Social support can save your life. In my new book, Is Your Lifestyle Killing You? I have an 8 step system for creating health. One of those steps is SOCIAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS. I have found that Western Medicine tends to treat a patient as an assortment of disconnected parts. The body is an extraordinary system; every part is connected via an intricate web of body, mind, and spirit. My 8 Step System, called The Healthy Lifestyle Solution, addresses the underlying triggers that have thrown our health off balance. In order to heal properly, we need to address the whole person. This includes the role of good nutrition, rest, physical activity, sleep and social connection.(For more information on the eight fundamental steps for optimal health, order my book Is Your Lifestyle Killing You?
One of the greatest books I have read on the topic of social support and health is by New York Times world-renowned physician Dean Ornish, M.D. He writes, “I am not aware of any other factor in medicine that has a greater impact on our survival than the healing power of love and intimacy. Not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery.”
His book titled Love and Survival: 8 Pathways to Intimacy and Health reveals that the real epidemic in modern culture is not only physical heart disease but also what he calls spiritual heart disease: loneliness, isolation, alienation, and depression. He shows how the very defenses that we think protect us from emotional pain are often the same ones that actually heighten our pain and threaten our survival. Dr. Ornish outlines pathways to intimacy and healing that have made a profound difference in his life and in the life of millions of others in turning sadness into happiness, suffering into joy.
