Most people assume that pain or illness are caused only by injury or disease. But for about 40% of people who go to a doctor, this is not the case…

From the symptoms alone, can you tell if they are caused by disease or injury or by PPD?  Usually not definitively, but often there are helpful clues…

One of the most surprising features of PPD is that patients with very different symptoms and personal backgrounds often share personality traits that can be stressful…

If you are skeptical about any of the information in the earlier chapters, I can relate. I will share my story about this because you should know a little about the background of anyone who provides health information. It will also provide useful context about how medical clinicians are trained.

he Doctor of the Year Award in 1990 led to many other physicians becoming aware of the work I was doing. Soon I was doing 90% of the 2nd opinion consultations for the Gastroenterology Department and also seeing patients with a full range of other symptoms..

Whenever you hear or read advice from a “health expert,” ask yourself two questions before you begin following their recommendations. (This applies to me, too!)

1. Are they making a profit from the advice they are providing or the product they are selling? If so, there is a potential for a conflict of interest. (Dozens of these products are currently marketed for PPD conditions.)…

PPD can be diagnosed and successfully treated. That simple statement has the potential to transform the practice of medicine. The diagnostic process begins by recognizing …

Most people believe that when you suffer from Depression, an Anxiety Disorder or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) it is obvious that you need care from a mental health professional. But for many people with these conditions…

Learning that ACEs could cause pain or illness in adults was the biggest shock of my medical education. It comes as a surprise to most patients, too, even those who suffered abuse, neglect, loss of a parent, parental alcohol or drug abuse, or other trauma.

Many clinicians assume that the stressful personality traits listed in Chapter 3 are not subject to change. That has not been my experience.

Why is a healthy self-esteem so important? For one, it is fundamental to changing the stressful personality traits in Chapter 10 that are linked to ACEs…

This is the single most difficult task in PPD treatment: developing awareness of repressed negative emotions and then expressing them in words. The more these emotions are expressed verbally, the less they need to manifest in your body in the form of pain or illness.

One of my patients was verbally and emotionally abused by her mother for nearly fifty years. For the last fifteen of those years, she suffered debilitating attacks of dizziness and vomiting every month or two..