Andrew Weil Quotes - Page 5

I think instead [of happiness] we should be working for contentment... an inner sense of fulfillment that's relatively independent of external circumstances.

It's rare - too rare, I have to say - for botanists to become doctors.

Even low-calorie diets and vigorous exercise fail to work in the long term for at least some people.

I'm not against high-tech medicine. It has a secure place in the diagnosis and treatment of serious disease.

As an American, you have a right to good health care that is effective, accessible, and affordable, that serves you from infancy through old age, that allows you to go to practitioners and facilities of your choosing, and that offers a broad range of therapeutic options.

The underlying idea is that you can prevent disease by balancing your body's pH... None of these claims are true. Furthermore, your body needs absolutely no help in adjusting its pH. Normally, the pH of blood and most body fluids is near seven, which is close to neutral. This is under very tight biological control because all of the chemical reactions that maintain life depend on it. Unless you have serious respiratory or kidney problems, body pH will remain in balance no matter what you eat or drink.

Giving gifts to others is a fundamental activity, as old as humanity itself. Yet in the modern, complex world, the particulars of gift-giving can be extraordinarily challenging.

I don't get money from the vitamins that I make. My after tax profits go to a foundation that supports integrative medicine.

There's no limit to what working with the breath can accomplishmy own first-hand experiences with this natural healing method have convinced me that breathing well may be the master key to good health. I recommend breath work to all my patients.

People who are contented and serene sleep well. They fall asleep easily, stay asleep, and wake refreshed. Conversely, people who are anxious, stressed, or depressed do not sleep well, and chronic insomnia is strongly associated with mood disorders. These are clear correlations, but what is cause and what is effect is not clear. Most experts agree that sleep and mood are closely related, that healthy sleep can enhance emotional well-being, while insufficient quantity or quality of sleep can adversely affect it.

The choice is ours: we can keep on craving what we don't have, and so perpetuate our unhappiness, or we can adjust our attitude toward what we do have so that our expectations conform to our experience.

Human beings have survived for millennia because most of us make good decisions about our health most of the time.

I fully support a national health care program for the U.S.

If at the first sign of infection, you always jump in with antibiotics, you do not give the immune system a chance to grow stronger.

If you have difficulty sleeping or are not getting enough sleep or sleep of good quality, you need to learn the basics of sleep hygiene, make appropriate changes, and possibly consult a sleep expert.

Drugs don't have spiritual potential, human beings have spiritual potential. And it may be that we need techniques to move us in that direction, and the use of psychoactive drugs clearly is one path that has helped many people.

I know of no culture in the world at present or any time in the past that has not been heavily involved with one or more psychoactive substances.

Shorter daylight hours can affect sleep, productivity and state of mind. Light therapy, also known as phototherapy, may help. It uses light boxes emitting full-spectrum light to simulate sunlight.

When people are told to "eat many small meals," what they may actually hear is "eat all the time," making them likely to respond with some degree of compulsive overeating. It's no coincidence, I think, that obesity rates began rising rapidly in the 1980s more or less in tandem with this widespread endorsement of more frequent meals.

To be clear, I worry as much about the impact of the Internet as anyone else. I worry about shortening attention spans, the physical cost of sedentary "surfing" and the potential for coarsening discourse as millions of web pages compete for attention by appealing to our base instincts.

The desire to transcend one's own ego boundaries, to share completely, even for a moment, the consciousness of another person must be a universal longing. It motivates many of our activities from taking drugs to making love, and lies behind the search for new ways of getting close to one another that is so intense in our society today.

As a physician, I recommend nutritious hemp seeds and oil to anyone interested in maintaining a healthy diet. Everyone will benefit when American farmers can grow this amazing crop once again.

Just the attempt to learn a [new] language is like running different software through the brain.

In the world at large, people are rewarded or punished in ways that are often utterly random. In the garden, cause and effect, labor and reward, are re-coupled. Gardening makes sense in a senseless world. By extension, then, the more gardens in the world, the more justice, the more sense is created.

I've always been willing to take risks and chances. Often I'm on talk shows and hosts will ask 'How do you feel about it, when people say you're controversial?' And I say that, 'I think if I stop being controversial, I wouldn't be doing my job.