Brilliant Books Club: Cured
The Remarkable Science and Stories of Spontaneous Healing and Recovery
By Dr Jeff Rediger (Penguin Life)
Dr Jeff Rediger, world-leading Harvard medic, has spent the last fifteen years studying thousands of people across the globe who have experienced extraordinary cases of spontaneous recovery from illness.
In Cured - a unique guidebook to combatting illness - Dr Rediger calls for a new model of medicine, based on his four pillars of health: healing your immune system, healing your nutrition, healing your stress response and healing your identity.
During a time when we all would benefit from some much-needed medical good news, Dr Rediger answered our questions with some serious hope.
If you’re stuck in a lift with a cynic, what would you say to encourage them to read your book?
I don’t ask people to agree with me. I just ask people to be open-minded about what could be helpful for the health and well-being of themselves and those they love. That is the only thing that matters. This is also the attitude that good science requires.
What are three lessons you want readers to take away?
1. How you feel about yourself and the world at a deep level – e.g., whether the universe is “friendly” towards you – can play an important role in your perceptions of your illness, in what you feel ready to do when facing a health problem, and in how proactive – or not – you will be.
2. Your life matters. Every person is more than a disease or diagnosis. Every person brings something great and good into the world. When you don’t know that, you suffer and lack resources for developing healing and well-being that are important.
3. One of the most common things that people say to me when describing their improbable recoveries is that it took an illness for them to wake up and stop taking care of everyone else – to stop responding to the perceived expectations of others – and instead, focus on what creates life and authentic wellbeing within them. It can seem selfish to begin setting up an authentic life that helps you come alive with a deep sense of your wellbeing, value, and purpose, but it’s not.
As my friend Gabor Mate says, “If you don’t know how to say ‘No,’ your body will eventually say ‘No’ for you. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve studied who were devastated by receiving a life-threatening diagnosis, but also liberated: “Now I have an excuse and can finally focus on myself and my own needs... I don’t need to take care of everyone else expectations first….” This unexpectedly became the doorway into a new life, a new way of being.
What inspired you to write the book? Was there a particular event/thought which set you in motion?
In 2002, an oncology nurse at Mass General Hospital in Boston came to me and said that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told that she had a matter of months to live. She began calling me from a healing center saying that she was seeing some amazing recoveries and hoped I would look into it. I declined.
Not to be deterred, she began telling people to call me, so people began calling me from around the country and elsewhere saying that they had medical evidence for their recoveries and asked if I wanted to hear their stories. I initially declined, but I eventually began opening the letters, looking at some of the lab tests that were being sent to me, etc and began to realize that something inexplicable appeared to have happened, at least in some situations. That was seventeen years ago, and the research has come to a long way since then.
What’s been the biggest adversity you’ve faced - and what did you learn from the experience?
Growing up in an extremely conservative, violent family with a lot of secrets.
What piece of advice/wisdom from your book don’t you follow enough?
I write in Cured about the four pillars of healing and wellbeing that were followed by many of those who I’ve studied. I could do better on all of these (they have transformed my life at every level), but over time continue to make progress. The healing of identity and false conscious and subconscious beliefs has room for progress!
What’s the most moving - or strangest - reaction you’ve had from a reader?
A reader in South Africa is saying that her breast cancer has stabilized and she is attributing it to the changes she has been making. I do not have information about what precise diagnosis or stage of breast cancer that she has had, and I have not heard anything for the past month or so. This is just an anecdotal report.
But it’s certainly true that people do not (just) have cancer, diabetes, heart disease or a blood pressure problem. More fundamentally, people have achronic inflammation problem. Most of the major killers in our culture are lifestyle illnesses, and we are only beginning to study how to decrease chronic inflammation in our bodies and heal our lifestyles. As we begin to track how people can decrease inflammation in their bodies and brains, I expect to see evidence for more disease reversal.
Which book (by another author) has changed your life - and why?
Two books: Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramhansa Yogananda (also reread by Steve Jobs every year). Challenges my western worldview at a deep level. I’m re-reading it and trying to decide what is true, or what I’m ready to understand.
Educated, by Tara Westover. Gives words to many for the traumas they have experienced, and provides a context within which readers can work through some of these issues personally and with each other in study groups. Was launched in Cambridge!
And, most importantly, what snack keeps you going whilst writing?
Well, I’m a big fan of smoothies – without added sugar or emulsifiers. When that’s not available, I like (and have with me right now!) the Strider’s Snack Trail Mix from WholeFoods.
