HEALTH
REVIEW
The Disease Delusion:
Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier,
Longer, and Happier Life
by Dr Jeffrey S Bland
I
believe that this book represents an important watershed in medical thinking. The delusion referred
to in the title is that good
medical practice is about
finding the right drug to
treat the symptoms of any given
disease. Dr. Bland, who is a proponent of functional medicine, suggests otherwise. His subversive
platform is to find and treat the
underlying causes of the chronic and debilitating diseases that
are making life a lot less fun for a
rapidly growing majority of the population. The
explosive increase of cancers, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, autoimmune diseases and the like,
has been blamed on the genetic lottery. It turns
out however, that genes respond to their environment - internal and external. The growing science
of epigenetics demonstrates that genes’ expression can be turned ON AND OFF by environmental
factors like stress, toxins, and nutrition (or lack of
it.) The changes caused can even be passed down
to subsequent generations. This is mind-blowing
information, because it implies that by changing
the environment of the body, you can change the
susceptibility to these diseases.
A very important point that he makes is that the
causes of our chronic diseases are as individual
as we are. The “cures” need to be tailored to the
particular circumstances of our life and physiology. One only needs to listen to the side effects in
9 | NEW CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW
the drug ads on TV to realize that
taking them is like playing Russian
roulette. Not surprisingly, nutrition is at the heart of his program.
As Hippocrates said, “Let food be
your medicine and medicine your
food.” He has a 4R program to get
one back on track: Remove - your
specific allergens like gluten, dairy,
shellfish, etc.; Replace – enzymes
that have become insufficient; Reinoculate – the gut bacteria that
have been killed off by antibiotics
and toxins; Repair – with nutritional supplements. Detoxifying and
de-stressing are also right up there.
Bland provides self-assessment questionnaires
to help you pinpoint your own areas of sensitivity
and suggests protocols to address them. He also
stresses the value of having the supervision of an
enlightened medical practitioner, but the 80:20
rule probably works here as well. Anyone with the
self-discipline to read and apply the principles in
this book should reap major health benefits – both
in terms of healing existing conditions and preventing more serious ones down the line.
This is just a small taste of the gems in this comprehensive book. I can only hope that the solid science
presented here will make its way into the conventional medical education curriculum. It might even
help take general medicine back to its roots of “do
no harm.”
Review by Miriam Knight