Heart Heals

Mehmet Oz is a gifted cardiovascular surgeon. He's not only a star in a field that is the exemplar of high-tech Western medical intervention today, but he has also been a leading instrument of change in his own right, and write.

Oz has developed methods for implanting in people the left ventricular assist device, a complex, partial artificial heart -- to keep them alive while awaiting heart transplant surgery. And, he has integrated the best of conventional medicine with an explorer's enthusiasm to examine alternative approaches to healing: one that is distinctively broad, and yet supremely refined.

In his book, “Healing From The Heart,” Oz gives us a mirror image of what the future of medicine will be in our century. In so doing, he also shares his “voyage of discovery,” and what he learned from medicine, and his patients: of how to harness, mould, and synthesise the mind and body as an ally in healing the heart.

His pristine pointer: when the emotional and spiritual heart begins to open, the physical heart often follows suit.

“Healing...” combines the best of Western medicine with Eastern techniques that include acupuncture, yoga etc., as well as “controversial” therapies such as hypnosis, reflexology and so on -- of treatments that are now being systematically studied in Oz's own high-tech surgical unit, where patients are making remarkable breakthroughs.

The book's bottom line: never underestimate the mind's role in healing the heart.

“Healing From The Heart”
Mehmet Oz
Plume
pp 202
Price: $8.00