Anticancer, A New Way of Life [ハードカバー]

The New York Times bestseller takes us on an empowering journey and changes the way we think about fighting cancer

David Servan-Schreiber's story of his journey from cancer patient to health combines memoir with a clear scientific explanation of what makes cancer cells thrive and what inhibits them. Anticancer is filled with easy to understand charts and diagrams and a sixteen-page color "Anticancer Action" insert that enables readers to make small but essential changes in lifestyle and diet. Your body knows how to fight cancer, says Servan-Schreiber, and you have to help it with nutrition, physical exercise, stress management, and avoiding environmental toxins. Anticancer enables people living with cancer to adopt a proactive attitude to living, even thriving, with cancer and helps healthy people prevent it.

After undergoing chemotherapy and surgery for brain cancer, Servan-Schreiber, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, asked his oncologist if any lifestyle changes would prevent a relapse; the answer was no. Certain this was wrong, Servan-Schreiber spent months researching a mass of scientific data on natural defenses against cancer. After a lucid introduction to cancer and its causes, he points out studies indicating that a poor diet, unhealthy habits (like smoking), some hormones, and environmental toxins increase risk. But as his advice grows more specific, evidence dwindles that these steps work. Eating organic foods, avoiding red meat and processed food, and eliminating household chemicals seem reasonable, but readers curious about how much turmeric or garlic to consume and how much it lowers their cancer risk will find no answers. Servan-Schreiber also advocates a positive, life-affirming attitude, illustrating with anecdotes of patients whose cancers disappeared when they attained inner peace. Servan-Schreiber underscores that his advice should be an adjunct to, not a replacement for, conventional treatments like surgery and chemotherapy, in this spirited mixture of good medical information, helpful suggestions and alternative medicine. (Sept. 22) ""
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A radical synthesis of science and personal experience that advocates a sea change in the way we understand and confront cancer

When David Servan- Schreiber, a dedicated scientist and doctor, was diagnosed with brain cancer, it changed his life. Confronting what medicine knows about the illness, the little known workings of the body's natural cancer-fighting capacities, and his own will to live, Servan-Schreiber found himself on a fifteen-year journey from disease and relapse into scientific exploration, and finally to health. Combining memoir with a clear explanation of what makes cancer cells thrive and what inhibits them, and describing both conventional and alternative ways to slow and prevent cancer, Anticancer is revolutionary in its clarity. It is a moving story of a doctor's inner and outer search for healing; radical in its discussion of the environment, lifestyle, and trauma; and inspiring and cautionary in its certainty that cancer cells lie dormant in all of usand we all must care for the "terrain" in which they exist.

Anticancer takes us on a serious journey and, ultimately, an empowering one. In the tradition of Michael Pollan, John Kabat- Zinn, Barbara Kingsolver, and Andrew Weil, Anticancer genuinely guides us to "a new way of life."

David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., Ph.D., is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and cofounder of the Center for Integrative Medicine. He is a founding member of the organization Doctors Without Borders and continues to work in international crisis intervention.