What They Know, Why It Works, and How It Can Work for You

GENE STONE

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Copyright©	2010 by Gene Stone

Afterword

Twenty-five different people with twenty-five different health secrets. From

bathing in cold H2O to dowsing in bottled H2O2, from downing dirt to doing the

downward dog. Secrets from nurses and doctors, firefighters and comedians,

agents and politicians. All the people included believe their secret is the reason

for their good health. All of them feel very confident. All of them are (or were,

during their lifetimes) very healthy.

Still, it quickly became clear to me that these people have conflicting ideas

on what helps them stay well. Rip Esselstyn avoids the dairy-based yogurts Tony

Japour consumes. Sasha Lodi and Helen Klein don’t see eye to eye on exercise.

Only Nate Halsey jumps into cold showers. Nobody else avoids people’s germs

like Rachel Hill does. Most people enjoy garlic, but only Susan Seideman Brown

consumes it so systematically.

Given that my quest for these secrets was initiated, in part, to avoid catching

colds, it seemed reasonable to adopt as many of these secrets as made sense. The

good news is that most of them are easy to add to a daily routine; some of them

were already part of mine. For instance when I co-wrote Rip’s book, The Engine

2 Diet, his unrepressed enthusiasm for a plant-based diet made me want to join

in, and I became a member of his Engine 2 pilot study. The results of my lipid

tests were impressive enough that eating only plants has been part of my life for

several years.

I’ve been performing many of Dr. Fulford’s exercises since ghostwriting his

book, Dr. Fulford’s Touch of Life. Every morning I do the two he told me were

most important: sitting in a chair and lengthening the spine, then leaning against

a wall and raising the arms to stretch in the opposite direction. These exercises

were designed to strengthen the back muscles as well as to enhance overall

health, and on that front, back pain has yet to appear in my life (except for that

one excruciating yoga ache).

Napping is already integrated into my daily routine, but in the past I ascribed

this habit to lethargy. Now I have permission to think the daily snooze is

evidence that I’m taking good care of myself. Every day, sometime between one

and three P.M. (the times recommended by Sarnoff’s daughter, nap expert Sara

Mednick), I sleep—not for as long as she recommends, but for at least fifteen minutes.

Because these secrets alone hadn’t been enough to keep me healthy, I added

more, assuming that each individual has different needs, and that in my case, a

variety of secrets was necessary to stay well. Everyone’s system is unique.

Whereas for some, one secret may suffice, for others, it may take many. Perhaps

some may need all of them.

I also noticed that even though some of the ideas clash with one another, the

people interviewed, even if they prefer one secret over all others, don’t live in a

vacuum. Many exercise aerobically and anaerobically, take vitamin and mineral

supplements, eat less than most people, and so on. In other words, they all make

an effort to live a healthy, well-balanced life.

For me, the toughest of my new habits is eating raw garlic, which I took up

after talking with Susan Brown: I don’t do it often, but whenever a cold feels

imminent, I chomp on a clove. Some people like the taste; I find the garlic

literally difficult to swallow. Still, more than any other of the secrets, my gut

tells me it’s working on whatever attackers are invading my body.

Due to my plant-based diet, chicken soup and dairy-based yogurt are offlimits,

although I do eat soy yogurt with live probiotic cultures now and then.

After hearing Barbara Pritzkat praise the powers of brewer’s yeast, I decided

to mix a tablespoon of it into my morning health concoction. Unlike the garlic,

the taste of the brewer’s yeast doesn’t bother me, although that might be due to

the fact that the rest of the mix contains pomegranate, orange, and cranberry

juices, along with a fizzy powder product called Emergen-C, a heaping scoop of

Green Vibrance (a nutritional supplement that, says the label, supports “the 4

Foundations of Health: Nutrition, Digestion, Circulation, & Immunity”), and a

half teaspoon of flaxseed oil.

The Emergen-C is replete with vitamin C, a nutrient that, thanks to Susan

Rennau’s recommendation, I now ingest a great deal more of. Coincidentally,

when I was an undergraduate at Stanford in the early 1970s, I participated in Dr.

Linus Pauling’s original vitamin C experiments, ingesting enormous amounts of

it. It gave me diarrhea, so I dropped out of the study. Today I take much less, and

my system responds much better.

