Book Reviews

When The Body Says No hit the Canadian bestseller lists within two weeks of its publication. It is a controversial book that has garnered enthusiastic reviews as well as some highly disparaging ones. In the words of a writer at the Victoria Times-Colonist, When The Body Says No is "compelling and complex, a book that makes us think."

EDMONTON JOURNAL | GLOBE & MAIL | QUILL & QUIRE | VICTORIA TIMES COLONIST

From the EDMONTON JOURNAL
“People have always understood intuitively that mind and body are not separable,” writes Vancouver physician Gabor Maté in his enthralling exploration of the relationship between stress and disease, WHEN THE BODY SAYS NO. “Modernity has brought with it an unfortunate dissociation, a split between what we know with our whole being and what our thinking mind accepts as truth.”

The author of a previous best-seller on ADHD, SCATTERED MINDS, Maté argues with passionate conviction that mind and body are not just connected, but inseparably intertwined. He believes certain chronic diseases (ALS, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, breast cancer) are at least in part “an expression of an internal disharmony” driven by the abrasive effects of stress.

The significance of the mind-body connection is hardly new. An entire field of research (psychoneuroimmunology) is devoted to it, exploring “how the mind. . . profoundly interacts with the body’s nervous system and how both of them, in turn, form an essential link with our immune defenses.” And it is not such a stretch to see the connection between organic disease and “stress”, a relentless pressure that can twist around the immune system’s protective powers into a “suicidal assault”: what Maté calls “a civil war inside the body”.

But how he defines stress is so different from mainstream interpretations as to be practically revolutionary. Maté probes deeply into the life histories and psyches of the many patients he treated during his years as a palliative care physician. What emerges is nothing short of a revelation. Read the rest of this review...

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From the GLOBE & MAIL
In a note to the reader at the beginning of When The Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, Vancouver physician and author Gabor Maté states: "It is a pleasure and a privilege . . . to bring in front of the reader the findings of modern science that reaffirm the intuitions of age-old wisdom." This seemingly simple statement is confusing. Does Maté mean that he is bringing only those findings that reaffirm wisdom? If so, what about the "findings" which contradict this wisdom? And if modern science reaffirms wisdom, is he equating the two? This is but one example of the way in which Maté implies a lot but clarifies little. Read the rest of this review...

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From QUILL & QUIRE
When the Body Says No explores the intimate connection between mind, body, and spirit through life stories and intimate interviews with dozens of people who have lived, died, and sometimes overcome chronic illnesses. Vancouver physician and writer Gabor Maté has worked as a palliative care specialist, a psychotherapist, and a caregiver for people who are living on the street, so he is up to the task of tackling these complicated medical issues.

Maté illustrates his ideas by analyzing the words and stories of famous people who've experienced chronic illness, such as Ronald Reagan, Gilda Radner, Stephen Hawking, and Pamela Wallin. The interviewees' stories are often touching and haunting, and are interspersed with chapters dealing with stress, emotional repression, hormones, the "cancer personality," the biology of relationships, and the power of negative thinking. Read the rest of this review...

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From the VICTORIA TIMES COLONIST
The role of stress in physical illness is a complicated and controversial subject, and one on which Vancouver physician Dr. Gabor Maté offers some interesting views in his book When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (Knopf Canada, 300 pages, $36.95).

After years as a family physician, palliative care specialist and psychotherapist, Maté is currently staff physician at a facility for street people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

He is also the author of Scattered Minds, a book about attention deficit disorder, and has just co-authored a book on parenting with Vancouver developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld.

n When the Body Says No, Maté draws on the stories of patients he has seen over the years, as well as some high profile figures such as baseball player Lou Gehrig. Read the rest of this review...

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