health
If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
Food Rules (New York: Penguin, 2009), 41.
The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.
The Unquiet Grave (New York: Persea Books, 1981), 25.
If people were to bring their marriages in for a checkup on an annual basis, would that provide the same sort of benefit that a physical health checkup would provide?
“Seeking to Pre-empt Marital Strife,” by Tara Parker-Pope, Well Blog, The New York Times, June 28, 2010.
Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.
quoted by Norman Cousins in Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), paperback ed., 78.
Always the purpose of treatment is only to restore nature’s balance against disease. There is no recovery unless it comes from the force and fiber of one’s own tissues. The physician’s role is to be the cornerman—stitch up the lacerations, apply the soothing balm, encourage the use of the fighter’s specific abilities, say all the right things—to encourage the flagging strength of the real combatant, the pummeled body. As doctors, we do our best when we remove the obstacles to healing and encourage organs and cells to use their own nature-given power to overcome.
The Wisdom of the Body (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 278.
Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals].
Food Rules (New York: Penguin, 2009), 55.
Avoid food products that make health claims.
Food Rules (New York: Penguin, 2009), 19.
To get up at a regular hour, to devote a regular amount of time during the day to activities such as meditating, reading, listening to music, walking; not to indulge, at least not beyond a certain minimum, in escapist activities like mystery stories and movies, not to overeat or overdrink are some obvious and rudimentary rules. It is essential, however, that discipline should not be practiced like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one’s own will; that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behavior which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practicing it.
The Art of Loving (New York: Perennial Library, 1974), 93.
Now that I’m here, my greatest urge is to speak to you of dental care. My generation had a rough go dentally. Our dentists were the army dentists who came back from World War Two and believed that the dental office was a battle ground. You have a better chance at dental health. And I say this because you want at night to be pacing the floor because your fuse is burning inside of you, because you want to do your work, because you want to finish that canvas, because you want to make that design, because you want to help your fellow man. You don’t want to be pacing because you need a damn root canal. So, floss. You know, use salt and baking soda. Get them professionally cleaned if you can afford it. Take care of your damn teeth.
Commencement speech, Pratt Institute, May 17, 2010.
The healthiest food in the supermarket—the fresh produce—doesn’t boast about its healthfulness, because the growers don’t have the budget or the packaging. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.
Food Rules (New York: Penguin, 2009), 19.
I prayed ceaselessly for him, a desperate human prayer. Not for his life, no one could take that cup from him, but for the strength to endure the unendurable.
Just Kids (New York: Ecco, 2010), 275.
They would be resistant to it at first, because they’d think, “Oh, well, it’s a yoga, Jane Fonda workout.” But if it’s done correctly, within 30 minutes, that soldier will be worn out.
“Army Boot Camp Embraces New-Age Fitness,” by Frank Morris, All Things Considered, NPR, December 28, 2010.