Although I’m not much of a cook, I have added more herbs to my diet

(without adding excess salt). And speaking of food, caloric reduction wasn’t for

me, because I already eat less than most people and don’t feel like cutting back

any further. Although calorie consumption is primarily a health issue, to some

degree it is also a psychological one. For many, food is as much about

nurturance as nutrition; they turn to it for comfort. The majority of such people

were raised in families where meals played a vital role, and food remains a

metaphor for security, relationships, or some other deep significance. However, I

grew up in a household where food was of minimal importance. No one cooked

it well, no one enjoyed it much, and everyone left the dinner table as quickly as

possible. When I feel anxious or unhappy, I turn away from food. My weight

hasn’t changed much since college.

No matter how much I tried, though, some of these secrets simply didn’t

take. I attempted jumping into a cold shower, but couldn’t acclimate to the idea

of facing freezing water in the morning—or any other time, for that matter. Even

with Nate Halsey’s enthusiastic coaching, being drenched in cold water felt

painful. Similarly, I still feel compelled to clean my fruit pretty scrupulously,

even though Patricia Burke has explained that that may not be necessary. The

habit is too firmly ingrained.

Exercise has always been part of my life, but everyone has his or her own

preferences. Even though I’m about the same age as Helen Klein when she took

up running, I get bored too easily going long distances. However, my threetimes-

a-week gym routine does include aerobic exercise as well as weight

lifting. So the old regime will suffice for now.

After talking to pH advocate Tom Appell, I bought litmus paper and tested

my urine every day for a week, but perhaps because my diet already consists of

so many fruits and vegetables, my pH balance was healthy. And peeing on the

paper felt awkward. Several times I missed. I tried dunking my head in hydrogen

peroxide as well, and although I never missed, I never felt comfortable either, so

when the bottle was empty, it wasn’t replaced.

Living in Manhattan makes it impossible to avoid the constant sneezing,

coughing, and nose blowing of strangers. But washing my hands after this

exposure has now become routine. It hadn’t occurred to me before to wash them

unless they were dirty; now I do it preventively.

Being a city-dweller has also made it possible to make many friends, but

unlike Sydney Kling, I haven’t cataloged them. It’s hard to argue that a social

support system isn’t a healthy thing; it just never occurred to me that each friend

is a potential ally in the fight against illness. This makes my address book a

different form of pharmacy.

Finally, although Susan Smith Jones is a passionate advocate for

stresslessness, it’s nearly impossible to write for a living and remain stress-free.

I’m working on her advice points, but I can’t pretend that anxiety didn’t attack

many times when I turned on the computer and this book appeared onscreen. It

could have been worse: Watch Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining

—that’s what stress can ultimately do to a writer.

The best part of all these remedies is that in the time it’s taken to research and

publish this book, my health has unquestionably improved. I still may feel a cold

coming on now and then—but that’s about it. At no point have I come down

with the raging sore throat and red, runny nose of years past. The reason for that

may have as much to do with my new belief system as anything else: I truly

believe that the combination of secrets I’ve chosen is working for me.

And that is the one commonality of these secrets. People may take cold

showers, drink warm soup, or eat hot spices, but in each case, the person who

has shared the secret firmly believes that it is why he or she stays well. This is

why, to some degree, everyone in the book agrees with one theory—Gail

Evans’s attitude about attitude.

Rationally, that may not make much sense. But little in health research does.

For nearly every study that claims to prove point A, another study refutes it with

point B. Ideas popular in one decade become passé in the next. In the 1960s,

doctors considered many of the medical practices of the 1910s somewhat

barbaric; today the same is true of some from the 1960s. For instance, consider

“completely safe” barbiturates, the overuse of electroshock therapy, or

prescription drugs such as Halcion that were considered free of all side effects

and yet drove some people into a spiraling depression—as told in author William

Styron’s frightening account of his own experience, Darkness Visible.

All we know for sure about the year 2050 is that its doctors will ridicule

some of today’s prevailing wisdom.

