SICK AND TIRED
Dr Nick Read on the many conditions that seem to defy modern medical science

Dr Nick Read has spent many years working with irritable bowel syndrome patients and although IBS is not the subject of his new book, it is typical of the conditions that he writes about.

Dr Read has long favoured a psychotherapeutic approach to intractable conditions such as IBS, seeing the condition as a sickness of both spirit and body. The more conventional medical approach seeks a purely physical or organ- based cause for the condition - which, in many cases, simply does not exist.

And this is the thesis on which Sick and Tired is based. Although we are living longer and the rates of identifiable disease continue to fall, increasing numbers of us are suffering from debilitating conditions - IBS, ME, post-traumatic stress disorder and many more - which our GPs are unable to cure.

Dr Read calls these ‘functional’ illnesses and sees their causes as rooted in modern lifestyles: our disconnection from our local communities, and often even our native countries, the breakdown of individual family groups and the family support network, the replacement of cultural and spiritual values and aspirations by purely material ones.

This is not in any way to suggest that ‘functional’ illnesses are not real physical illness - but that their cause lies not in some organ failure or acquired virus, but in the disquiet of the minds, soulsand spirits of the sufferers. Because mind, body and spirit are inextricably linked, spiritual disquiet causes a physical disquiet which manifests as IBS, allergies, ME or degenerative conditions like arthritis or MS.

Only by recognising this link and tackling the underlying spiritual malaise along with the physical symptoms of illness can this epidemic be stemmed.

Sick and Tired is an inspiring book and will, hopefully, encourage both practitioners and patients to search deeper and more holistically for the cause of their illness.
For practitioners and the medically minded, there are over 60 pages of references and notes.

Sick and Tired published by Orion Books @ £16.99
ISBN 0-297-60705-7