiah C Nott – the man to make the claim that mosquitoes and not toxic swamp gas caused malaria and yellow fever
- Gregor Mendel – The pioneer of genetics
All were ridiculed by the medical community when they made their initial claims and Semmelweis, Nott and Medel went to their gravies without ever being recognized.
Chronic Stress Is A Killer Of Biblical Proportions
Rankins book makes a compelling argument that chronic stress can have a destructive and catastrophic effect on our health, but I’m pleased to say she doesn’t stop there.
Rather than just scaring you to death, she delivers solutions on how you can reverse the damage or preferably, avoid it arising in the first place.
Drawing on positive psychology research done by one of my heroes, Marty Seligman, author of ‘Learned Optimism‘ and ‘Authentic Happiness‘ as well as work done by ‘The How of Happiness‘ author, Sonja Lyubomirsky, she explains that there are solutions that don’t necessarily involve a prescription.
She also explains the massive scientifically proven upsides of meditation on good health.
Maybe John the recent commenter on my tongue-in-cheek post “7 Reasons To Avoid Meditation’ who insisted that there was only anecdotal evidence to support the health benefits of meditation should grab a copy.
I said ‘Mind Over Medicine‘ is the most important book of the decade, but it may actually may be more important than that.
It has the potential to lengthen and improve the quality of millions of peoples lives including yours, and if that isn’t self development in its truest form, I don’t know what is.
While I can’t deny that lowering stress is beneficial for health, I must say that it’s not so miraculous that Roseto’s inhabitants were healthy eating lard and carbs. That’s good, actually.
No one should eat modern vegetable oils, because they’re really high in Omega 6 fatty acids, and guess what, they are THE nutrient of which consumption goes up (and I mean up) when people eating their traditional diets (even of lard and refined carbs) switch to an industrialized and more American way of living.
Also, they fill their heads with all the “artery-clogging saturated fat” crap, and “red meat is bad for you” and “you should eat a lot of disgusting whole grains and lettuce and leafy green vegetables, even though they taste sour because they don’t want us to eat them”.
I’m glad the author of the book is willing to accept that a lot of things are wrong within the medical community, but maybe it’s not as far-fetched as placebo or belief systems, or even woo woo stuff. It’s in front of our very eyes: diets suck, saturated fat is good, food is to be enjoyed, not feared, industrialized food can’t be better.
But I’ll definitely read the book.
Oh, and BTW meditation can be harmful for some people. You should really say that in your book, Tim. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns for everyone.
Just my two cents.
PS: sorry for my English.
Fab – I think you’re cherry picking the facts to make your point.
They were also heavy smokers, heavy drinkers and worked in toxic conditions. A high carb high fat diet is definitely harmful and I have never seen anybody else say to the contrary.
Now if you’re talking Paleo or Primal then I’m on board, but that requires low carbs.
So sitting down, relaxing the body and concentrating on your breath can be harmful to some people can it?
Got a link to that research?
Unless it’s an airline pilot and he’s decided to close his eyes prior to engaging the automatic pilot, then I have no idea what you mean, so I’m keen to know how you came to this conclusion.
“sitting down, relaxing the body and concentrating on your breath can be harmful to some people can it?”
Tim, come on, if meditation was only that you wouldn’t have written a whole book about it. There wouldn’t be teachers. It’s more complicated than that.
Here’s the link to one study: http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1976.39.2.601?journalCode=pr0
Maybe it is that people in the West don’t really know how to meditate, or try to become monks after a month or something, but I really think that meditation is not for everyone.
Or just accept that everything may have its downsides. Water? Sun? Air? Self-development books? ;)
No it’s not.
Meditation is mindfulness.
You can do other things like offering lovingkindness, cultivating compassion and cultivating the Jhana Factors (all traditional Buddhism), trying to empty your mind completely (Zen), observing your thoughts (Vippasana or Insight) etc.
You link to a report that’s almost 40 years old and of dubious origin on TM.
Unfortunately for your argument there is no ZERO debate amongst the scientific community of the benefits to meditation anymore because we can now map the brain with fMRI’s.
I didn’t say it was for everyone. I said it wasn’t harmful and it isn’t. Unless you happen to sit on a spike.
Sorry it took me awhile to get here. I was offended initially because I thought how could this book be the best book of the decade when the Secret is out there. Thankfully, I realized the Secret was published in 2006 so we’ll just call that the best book of last decade and this century.
When I first started seeing reviews of this book around the internet, I thought the author was a kook! Just another one of those ‘don’t go to the doctor, heal yourself books’ but you’ve made a reasonable enough argument for me to get this book. Stress kills, agreed. And we can do something to stop it! I’m all for that. And this could severely reduce society’s reliance and dependence on the medical profession? This sounds like win-win.