So much conflicting information, and so many treatments falling in and out

of fashion—and yet one theory that’s been around since Hippocrates is the belief

in a mind-body connection. The way we think about our health may be as

important as any other aspect in determining how well we are. Still, modern

medical science doesn’t understand this role of attitude on health, and plenty of

well-documented, double-blind, randomized controlled studies dispute its

importance. In fact, until recently, Western medicine was reluctant even to admit

that the connection exists. But it could be that discussing the two constitutes a

tautology; the mind and body may be so connected that you might as well be

discussing a pancreas-body connection.

That also may explain why the placebo effect is one of the most powerful

and least understood concepts in medicine. A placebo (Latin for “I will please”)

is an inert pill that seemingly has no real medicinal benefit—and yet often has

the same effect as the actual medicine for which it is substituted. Many doctors

who have given patients placebos instead of medicine have seen those patients’

conditions improve—and many doctors now routinely use placebos in place of

prescription drugs. A 2004 study of Israeli physicians reported in the British

Medical Journal found that as many as 60 percent of them had given placebos to

their patients—generally to keep them from taking powerful drugs they didn’t

need; the figure was 40 percent in a study of Danish doctors. In a 2007 survey of

doctors in the Chicago area, 47 percent admitted to using some form of a

placebo treatment with their patients. (Controlled studies have been undertaken

to investigate this phenomenon, but the results have been inconclusive; the NIH

is currently funding several such inquiries.)

It has also been shown numerous times that the more faith a patient has in

the remedy he or she is given to combat illness, the more likely it is that the

chosen remedy will work. But not only do scientists fail to understand why it’s

true; they also can’t say why it’s true for some people and not others. And what

of the studies that have shown that the more a patient believes in a doctor’s

ability to understand him or her and the illness, the more likely it is that the

doctor’s treatments will work? Why is that so—and why doesn’t the

phenomenon work for everyone? Again, no one knows.

This does not mean that the twenty-five remedies offered in this book are

simply placebos, but perhaps without belief, the remedies might not be quite as

effective, which is why the connotation of the word placebo is changing in the

twenty-first century: Whereas it once implied something relatively worthless, it’s

now being investigated as a powerful and real medical device, one that may

unlock an entirely new paradigm for medical care. The study of the placebo

effect has even led to the examination of its opposite—the nocebo (Latin for “I

will harm”) effect, which occurs when the patient has an unduly negative attitude

toward whatever remedy he or she is being offered, invalidating its efficacy.

Science is just beginning to work on this one (the word was coined less than fifty

years ago). If it holds up, it’s more proof that the power resides in the mixture of

mind and medication.

Taking care of oneself involves many personal beliefs, however, and my own

is that my health will improve as I implement as many of these secrets as make

sense to me. Why not believe this? Think of Pascal’s wager. The seventeenthcentury

French philosopher Blaise Pascal asserted that God’s existence cannot be

proven using reason but that it makes reasonable sense to bet that God exists. Put

very simply, if you live your life believing that God exists, you have nothing to

lose and everything to gain (you’ll go to heaven). If you’re wrong, however,

you’ll have lost nothing. But if you bet that God doesn’t exist, and you’re right,

you’ll gain nothing, because when you die, it’s all over. And if you were wrong,

then you really lose, because you’ll be consigned to hell for eternity.

I’ve decided to make an earthly form of Pascal’s wager with my health. I

choose to believe I’ve found the correct combination of secrets that will keep me

healthy. I have everything to gain from believing it (assuming attitude really

does hold sway) and nothing to lose (except perhaps a bad taste in my mouth left

by raw garlic). So I intend to keep believing.

Unless for some reason I start getting sick again—in which case my belief

system will fly out the window, and I’ll need to seek out still more healthy

people. (I did make the same kind of bet when I was six concerning the existence

of Santa Claus. That one didn’t work out so well.) And that means that the

publication of this book doesn’t end the search for health secrets. If you have a

different one that you’d like to share (or an opinion of the ones I’ve described),

please visit www.secretsofpeople.com and post your experiences.

Besides belief, there is something else that everyone in the book shares:

consistency. These aren’t people who sometimes take a cold shower or

occasionally eat probiotics or run now and then. Their secrets are woven into the

fabric of their daily routine.

That’s the secret to any secret—doing it. Belief is the underlying attitude, but

without the practice, nothing is accomplished. If you decide that you want to

make one of these secrets your own, take that decision seriously. Don’t try it

now and then, or when you remember, or only when you feel ill. Whatever you

decide to do, do it, and do it as regularly as possible.

