My Doctor Says I'm Fine ... So Why Do I Feel So Bad?

ISBN: 1-57733-085-4, 340pp., 6x9, paper, $19.95

My Doctor Says I'm Fine ... So Why Do I Feel So Bad? gives you practical ways to deal with "pre-disease" states.

Illnesses develop out of imbalances, and not overnight. Western medicine provides us with few tools for understanding what is out of balance and what to do about it. So where do we go for help?

In the East a different approach has been used for thousands of years, an approach based on careful self-observation for clues about these vague but disturbing symptoms. The Eastern model looks at the life force, that which distinguishes the living from the non-living. The life force is expressed externally by markings on your body that precede the development of diagnosable disease.

In My Doctor Says I'm Fine ... So Why Do I Feel So Bad? you will learn how to examine markings on your face, tongue, eyes, ears, hands, and feet to learn about the nature of your own imbalances. Then you are provided with a variety of ways to bring yourself back to a state of balance.

"Shoshana Zimmerman and Margaret Peet have written an excellent collective work and a most practical guide for the reader.... This integrative approach is the medicine of the twenty-first century, a new paradigm that moves beyond the physical." Dr. Vasant Lad, BAMS, MASc

"A thoughtful and practical guide to Ayurveda, an ancient system of healing with wide ranging scientific possibilities." Peter D'Adamo, ND, Eat Right 4 Your Type and Live Right 4 Your Body Type

"This book is a synthesis of Western medicine mechanisms of disease and the influence diet and lifestyle have on them with the elegant system of ancient Eastern medicine that allows the body to be its own healer. I strongly recommend this book for its synthesis of these perspectives into a sensible healing program that is owned by the reader." Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., Clinical Nutrition, Genetic Nutritioneering

"This book is a valuable contribution for people to have more power in understanding their own healing." Ted Kaptchuk, OMD, The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine

"The authors take an ancient and complex system of medicine and translate it into a readily accessible set of principles for achieving optimal well being. Similar to the approaches employed by practitioners of Western complementary medicine, they demonstrate the power of basic lifestyle changes to profoundly impact health conditions." Robert Rountree, MD, Immunotics: A Revolutionary Way to Fight Infection, Beat Chronic Illness, and Stay Well

"My Doctor Says I'm Fine ... So Why Do I Feel So Bad is a unique book, and everyone should read it. The material covered gives down-to-earth suggestions for maintaining health and happiness." Wataru Ohashi, Reading the Body: Ohashi's Book of Oriental Diagnosis and Do-It-Yourself Shiatsu

"This book is filled with valuable insights for people searching for answers to the nagging question the title asks. By integrating the philosophies of traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda and naturopathy, this book provides rich insights for people trying to improve their health." Sally Lamont, ND, LAc, Executive Director, the Northern California Association of Naturopathic Physicians

"My Doctor Says I'm Fine ... So Why Do I Feel So Bad? will benefit persons seeking to advance their knowledge of self healing through Ayurveda and other natural approaches. This is an important book for those who are chronically ill or merely out of balance. It is for those who want to play a role in their own healing process." Marc Halpern, DC, Founder of the College of Ayurveda

"The authors remind us that in the body - as in the rest of nature - the parts often mirror the condition of the whole organism, and that the recognition of a blemish in a mirror is the first step toward its removal." Hart deFouw, co-author of Light on Life

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Foreword
Acknowledgments

Part I: Why Do I Feel So Bad?
1. How You Get to Feeling So Bad: Energy Imbalances and the Disease Process
2. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: A Close Look at Your Face
3. Look at Your Tongue: It's for More Than Just Tasting
4. A "Hands On" Look at Fingers, Nails and Palms
5. Checking Out the Rest of You: Your Eyes, Ears and Feet
6. Reading the Flow of Energy in Your Body

Part II: What Can I Do About It?
7. How to Identify What's Imbalanced: Lifestyle Links to Common System Problems
8. What to Do About What Goes Wrong: Treatment
9. Staying Clear of Trouble: Using Food to Maintain Balance
10. Protecting Yourself from Toxins in Your Food
11. Managing Your Environment So It Doesn't Make You Toxic
12. The Extra Touch for Immunity: Enhancing Balance with Herbs and Supplements
13. Tips for Travel: What to Take with You
14. Medicine of the Twenty-First Century: A New Paradigm that Moves Beyond the Physical

Appendix A: Modifying the Way You Eat
Appendix B: Food Plan for Managing Vata, Pitta and Kapha Appendix
C: Resources
Notes
Bibliography
Index

HAVE YOU EVER HAD THE EXPERIENCE of visiting your doctor because you didn't feel well only to be told there was nothing wrong with you or that you were "perfectly healthy"? Perhaps you were given this information after a battery of tests or after a routine physical exam. In either case, you left the office still wondering why you didn't feel well. Was it all in your head? "If I am so fine," you asked yourself, "why do I feel so bad?" Perhaps you were told that the doctor wanted to keep an eye on things and that you should return for another office visit in a few months. "Keeping an eye on things" meant your doctor wanted to make sure you had not gone from "healthy" to "unhealthy," in an effort to ensure that any disease was identified and treated at its earliest detectable stage.

This kind of experience is quite common, because our Western medical model is not equipped to deal with the disease process prior to the diagnosis of an identifiable disease. That is because the Western model IS a disease model: physicians treat disease. In this book we will introduce you to another medical approach which focuses on what happens in the body prior to the onset of a diagnosable disease.

When you know "something is wrong" and no disease is obvious, you can be left with a feeling of bewilderment. What can you do? What are the options?

Whatever is causing you to feel bad, to feel out of balance, is reflected by your body in ways you can learn to observe. Each kind of imbalance you experience has certain characteristics. You may, for example, have imbalances that can be characterized by the idea of coldness - cold feet and hands, always feeling cold even in a warm room, feeling emotionally cold, etc. Or you may experience the opposite characteristic, too much heat. This can manifest as rashes, infections, fevers, even hot flashes, irritability and anger. It is possible to have both excess cold and excess heat - you can alternate between cold chills and a fever, or have cold hands and feet but also have a hot heartburn from an overly acid stomach.

For you to be able to understand the nature of your imbalances, two things need to happen. You have to develop a conceptual way of looking at yourself, and then you have to know what to look for.

What we see is determined not only by where we look, but also by the questions we ask. Legend has it that the local residents who lived on the tip of South America had a truly unique experience. These "natives" literally could not see the ships of the early explorers approaching. They had no concept that a ship even existed. Not until the explorers got out of the ship and onto the land were they seen.

Some of the concepts we describe may feel as unfamiliar to you as the ships were to the "natives." However, once you "see" them you can immediately apply them to understanding what's happening in your own body.

In this chapter we will introduce you to concepts that may be new to us Westerners, but they have been used for thousands of years quite successfully in the East. In the rest of Part I of this book, we will show you how to look at yourself, physically, in a new way. In Chapter 6 we will help you interpret what you have observed by connecting your markings and other observations with the characteristic symptoms and qualities that are the basis of your imbalances. In Part II we will describe practical steps you can take to bring yourself back into balance. First you will discover ways to deal with specific common problems, and then in subsequent chapters you will learn how to strengthen your immune system. A strong immune system is the best defense against the development of chronic illnesses.

Copyright 2001

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