Dr. Andrew Weil is a Harvard medical School graduate who also holds an AB degree in
Biology (Botany) from Harvard University. He is an Internationally recognized expert on medicinal herbs, mind-body interactions, and the director and founder of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.
He has authored numerous scientific articles and eight books, including three consecutive New York Times #1 bestsellers Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, Spontaneous Healing and his newest offering, Eating Well for Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Food, Diet, and Nutrition. In 1997, Time magazine named Dr. Weil as one of America's most influential people.
Dr. Andrew Weil is a well-known health and wellness "guru" who, like Deepak Chopra, has a strong focus on the mind-body connection, with a tinge of spirituality thrown in. In our opinion, he is a little outside of the mainstream, since he does believe in the use of herbs and other "non-traditional" healing methods.
Dr. Weil’s philosophy on weight loss programs...
According to
Dr. Andrew Weil, diets generally do not work. The
diet book: My
Optimum Health Plan is about making every day easy-to-follow lifestyle changes.
It is about your body’s natural ability to heal itself and align itself to
natural forces. If your body needs to lose weight, it will happen when you
follow this program, it is claimed. Dr. Weil donates all of his after-tax
profits from the "My Optimum Health Plan" to the non-profit Polaris Foundation "to sustain the vision of integrative medicine for all through education and research."
Dr. Andrew Weil is a proponent of Integrative Medicine, which combines the best ideas and practices of alternative and conventional medicine in order to maximize the body's natural healing mechanisms. Integrative Medicine has a much larger perspective and mission.
It:
Seeks to restore the focus of medicine on health and healing rather than disease and treatment.
Views patients as whole persons—minds and spirits as well as physical bodies—and considers these in the diagnosis and treatment of illness.
Emphasizes a true partnership between patient and practitioner that addresses healing on all levels—especially lifestyle factors such as
a healthy diet, exercise, stress, quality of sleep, relationships, and work, as well as the appropriate use of dietary supplements, herbs, and other treatments.
Considers simple, inexpensive, low-tech treatment methods, especially when conventional approaches are relatively ineffective or potentially harmful.
If you prefer a total wellness approach, and are open to non-traditional methods of healing and achieving wellness,
Dr. Weil’s books, tapes, DVDs and website may be for you. He will be closer to Deepak Chopra in philosophy than Dean Ornish, in our opinion. His books and website do cover such psychological issues as social skills, but are weak in areas like stimulus control and emotional overeating. However, the program does provide a very good meal planner and the ability to get feedback from other users. The emphasis is on nutrition and wellness and the mental aspects of your total body health. Also, you can’t contact a dietitian or psychologist on staff, as you can with eDiets.com. As a do-it-yourself diet website, it’s pretty good, but seems to be weak in addressing exercise. This is perhaps the site’s biggest weakness, in
BestDietForMe.com’s opinion.