Maintaining this consistency means choosing the secrets that make sense for

you and your lifestyle. If you enjoy exercising with others but hate the gym, give

yoga a try. If solitary workouts are more to your liking, running is the way to go.

If you don’t have the time or just dislike working out, the diet-based secrets will

be easier to stomach.

Once you try one, stick with it—at least long enough to determine if it’s right

for you. I knew quickly that cold showers, no matter how healthy they might be,

were never going to be a part of my life. Eating a plant-based diet took some

time to adjust to; at first it required serious effort, but now it’s a snap, and I

seldom stray from it. Adding brewer’s yeast to my morning drink was as easy as

buying it at the health food store and storing it next to the drink’s other ingredients.

Pick a secret that makes sense for you and your lifestyle. Pick one that

appeals to your strength. Pick one that your friends and family will support.

Don’t be upset if you try one and it doesn’t work. Try another.

Good health results from good healthy habits. No matter which secret

becomes yours, make it a part of your life.

....

Introduction

CAPON AND PIGEON ACCOMPANIED BY SAUSAGES, HAM, AND WILD BOAR,

PLUS POTAGES (A TYPE OF THICK SOUP)

WHOLE ROAST SHEEP WITH SOUR-CHERRY SAUCE

A GREAT VARIETY OF ROAST BIRDS—TURTLEDOVE, PARTRIDGE, PHEASANT,

QUAIL, FIGPECKER—ACCOMPANIED BY AN OLIVE CONDIMENT

CHICKEN WITH SUGAR AND ROSEWATER

WHOLE ROAST SUCKLING PIG WITH AN ACCOMPANYING BROTH

ROAST PEACOCK WITH VARIOUS ACCOMPANIMENTS

A SWEETENED, SAGE-FLAVORED CUSTARD

QUINCES COOKED WITH SUGAR, CINNAMON, PINE NUTS, AND ARTICHOKES

VARIOUS PRESERVES MADE WITH SUGAR AND HONEY

TEN DIFFERENT TORTES AND AN ABUNDANCE OF CANDIED SPICES

Menu from Mario Bendiscioli and Adriano Gallia, Documenti di Storia Medievale, 400–1492 (Milan:

Musia, 1970), pp. 267–68.

In the 1490s, as Cornaro approached his fortieth birthday (about ten years

before an Italian aristocrat in the fifteenth century would have expected to die),

he fell ill. His doctors informed him that if he wanted to survive, he’d have to

moderate his diet. Most who received similar prescriptions ignored them, but not

Cornaro. Having lived intemperately during the first part of his life, he was

determined to live sensibly during the second part.

At the time, knowledge of the connection between diet and health was

murky, so, as an experiment, Cornaro designed himself a new diet, cutting back

drastically on the quantity of food he consumed. Each day, he limited himself to

twelve ounces of solid food and fourteen ounces of wine (the water of its day,

medieval wine was much lighter than today’s vintages).

Cornaro’s plan worked almost immediately. His health improved so

dramatically that he continued his plan until age 68, when his doctors, worried

that his food intake was too meager, insisted he eat and drink more generously.

He complied but soon developed a mild fever, prompting him to return to a

lighter menu, which he maintained for the rest of his life—till the age of 102.

Cornaro wrote about this plan in his four-volume book, often translated as

Discourses on a Temperate Life, in which he articulated his philosophy that

people should eat less as they grow older. He also elaborated on his belief that

the body prefers rest to digestive action during periods of weakness, meaning

that it is healthier to avoid food than to gorge on it. “There is no doubt,” he

wrote, “that if one so advised were to act accordingly, he would avoid all

sickness in the future, because a well-regulated life removes the cause of disease.”

Cornaro not only lived a very long time, but also remained healthy until just

before his death. As he noted, “A long life full of disease and misery is worse

than no life at all.”

For centuries afterward, Cornaro’s book was read and discussed by many

other great writers and thinkers, including essayist Joseph Addison, Sir William

Temple (Jonathan Swift’s employer), and philosopher Francis Bacon. But over

the centuries, the book’s influence waned, and today few people have even heard

of Cornaro. However, his secret—calorie reduction—has resurfaced as a twentyfirst-

century approach to achieving health and longevity (see page 18).

