Heal Faster: Unlock Your Body’s Rapid Recovery Reflex
This book hooked me with the notion that a big part of healing is thinking differently. My intellect knows this to be true, but my emotions, desires, and ego wrestle with this fact daily. So, any book that offers tools and techniques for approaching healing as a combination of function and feeling is the perfect prescription for optimizing health. Dr. Victoria Maizes’s Heal Faster serves me, and any reader, well.
Let’s start with the facts. The author is an expert, drawing from forty years of medical experience. She’s a physician, medical school professor, and the founding executive director of The Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.
Her new book shows how to tap into the primed healing machine—the body and mind—with the guidance and support to be well, stay well, and optimize wellness.
Her thoughtful combination of expert demystification of illness and diseases, coupled with client cases that demonstrate transformation, is incredibly eye-opening. As she outlines her prescriptions for healing faster, she discusses how Western and Eastern Medicine, the mind, body, the spirit, diet, movement, thought patterns, environment, and even our home and work lifestyles are impactful.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part looks at short-lived conditions and other issues that might pop up, such as a cold or an ankle sprain. Then she goes into part two, where she addresses recovering from longer-standing health issues or diseases, something that you might initially feel is irreversible, such as diabetes, weak bone density, or depression. Part three focuses on bouncing back after a surgical procedure, whether it is cancer surgery or disc replacement. And each chapter addresses specific families of conditions and the full gamut of options to heal faster, including prescriptions, exercises, supplements, diet, breathing, etc.
The author includes informative details on the origins, effects, and symptoms of conditions and diseases, but thankfully not so much that it becomes a textbook or grosses out the reader. (Ahem, important to me!)
It’s more of a brief history of how it develops in the body, why it attacks the immune system, and what could happen if it’s not addressed. Also, she talks about current healing trends, including medicinal mushrooms and just about anything that could help one heal faster.
It offers many suggestions for small adjustments so that there aren’t any big, scary changes.
Take sleep, for example. We all know it’s critical to health, performance, and healing. Many doctors prescribe drugs or sleep aids without even thinking about accurately diagnosing what the problem is and why you’re having difficulties sleeping. It could be when you’re eating, or how many stimulants, such as caffeine, you have during the day. It could be arguments you have with family members right before you go to bed. This book offers a breath of options beyond drugs. But to be clear, the author is not anti- pharma, she’s a doctor after all. Rather, it’s about a collaborative and comprehensive approach to healing.
The trick really comes down to a willingness to change and keep an open mind. And of course, prioritizing hope. Many people who have gone to the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine have either tried everything, their doctor is out of ideas, or traditional Western medicine isn’t working. But before you get to that point, please read Heal Faster first! I recommend a straight-through read, then going back to review—and apply—what is applicable to your current needs. Then, as I have, take notes on lifestyle and diet changes that can prevent disease and pain. Finally, keep this book at the ready as a partner in diagnosing and treating whatever has impacted your health.
I also need to add that I’m a huge fan of Dr. Andrew Weil ever since sharing a dinner with him years ago, back when I lived in Houston. (Thanks, Sis!)
I have followed his career and his wisdom, incorporating his guidance into my lifestyle. And I know that his working with her already makes me biased in favor of this book. But after a few chapters in, I’m now fangirling over Victoria. I can tell from her story that she truly cares and has a passion for helping others as she partners with her patients to explore all the options that may be influencing their health and healing
Ironically, this book came at the perfect time for me to read, because I’m still recovering from my wrist fracture. Of course, some of the suggestions I’m already familiar with, but hadn’t tried or had forgotten. Most is new. Altogether, this book is serving me well, and I would recommend it to anyone who cares about living a healthier life. Especially for those of us who want to heal faster, no matter what caused our setback.
Book and Image Courtesy of Simon and Schuster and Netgalley
