• The Disease Delusion

  • Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, and Happier Life
  • By: Dr. Jeffrey S. Bland
  • Narrated by: Brett Barry
  • Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (356 ratings)

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The Disease Delusion  By  cover art

The Disease Delusion

By: Dr. Jeffrey S. Bland
Narrated by: Brett Barry
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Publisher's summary

Disease care vs health care: Which would you choose?

Contrary to conventional wisdom, chronic disease is not genetically predetermined but results from a mismatch between our genes and environment and lifestyle. What we call a "disease" is the outcome of an imbalance in one or more of the seven core physiological processes. Leveraging a lifetime on the cutting edge of research and practice, Dr. Jeffrey S. Bland lays out a road map for good health by helping us understand these processes and the root causes of chronic illness. As Bland teaches us, no two people have the identical form of any disease, so with the right personalized program, we can safely and effectively manage and ultimately cure what ails us.

In the twenty-first century, medicine is undergoing a paradigm shift comparable to the advances in infectious disease in the late nineteenth century. While these strides have nearly doubled life expectancies in only four generations, quality of life has yet to rise to its full potential. Treatment of chronic diseases - diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, dementia, and many others - is responsible for 78 percent of total health care costs in the United States, yet we're managing the symptoms of these illnesses with pills and temporary remedies instead of identifying, preventing, and addressing their underlying causes. In The Disease Delusion, we learn how we may fundamentally change our perceptions of illness and approach a cure.

Dr. Bland has greatly influenced many of the biggest names in medicine today, but until now we have not had access to the larger framework in which to understand chronic illness or ways to foster lifelong health. Complete with self-evaluation questionnaires and sample meal plans, and supported by the most recent advances in health science, The Disease Delusion is indispensable to anyone determined to live long and well.

©2014 Jeffrey S. Bland (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about The Disease Delusion

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Life changer

This book is phenomenal. I have worked in an acute healthcare setting for nearly 30 years and yet this field is almost entirely new to me. During the course of this book Dr Bland has completely changed my outlook on the causes and management of chronic illness. I have no idea whether I will stick to it, but at the moment I am determined to radically change my diet, because I am now convinced that a careful choice of diet (combined with exercise, which I already do enough of) is the key to staying healthy in the long term and avoiding chronic illness.

At first I thought he was a bit of a quack and I wondered if I was wasting my time and my Audible credit, but as the story unfolded I became completely captivated and convinced by the evidence presented.

I am now going to listen again. I've downloaded the PDF and I'm going to try to implement the lifestyle changes. There are even recipes in the PDF, and I'm going to give those a go!

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28 people found this helpful

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Awful

A quick scan of the reviews that I've done will show that I'm not one to slam a book just for the sake of it, even if I don't like a book, I try to give it the due it deserves.

But this was just really bad. The narrator spoke for an hour and a half and still hadn't said anything substantial as the author was obviously trying to inspire instead of inform. There was some vague cancer statistics thrown out and a study or two mentioned and how great the study was and how respected the researcher was, but no actual facts.

I was left with the feeling that someone was trying to sell me something but didn't want to get into the details for fear of what I might think or misinterpret. Smarmy stories about people using their first names and how great their lives are now that they have this great new and improved product. But I couldn't get any real details about the product he was selling, only the pseudo-inspiring stories about the awesome people who had benefitted from it all.

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26 people found this helpful

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Doctors work for the government now

Bad news is you have to be your own physician. Good news is there are movements like Functional Medicine which offer hope to many of us who have been failed by the system.

The human body is an amazing system. Surprisingly we have very few genes and even fewer genes that make meaningful distinctions among us. Functional medicine offers a way to begin to think about how our genes are interacting with our environment, broadly defined. That broadly defined means hazards as well as diet.

Too many of us have just accepted the "wisdom" of some doctor. Take this pill and you'll be fine. Hey you're an allergy freak, but my allergy shots will desensitize you. Ummm, yeah you're kinda close to metabolic disorder, but a statin will fix that right up. Run harder, longer, accept that your basal metabolic rate is 50-60% of what it should be. It would be comical if it weren't so tragic.