Many other modern health secrets also originated long ago, only to lose

favor or see their efficacy challenged by scientists looking for hard proof. But

like Cornaro’s, these secrets often have a surprising degree of validity.

For example, if you’re prone to seizures, someone might have told you to be

wary of the full moon, a warning medicine didn’t take seriously until the 1990s,

when researchers at Greece’s University of Patras Medical School reviewed the

records of 859 patients admitted for seizures and found “significant clustering of

seizures” around the full moon.

You might also have dismissed the often-heard belief that fish is brain food

as an old wives’ tale—but many recent studies show that certain oils found in

fatty fish (such as mackerel and sardines) play a significant role in brain

development and functioning. Fish intake has also been associated with a slower

rate of cognitive decline in aging patients, along with many other benefits.

For centuries, conventional wisdom held that cranberry juice will cure a

bladder infection. Researchers at Harvard Medical School recently confirmed

that cranberry juice actually does destroy bacteria clinging to the walls of the

bladder. Similarly, an apple a day may well keep the doctor away; data from

Ireland’s University of Ulster suggest that high levels of certain chemical

compounds found in apples help destroy colon-cancer cells. Moreover, Cornell

University researchers have found that apples can prevent mammary cancers in animals.

Speaking of animals, it’s often been said that having a pet is good for human

health and well-being. New evidence corroborates the concept: Dog owners, for

instance, tend to have fewer illnesses than their canine-free counterparts. “The

simple act of petting an animal has been shown to lower blood pressure by

inducing an instant relaxation response,” says Alan Beck, ScD, director of the

Center for the Human-Animal Bond at the Purdue University School of

Veterinary Medicine.

For thousands of years, doctors used leeches as a bloodletting device; the

practice was only discontinued toward the end of the nineteenth century. Recent

medical research, however, indicates that leeches can help cure many conditions,

including osteoarthritis. Bee stings, too, have made a comeback as a treatment to

alleviate the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. And if you have bedsores, one of

the best remedies is the same one that would have been prescribed for you in the

year 1250. That would be maggots, which devour dead tissue from open wounds

and eradicate bacteria by excreting a solution similar to ammonia.

In the Middle Ages, wealthy patients often drank suspensions of finely

ground gold (aurum potabile, or “drinkable gold”) to ease the symptoms of

disease. The metal then fell out of favor for hundreds of years, but at the end of

the last century, studies revealed that small quantities of liquid gold can

strengthen the immune system and are particularly useful in patients suffering

from rheumatoid arthritis. According to researchers from the Arthritis Research

Centre of Canada, “Gold therapy reduced the severity of arthritis in patients who

had a poor response with methotrexate, the standard drug used to treat the disease.”

The popular remedies mentioned above aren’t meant to suggest that all notions

held by mothers, midwives, scientists, or, for that matter, anyone else are always

accurate, or even useful. Many are flawed. Some are foolhardy. Trepanation, the

practice of drilling holes in the skull to relieve the pressure that supposedly

caused all kinds of ailments, was practiced for more than five thousand years

throughout the world. It didn’t work. For centuries many people believed that

coffee stunted growth; it doesn’t. Copper bracelets, supposedly beneficial for

arthritis sufferers, do not appear to have any benefit. The notion that staying

outside in cold weather will give you a cold turns out to be wrong; the actual risk

comes from staying inside in close contact with other people breathing germs on you.

The herb hemlock was once thought to be useful in reducing pain—but it

also induced death. Cocaine was considered an excellent teeth whitener, as well

as a treatment for morphine addiction; Sigmund Freud called it an excellent

stimulant with no side effects or abuse potential.

There was a time when doctors routinely bled their patients; bloodletting was

supposed to restore the balance of fluids in the body. When George Washington

was ill, his doctors drained eighty ounces of blood from his body, likely

precipitating his death.

