Andrew Weil Quotes

People who are contented and serene sleep well. They fall asleep easily, stay asleep, and wake refreshed. Conversely, people who are anxious, stressed, or depressed do not sleep well, and chronic insomnia is strongly associated with mood disorders. These are clear correlations, but what is cause and what is effect is not clear. Most experts agree that sleep and mood are closely related, that healthy sleep can enhance emotional well-being, while insufficient quantity or quality of sleep can adversely affect it.

There's no limit to what working with the breath can accomplishmy own first-hand experiences with this natural healing method have convinced me that breathing well may be the master key to good health. I recommend breath work to all my patients.

Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is, gardening is just the opposite - it is, or should be, a central, basic expression of human life.

Treatment originates outside you; healing comes from within.

Low levels of vitamin D in the population as a whole suggest that most people need to take a vitamin D supplement. This may be especially true for seniors, as the ability to synthesize vitamin D in the skin declines with age.

Healing is making whole, restoring a state of perfection and balance that has been lost.

You've got to experiment to figure out what works.

Human beings and plants have co-evolved for millions of years, so it makes perfect sense that our complex bodies would be adapted to absorb needed, beneficial compounds from complex plants and ignore the rest.

Following an anti-inflammato ry diet can help counteract the chronic inflammation that is a root cause of many serious diseases, including those that become more frequent as people age. It is a way of selecting and preparing foods based on science that can help people achieve and maintain optimum health over their lifetime.

Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.

As a physician, I recommend nutritious hemp seeds and oil to anyone interested in maintaining a healthy diet. Everyone will benefit when American farmers can grow this amazing crop once again.

American businesses are struggling to pay outrageous, exploitive insurance bills for their employees, hampering our ability to compete globally.

I am a particular fan of integrative exercise - that is, exercise that occurs in the course of doing some productive activity such as gardening, bicycling to work, doing home improvement projects and so on.

The world is beset by many problems, but in my opinion, this hijacking of our brain's reward centers by electronic media is potentially one of the most destructive.

I think it's worth trying to do something about obvious sources of stress in your life. But even more important is learning and practicing methods to neutralize the harmful effects of stress on the body and mind. There are many possibilities, anything from meditation and yoga to listening to relaxing music. My personal favorite is simple breathing techniques - they're very effective, take very little time, and they're free.

Most disease is lifestyle related and preventable

Health is wholeness and balance, an inner resilience that allows you to meet the demands of living without being overwhelmed.

If at the first sign of infection, you always jump in with antibiotics, you do not give the immune system a chance to grow stronger.

The choice is ours: we can keep on craving what we don't have, and so perpetuate our unhappiness, or we can adjust our attitude toward what we do have so that our expectations conform to our experience.

Everyone prefers some foods over others, but some adults take this tendency to an extreme. These people tend to prefer the kinds of bland food they may have enjoyed as children - such as plain or buttered pasta, macaroni and cheese, cheese pizza, French fries and grilled cheese sandwiches - and to restrict their eating to just a few dishes.

Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.

When people are told to "eat many small meals," what they may actually hear is "eat all the time," making them likely to respond with some degree of compulsive overeating. It's no coincidence, I think, that obesity rates began rising rapidly in the 1980s more or less in tandem with this widespread endorsement of more frequent meals.

In Europe, when tobacco was first introduced, it was immediately banned. In Turkey, if you got caught with tobacco, you had your nose slit. China and Russia imposed the death penalty for possession of tobacco.

I know of no culture in the world at present or any time in the past that has not been heavily involved with one or more psychoactive substances.

To be clear, I worry as much about the impact of the Internet as anyone else. I worry about shortening attention spans, the physical cost of sedentary "surfing" and the potential for coarsening discourse as millions of web pages compete for attention by appealing to our base instincts.

Another very common use, in all cultures, of psychoactive substances is to give people transcendent experiences. To allow them to transcend their human and ego boundaries to feel greater contact with the supernatural, or with the spiritual, or with the divine, however they phrase it in their terms.

As any doctor can tell you, the most crucial step toward healing is having the right diagnosis. If the disease is precisely identified, a good resolution is far more likely. Conversely, a bad diagnosis usually means a bad outcome, no matter how skilled the physician.

I don't get money from the vitamins that I make. My after tax profits go to a foundation that supports integrative medicine.

If we can make the correct diagnosis, the healing can begin. If we can't, both our personal health and our economy are doomed.

Insurance companies, whether private or government owned, must be compelled to pay for health-promoting measures. In turn, this will encourage physicians to offer such treatments in earnest.

Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication.

Studies have shown that people who are physically active sleep better than those who are sedentary. The more energy you expend during the day, the sleepier you will feel at bedtime.

Imagine that each time you inhale, that the universe is breathing into you, and as you exhale it is breathing out of you.

Imagine a world in which medicine was oriented toward healing rather than disease, where doctors believed in the natural healing capacity of human beings and emphasized prevention above treatment. In such a world, doctors and patients would be partners working toward the same ends.

The essence of health is inner balance.

The most common objection that I hear to walking as exercise is that it's too easy, that only sweaty, strenuous activity offers real benefits. But there is abundant evidence that regular, brisk walking is associated with better health, including lower blood pressure, better moods and improved cholesterol ratios.

Each day as I travel through downtown Tucson, I am amazed at how quickly the most ancient of human behaviors have changed. For as long as there have been Homo sapiens - roughly 200,000 years - people have filled their lives principally with two activities: talking directly with other people, and doing physical things.

The bottom line is that the human body is complex and subtle, and oversimplifying - as common sense sometimes impels us to do - can be hazardous to your health.

The more people have, the less content they seem to be. In America, the cultural expectation that we're to be happy all the time and our children are to be happy all the time is toxic, and I think that really gets in the way of emotional well-being.

If the only way you could read an email was to run a mile first, the urge would quickly die. Human beings constantly do subconscious effort/reward calculations. Tapping a screen is the easiest of physical tasks.

Routines may include taking a warm bath or a relaxing walk in the evening, or practicing meditation/relaxation exercises. Psychologically, the completion of such a practice tells your mind and body that the day's work is over and you are free to relax and sleep.

Learning to focus attention and concentration is very useful; meditation can help you do that.

Human beings have survived for millennia because most of us make good decisions about our health most of the time.

Technology has a shadow side. It accounts for real progress in medicine, but has also hurt it in many ways, making it more impersonal, expensive and dangerous. The false belief that a safety net of sophisticated drugs and machines stretches below us, permitting risky or lazy lifestyle choices, has undermined our spirit of self-reliance.

One of the most obvious ways dogs can improve our physical and mental health is via daily walks.

In my experience, the more people have, the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that depression is a 'disease of affluence', a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world.

I find that low protein diets often contribute to improvement in patients with immune system problems ... In fact, it would be hard to become deficient in protein in our country even if you tried.

You can't afford to get sick, and you can't depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It's up to you to protect and maintain your body's innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live.