If you love someone whose health is not right or are someone who feels like something just isn't quite right with their health and you want to understand how to think about what might be wrong and how to begin taking healing steps, this book is a great place to start. There is a difficulty because there are so few skilled functional medicine practitioners, but perhaps a dialogue with a trusted open minded physician could enlist an ally. There are likely resources online as well, but caveat emptor. But a better informed patient is more capable of understanding the hazards of different courses of action and weather the blistering criticisms of the big pharma reps (formerly called doctors). This book will give you the tools to be a better informed patient. Some experimentation is also necessary because our genetic codes are all different... so what works for some may not work for you. But you'll be on a more hopeful, optimistic, and empowering journey to restore your health.

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22 people found this helpful

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Generally quite good but some weak spots

It's interesting to see an author write about mistakes made in the past in medicine and particularly in nutrition and nutritional science, and then go on to promote his own views of what proper nutrition is without having a lot of evidence or studies in many cases to back it up.

I tend to largely ignore any author the writes that saturated fat is bad. Does that mean vegetable oil, which I can agree is harmful, or grass-fed butter and virgin coconut oill which do more to promote health than most other foods? Don't expect a detailed discussion here since all saturated fat is deemed to be harmful to one's health without a single study or other piece of evidence listed in support of that claim.

Further, the Mediterranean diet is clearly the author's focus as the nutritional cure-all. He cites Dean Ornish's diet, which is massively and in my view dangerously low in healthy fats, and claims that all of the benefits from the Ornish diet are due to the food. However, the Ornish diet recommends meditation, various forms of stress relief, quitting smoking and several other things, so could it be that the diet is even slightly unhealthy and these other factors more than make up for that to lead to a positive result?

Overall, the book was okay. The author should insist that when his book has numbered lists (it has many of these) that these should likely be removed and added on a website for separate viewing. There are cumbersome and not worthwhile content when listening to an audiobook.

It certainly seems to me that many scientists/researchers and now writing books (i.e. Oxygen Effect, Telomere Effect) where very little new research or in depth consideration of issues are raised and instead the authors basically decide to write about a wide varitety of issues that they basically have no experience with. At least this book was an improvement in that regard. Hopefully the author will do some reading of the current research on whole foods based modified ketogenic diets and then I suspect the advice re: Mediterranean diets (at least as the only reasonable option) will change considerably.

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17 people found this helpful

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I loved this book!

This book was a great eye opener. Be sure to have a pen and some paper handy while reading. It really opened my eyes not just to the folly of our current health system, but also to my own sluggish systems that need rejuvenation. Excellent book. I'll be listening to it a second time to recapture anything I might have missed.

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Great except for when its wrong

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes as long as I tell them an important issue on which newer information has proven one issue he mentions on Autism to be wrong

What did you like best about this story?

Just how well he covered most relevant facts

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The entire book was great except for the issue I noted

Any additional comments?

He said that Andrew Wakefield's research study on Autism was discredited and retracted. He failed to add that Dr. Wakefield has now been shown to be completely correct and that his published research was not altered or fraudulent. The book Callous Disregard covers this in depth. I hope if he ever republishes, he will add this correction

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    4 out of 5 stars

Read this to understand how your body uses food

Read this book to understand better how to talk to your doctor. Read this book to give up "giving up " to " old age" There is so much you really CAN do to live a better life, and this book gives the science that explains what and why. Well worth it.

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Phenomenal Book - Will Buy in Hard Copy

Any additional comments?

Dr Bland systematically explains the science and philosophy of functional medicine. The true value of this book will not be realized for another decade, after more of us come to the conclusion that what we are doing is ineffective, expensive, and unsustainable. Treating chronic conditions and imbalances is challenging and complex, but certainly not impossible or as hopeless as many of us believed.

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Repackaged pseudoscience

This book is not a “paradigm shift” as advertised. It is a scientific sounding repackaging is the same pseudoscientific alternative remedies that have been around for ages. Leaky gut, cellphone radiation, heavy metals/chelation, mysterious toxins, and the life crippling effects of evil gluten are all mashed together in one book.

Even more insulting is that the author spends half the book recommending the diet, exercise, and stress relief practices of modern medicine, but tries to rebrand them as his own new ideas. The problem with this is that he weaves in enough worthless remedies that it is hard to tell where solid science ends and fringe opinion begins (for the reader unfamiliar with the subject matter).

If you want to change your diet and lifestyle for the better, you would be much better off reading the works of Michael Pollan.

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Old science

Not a thorough explanation of insulin. At least he recognized that calories aren't what matters. But he is mistaken with his fear of fat and cholesterol.

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