In 1899, the respected Merck Manual recommended arsenic as a treatment

for baldness. These days, the cancer-causing metal is listed as a toxic substance

by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Merck Manual also listed

coffee as a means to relieve insomnia. Other beverages, particularly liqueurs

(which were first formulated as cures for everything from parasites to

impotence), were mistakenly ascribed medicinal powers. The herbal liqueur

Benedictine D.O.M. (Deo Optimo Maximo, “To God most good, most great”),

originally formulated in 1510 from twenty-seven herbs and spices, was designed

to fight malaria around the Benedictine Abbey at Fécamp on the north coast of

France. Other liqueurs once believed to have restorative powers include the

Belgian elixir d’Anvers (for stomachaches), the Greek mastic (also for gastric

relief), and the French vervein du Velay (for increasing libido).

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were rife with a particularly

infamous category of potions known as patent medicines (or nostrums),

trademarked concoctions of dubious and sometimes harmful effect. Popular in

Europe and the United States, these over-the-counter products promised

miraculous curative powers over everything from tuberculosis and venereal

diseases to colic and cancer, as well as the perennial advertising-industry

favorite, “female complaints.”

In reality, many patent medicines were benign, alcohol-based solutions, but

some contained dangerous opiates or stimulants such as morphine, opium, or

cocaine. For example, the opium-based laudanum, praised by the medical

community as an effective pain-killer, was the scourge of the underclass in

Victorian England. And heroin was once marketed by Bayer as a cough suppressant.

One of the more harmless concoctions included “snake oil,” a term first

innocently coined by a man named Clark Stanley for a benign ointment he

created to cure muscle aches—but which came to mean any fraudulent medicine.

(Stanley gained fame for killing live rattlesnakes as part of his demonstration at

the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.) Although you can no longer buy Stanley’s

Snake Oil, other potions once marketed as patent medicines are still available

(minus the health claims): Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper, 7UP, Angostura Bitters, and tonic water.

Even some very recent remedies have missed the mark. A few decades ago,

it was thought that lying on a tanning bed in winter might keep vitamin D levels

high and prevent seasonal depression—until the journal Lancet Oncology

published findings showing that the probability of cancer increased by 75

percent in people who used tanning beds before the age of thirty. Such research

led the International Agency for Research on Cancer to reclassify tanning beds

as “a definite carcinogen,” alongside tobacco products, arsenic, and mustard gas.

Which health secrets make sense and which don’t? Who can benefit most? How

can you make sure that you live a long and healthy life? How can you manage to

avoid sick days at the office?

How do you just flat-out manage avoiding being sick at all?

This book is designed to answer these questions, because all of us could

profit from knowing what keeps other people well and how to stay well ourselves.

I certainly felt my health could stand improvement. For the past two decades,

I’ve written extensively about health as a journalist and ghostwriter. As someone

who believes that responsible writing can require participation, I’ve

experimented with nearly every tip, technique, and tonic I’ve covered. (The

exception: electroconvulsive therapy. The doctors interviewed offered me a free

session, but I declined.)

This commitment means I’ve probably been tested more than nearly any

other relatively healthy human being. I’ve been through body scans, ECGs,

EKGs, DEXA bone-density scans, DEXA body composition scans, IgG food

antibody tests, and 2D and Doppler echocardiograms. I’ve had my blood tested

for C-reactive protein, homocysteine, fibrinogen, insulin levels, lipoprotein A,

and I’ve taken a glucose challenge. I’ve had urinary and serum-amino-acid

nutritional profiles taken, along with myriad lipid profiles; my cholesterol levels

have been charted so frequently that they look like a plot of the Dow Jones

Industrial Average. I’ve been tested for every possible allergy (I’m mildly

allergic to cats, certain pollens, and mold). I’ve had my muscles studied, my

organs examined, and my brain waves synched via a contraption placed on my

head (instead of generating alpha waves, my brain tuned in to a local radio station).

I’ve also sampled countless spa treatments, from Bindi Shirodhara to

Ayurvedic herbal rejuvenation, and submitted myself to dozens of New Age

modalities, including candling, rebirthing, crystal therapy, past-life regression,

and polarity therapy. I’ve had feng shui experts rearrange my home for better

energy flow and seasonal affective disorder experts install lighting to boost my

mood. I’ve undergone acupuncture, biofeedback, hypnotherapy, bioenergetics,

the Alexander technique, Rolfing, reiki, and reflexology.