A win/win indeed mate. And you know I’m not woo-woo and likely to fall for kooky ideas other than the one circulating at the moment that you are a highly intelligent and amusing human being.
I’ll never fall for that one!
I am a big fan of scientific evidence, but I have a question (well two questions) for you, Tim: should we have waited for 1500 years and disliked the meditation woo-woo until the solid proof from neuroscience that it’s really really really really really really beneficial? If there is something more to our well-being than what traditional medicine is able to cover, isn’t there something more than a scientific evidence to count on?
Lucia – I think you’ve cleverly answered your own questions.
Well not everybody did wait 1,500 years as meditation had been practiced for a lot longer than that.
The problem is the medical industry can’t mak huge profits for prescribing meditation.
The crack are opening up, but I think it’s best to focus on what we can do moving forward than worrying about why it took so long. We can’t influence the latter.
Sounds like a good read, I think the same example you used at first is also talked about in Napoleon Hill’s “Outliers”
Yeh I mentioned Outliers in the post Dan, and I think you mean Malcolm Gladwell unless there’s another one.
Hi Tim–
I’m currently reading Lissa’s book after your mention of it on Facebook, and want to say thanks so much for the heads up and recommendation. Very readable and important. Heart disease is a significant topic at my house because my husband had a coronary triple bypass just four weeks ago. Also, I’m writing a book with a psychiatric medication thread (working title: Mental Health Without Meds), so have lots of other books on a similar theme scattered around and ideas flowing through my head. I’d also like to give a big recommendation for Dr David Healy’s new book “Pharmageddon” for anyone interested in how we are brainwashed and hoodwinked (aren’t those two wonderful words?) by the pharmaceutical industry to be drug consumers, and to the detriment to our health. Re: Lissa’s book–she also has a good website at lissarankin.com and she’s done a couple of Ted talks that are on YouTube. Again, thanks Tim. If it hadn’t been for your facebook post, I wouldn’t have discovered this amazing woman. Cheers.
I’ll second your TED Talk recommendation – it’s great. I’m very keen to read your book-in-progress too.
Thanks Susan and best wishes to your husband!
And I agree on the pharm industry. They are the evil trifecta along with the insurance and food manufacturing industries because they don’t give a crap about the health of this nation.
I’m just doing a sugar and gluten fast and jeez it’s hard. They add sugar to everything, and I pretty much mean everything. They even have a list of ingredients as long as your arm for a rotisserie chicken including wheat!
I know it’s none of my business, but I feel I should say this:
Stop that fast! It will make you intolerant or even allergic to gluten if you weren’t in the first place.
I really don’t know why you’re doing it, but trust me, you don’t want to start restricting food because it will make EVERYTHING worse. Visit 180degreehealth.com if you wonder why.
All the best :)
Your opinion pretty much flies in the face of all traditional medicine and ALL holistic medicine. It’s tough to do that!
What you’re effectively saying is don’t stop taking the thing that may be harming you because it may harm you more when you do take it. I won’t take it if that’s the case.
Almost everybody has a level of intolerance to gluten. Gluten is a poison designed to stop animals eating grains.
As for that one site. I can point you to 50 that disagree all populated by experts and doctors too.
You pay your money and take your choice, or more accurately you (and I’m generalizing here, I don’t mean you per se) choose the route that you already believe in.
The evidence for Paleo is COMPELLING when you really get into it and there’s been a LOT of research buried by the pharm industry.
The reality is we’ve been around for 300,000 years and it’s only very recently we have started eating stuff like gluten and dairy. Could it be harmless? Sure, but a few hundred million lactose intolerant people (including over 1 billion Chinese) and tens of millions suffering from Celiac disease who acquired it without the help of an exclusion diet, but discovered it that way, would disagree.
I understand you have the best intentions Georgina, but it’s actually reckless of you to tell somebody not to do an exclusion diet, especially when you have no idea why they are doing it or what the repercussions of not doing it are.
I’m just saying that there’s a lot more than Paleo in the world. Trust me when I say it’s not the last word. Please read the blog I linked you to, and come back later when you realize that Paleo is just ONE way of thinking about health, and certainly not the best.
Celiac disease and food intolerances are just symptoms of an underlying malfunctioning of the metabolism. You’d be amazed at how many allergies and intolerances can be cured when people get their metabolism working properly (hint: almost everyone has a bad metabolism).
Thinking Paleo, GAPS or another excruciatingly restricting, socially crippling diet is the solution is naive, to say the least.
People, medicine and everyone actually should really focus on fixing their metabolism, not in choosing a new evil food and then finding every single study supporting that stance.
When doctors and laymen alike understand that studies cannot be trusted when it comes to nutrition, we can hope to get better.
