Shining a little light

One of my guilty pleasures every month is reading “The Sun” magazine. It lets you feel like a voyeur sometimes, peeping into the lives of people who write exquisitely intimate memoir-style pieces for the magazine. The magazine also prints question/answer pieces based on interviews with a wide range of people. This month, the interviewee was Dr. Andrew Weil, of integrative medicine fame.

If you haven’t heard of Weil, he’s the author of several popular books, including “Natural Health, Natural Medicine: The Complete Guide to Wellness and Self-Care for Optimum Health” and “Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being.” He directs the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine (http://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu) at the University of Arizona med school.

I found the interview with him fascinating. Here’s an excerpt:

“Integrative medicine focuses on preventing disease and promoting health. Conventional medicine has failed us here, and that is one cause of the healthcare crisis. We are too occupied with managing cases of established diseases, most of which are lifestyle related and preventable. The essence of prevention is not colonoscopies and mammograms; it is understanding how our life choices reduce or increase the risk of disease. As a society we need to be helping people make better choices.”

You can read a good portion of the interview online for free at the sunmagazine.org. To read all of it, you need a copy — perhaps your nearest library might have one.

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