Book review of “Cured: The Life-Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing” by Jeffrey Rediger

A doctor in Ohio performed a biopsy and found she had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an irreversible disease that is always fatal. She became weak, exhausted, and disabled. She had to carry a CPAP machine everywhere she went to get oxygen to her lungs. She began seeing a faith healer who was also a physician. He gave her acupuncture and prayed for her. She began to feel better, was taken off the oxygen, and returned to work. Years later, a chest x-ray showed no evidence she had the disease.

A woman living in Oregon learns she has pancreatic cancer. She refuses the risky surgery her doctor recommends and resolves to live the rest of her life as healthy as possible, surrounded by friends and family, doing the things she loves. Five years later, a CT scan shows her pancreas is clean.

Sounds impossible, right? No wonder doctors dismiss these results: the initial diagnosis must have been wrong. In the introduction to his new book, Healing: The Science of Natural Healing, Jeffrey Rediger writes that the very subject is taboo in mainstream medicine. Faced with recoveries that can’t be explained or replicated, doctors tend to dismiss these cases as coincidences, one-offs.

“It’s almost like he’s embarrassed,” Rediger wrote.

But Dr. Rediger, a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School, has long been intrigued by these unusual people. What, if anything, do they have in common? How did these people change their lives after their diagnosis? What caused their immune systems to become revitalized?

This compelling book is the result of 17 years spent tracking these people and verifying their stories. “These were irrefutable, documented diagnoses, followed weeks, months, and sometimes years later by documented evidence of complete remission,” he writes. Listening to their stories, he came to believe that something had changed in these patients that made healing possible, and that there were lessons to be learned.

For those familiar with health trends, the lessons will come as no surprise: they include diet, exercise, stress reduction, social interaction, love, faith, and finding your true self. But more than that, the book is a sharp critique of Western medicine’s blind spots, resistance to change, and its very structure.

Rediger proposes a radical overhaul of medical practice, and his case is compelling. The history he tells, the clinical trials he cites, and the personal stories of real people give his argument the force of a hurricane. After I finished the book, I ordered copies for friends and changed my shopping list.

Rediger is well-qualified to be a messenger: In addition to teaching at Harvard University, he is medical director of the McLean Southeast Adult Psychiatry Program and director of community engagement at McLean Hospital, a renowned psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts. He also holds a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his compassion spills over into the pages of this book.

He knew he might be ridiculed for seriously researching “miracle” cures, but he was prepared for it. Growing up in an Amish family (though not an Amish community) in Indiana, he endured the pain of being different. (He also says he was abused at home as a child.) Perhaps these experiences gave him the courage to take on such a difficult problem.

He began his research with a sense of skepticism, but eventually became convinced, he writes, that Western medicine was missing something important: It focused on the disease, not the person; instead of strengthening the immune system to prevent illness, it waited for people to get sick.

The mind-body connection is only just beginning to be established in Western medicine, he says. But every doctor knows that the placebo effect is real, and that the mind can change what’s going on inside the body. Before they got better, some patients had dreams and hallucinations. You don’t have to buy into mystical explanations to understand that your brain was telling you something.

Another often overlooked problem is chronic inflammation, known as “the world’s deadliest highway to disease,” Rediger writes. “But has your doctor ever helped you reduce inflammation in your body, or even talked to you about it?” The Western diet is cited as a major culprit in causing constant inflammation throughout the body, as is stress. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to reducing stress, the lifestyle changes made by the people featured in this book suggest ways to do so.