I’m really wishing you all the best. Just keep your mind open and do some research on metabolism. Unless you really want to keep eating gluten-, sugar- and dairy-free for the rest of your life. I’m telling you, there are better options for optimal health.
You are making MASSIVE assumptions about me when you know nothing about me.
I don’t live Paleo or even close, so let’s remove that.
I have worked with a metabolic ‘expert’ (an-ex leading Endocrinologist) and spent $3k to zero effect.
If it ‘works’ why did it not work with me? Or like all the other fads is it just down to a belief system.
So your assumptions that what you’re telling me is new are equally wrong as well as the inference that I’m close minded.
And stop being silly with your ‘socially crippling’ hyperbole.
I have friends who are Paleo that have no problems whatsoever and I have had no issue with avoiding gluten recently as most places now offer gluten free alternatives.
I’ll tell you what pisses me off Georgina. Not that you have an opinion, not that you posted your OPINION, but that you told me what to do with no knowledge of me and my medical situation whatsoever.
You’re an evangelist like the highly ironical post on the site talks about. Except (sarcasm alert) they’re not evangelists and they won’t see you as one either, because evangelists love other evangelists with the same beliefs and abhor others with different beliefs.
Thanks for your well wishes, now let’s end this ok? No response needed.
I’m sorry I pissed you off, it wasn’t my intention. You’re right about the evangelism thing. I will stop talking about that, I promise. Lesson learned.
No problem.
Is there a link to Amazon UK – I want you to have your commission!
Appreciate it matey, but don’t worry about I can live without the 40p I’d have made ;-)
Thanks for this thoughtful and thought-provoking review, Tim! You got me intrigued! Definitely gonna check out the book!
An
Glad you liked it An.
P.S. I completely agree with your astute observation about “You Can Heal Your Life” – there’s kernel of truth to it accompanied by a shit-tonne of unscientific nonsense.
I hate you Tim. You’ve forced me to abandon my self-imposed self-help hiatus. I saw Lissa Rankin’s comment about this post on Facebook and I couldn’t resist.
I’m roughly halfway through this book though I haven’t looked at it in a while and really should pick it up again. My Dad said he was disappointed with the end, though he didn’t comment further due to wanting to avoid spoilers. Presumably you didn’t have any such qualms!
And yes, I’m going to be a dick and suggest that you remind yourself of the correct use of the apostrophe (just like my alcoholic GCSE English teacher did!). You use “it’s” only as a contraction of “it is”. To indicate posessiveness, you use “its”. This is mildly confusing because it’s the opposite of possessiveness like “Rob’s”. But then, the English language is full of non-logic like that!
On a personal note, I’ve been pretty much unemployed for a few months now. I’ve noticed a huge reduction in my stress now that my life is so calm and non-eventful, though sadly this peace has been joined by clinical depression. I’m reminded that (as you acknowledge yourself elsewhere), we all need a certain optimal amount of stress to function correctly.
I’m not convinced that I want full-time regular employment again. Perhaps being a male model would provide an optimal level of stress…
Rob, I know when to use it’s, I just sometimes type it wrong in the first insatnce, like I’ll often type right when I mean write or there when I mean their. However 9 times out of 10 I’ll see and change these things when I edit the entire post. This one was a nightmare though.
I thought I hadn’t saved the edited version, but I had. For some reason WordPress is messing with my head as it was with Kate’s”’ guest post last week.
The Butler did it.
Oh and male model is a no-brainer. You are to male modelling what the dude from Huddersfield is to rapping ;-)
His name’s Brownson,
I don’t wanna see you frown, son,
When it comes to ice cool advice,
Don’t make me tell you thrice,
Or you’ll pay the price,
Cos Tim’s the main man in Florida,
Don’t you know dat? Duuuh!!!
Let’s hear the bass in the place,
Kicking you in the face,
Shout out to my main man Seligman,
He opened up this whole world o’fun,
And if you want your health to be the best,
You know you gotta kill that chronic stress.
PEACE OUT.
I gotta think for a minute, man.
Wow, pretty awesome my homie!
I think I’ll consider getting is book as well because I love the topic . I ordered a couple books (numbers 1 and 2) off your “20 books that will change your life ” list in the hopes they would be as good as your own “how to be rich and happy book ” . But they weren’t :/
Sorry about that Ervin, I’ll write another next year!
And i will once again purchase it and refer it to my friends! Good writing Tim!
Great synchronicity…I’ve read this morning about the Roseto study in the brilliant book “Sex at Dawn” by Christopher Ryan (yeah, us French have a filthy mind) and I was just thinking of writing a post on it. But, I guess the Universe wants to tell me :” Tim is quicker than you (despite his age)” or something similar.
My Gaelic friend, I just dug you out of my spam folder. Perhaps it knew who you were? ;-)
Write the post anyway!
I’ll definitely check out this book.
You won’t regret it Laurie!