Being fairly obedient, I’ve generally tried everything experts have

recommended, from exercising the 1980s way (cardiovascular and strength

training) to working out the twenty-first-century way (interval training). I’ve let

doctors attach electrodes to my scalp in sleep labs and allowed pros at

consciousness labs to investigate the inside of my brain. I’ve experimented with

Freudian therapy, Jungian therapy, primal therapy, cognitive therapy,

aromatherapy, and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).

I’ve talked to psychics about my health, and to pet psychics about my pets’

health. (One of the latter suggested my cat was whining at night to warn me that

the stairs in our apartment were dangerous.)

Despite all this, I always got sick at least twice a year. At some point every

winter, I came down with a blistering sore throat that turned into a lingering

cold. Then, in either late spring or early fall, a different kind of cold took over,

one that started with a mild tickle in the throat, moved to my chest, then settled

in my nose, where it lingered like a lazy guest who won’t get off the couch,

resting there indolently for days.

It has recently occurred to me that I was taking the wrong medicine. Instead

of relying solely on experts, my thoughts have turned to people who don’t

depend on medical professionals—or any type of expert, for that matter—but

who manage to stay healthy nevertheless.

I’ve known many such people in my life. While I was enduring one cold

after another, they were happily living under the cover of some personal secret

that kept them healthy even as I twisted, writhed, and sneezed, in thrall to

whatever germ, virus, or unidentified alien life form was sweeping through my being.

Not that all such secrets are worthwhile—as mentioned, some are downright

wrong, while others are simply strange. What all the secrets in this book share is

that they seem to work for the people who promote them—often better than the

solutions proffered by science. Despite centuries of lifesaving advances in

medicine and public health, medical professionals still can’t tell us how to stay

well. The common cold is just as common as it was eons ago, and sickness itself

shows no sign of abating. So why not look for solutions to sickness among those

for whom the common cold is uncommon?

This became my mission for the last few years: to find people who didn’t get

sick, to find out why they didn’t get sick, and then to see if their secrets were

valid for others.

For the most part, these people who “never get sick” actually may catch a

slight cold now and then or suffer an occasional ache and pain here or there.

What they don’t have are the colds, flus, and fevers so many of us get so often.

They also rarely have any serious diseases. Although they may have inherited

some kind of genetic condition that manifested at some point, they’ve

energetically fought it off—or in a few cases, did come down with a major

illness but adapted their secret to the situation and achieved a solid recovery.

Overall, they are living long and healthy lives.

....

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

THE SECRETS

1. Blue Zones

2. Brewer’s Yeast

3. Caloric Reduction

4. Chicken Soup

5. Cold Showers

6. Detoxification

7. Eating Dirt

8. Friends

9. Garlic

10. Germ Avoidance

11. Good Genes

12. Herbal Remedies

13. Hydrogen Peroxide

14. Lifting Weights

15. Napping

16. pH Balance

17. Plant-Based Diet

18. Positive Attitude

19. Probiotics

20. Running

21. Spirituality

22. Stresslessness

23. Stretching

24. Vitamin C

25. Yoga

AFTERWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

Screenbook

....

WORKMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

225 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014-4381

www.workman.com

Design and Illustrations by E.Y. Lee

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:

Page 17: “Pep-Up” recipe from Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, by Adelle Davis.

Page 24: Tips on Calorie Restriction by permission of the Calorie Restriction Society.

Page 25: Excerpts from How to Live to be 100—Or More, by George Burns.

Page 30: “Chicken Soup” recipe from Cooking Jewish, by Judy Bart Kancigor.

Page 131: “Sweet Potato—Vegetable Lasagna” recipe from The Engine 2 Diet

Page 145: “Bug Crazy: Assessing the Benefits of Probiotics,” by Laura

number 2418860309904.

Page 178: Excerpts from Dr. Fulford’s Touch of Life, by Robert C. Fulford with

Robert C. Fulford’s estate.

The original material by Thomas Moore, Judith Orloff, and Tim Sanders, and the

advice of Susan Smith Jones, were provided by those authors. To learn more

about each, please visit their websites:

Thomas Moore: Careofthesoul.net

Judith Orloff: Drjudithorloff.com

Tim Sanders: Timsanders.com

Susan Smith Jones: susansmithjones.com

The Secrets of People Who Never Get Sick

What They Know, Why It Works, and How It Can Work for You

GENE STONE

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