Feeling Good Is Good for You: How Pleasure Can Boost Your Immune System and Lengthen Your Life [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by x Carl J. Charnetski (Author), x Francis X. Brennan (Author) "If you could put under a microscope all the food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, and everything that your hands..." (more)
Key Phrases: Big Mac, The Final Frontier, Getting Connected (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is one of the very few I know which engages the no-man's land between psychology and physiology.... A most stimulating work on what is usually an unreadable subject."--Norman Mailer

Product Description
The media love to report how sex, laughter, and other simple pleasures are good for you. And you love to hear it. But is inciting pleasure a legitimate medical prescription for boosting a person’s immunity? Can you literally fight off infection with a smile?

Researchers Carl Charnetski and Francis Brennan say yes, and in Feeling Good is Good for You they present a convincing amount of evidence to support this comforting claim. Drawing on the results from hundreds of studies, including their own extensively publicized findings, the authors explain the science behind the connection between pleasure and the immune system, and suggest fun ways to receive its full benefits.

Feeling Good is Good for You addresses one of the most fundamental questions in medicine: How can we better teach our bodies to protect us from disease? A virtual explosion of information has emerged in recent years about the wide range of factors that can influence health. But some of the most promising research focuses on the role the mind plays in influencing the body. As this book reveals, the power that positive thought, joy, and emotional well-being have over the body’s immune system is not only measurable but influential.

Pleasure not only feels good, it does good things to our bodies. It promotes good health and helps protect us against disease. Anyone can boost their immunity by accepting the Immunity-Pleasure Connection. When the payoff is pure pleasure, what’s not to like?


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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books; illustrated edition edition (September 8, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579543464
• ISBN-13: 978-1579543464
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,604,849 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ways that Feeling Good Helps the Immune System, September 3, 2001

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Those who enjoyed and learned from Dr. Dean Ornish's fine book, Love and Survival, will be glad they read Feeling Good Is Good for You. Drs. Charnetski and Brennan report on fascinating scientific research in human studies concerning the positive influence that various pleasurable experiences and influences can have on the body's immune system. "The human drive for pleasure, if satisfied in moderation, can assist us on the pathway to good health." The authors make it clear that pleasurable experiences and environments are not the only ways that the immune system can be supported.

The book provides a basic overview of how your immune system operates, and how various diseases are encouraged or repelled by strengthening or weakening immune responses.

The starting point for all kinds of mind-body research (psychoneuroimmunology or PNI, in this case) is the well-known placebo effect. Many people get better if they think they are receiving medications, even when they are not. The placebo effect works best when the evidence of receiving medication is strongest (such as through an IV in a hospital). This effect is a real one because the brain can calm stress-based hormonal and chemical turbulence, trigger feel-good chemicals, and cause chemicals to be released that stimulate the effectiveness of the immune system.

The book goes on to take a detailed look at how optimism versus pessimism, hostility, stress, music, friends, love, touching, pets, laughing, light, visualization, religious practices, eating and drinking habits, and the degrees of these factors influence specific parts of the immune system. At the end of each subject, you are given suggestions for ways to apply the lessons to your own life. In several sections (such as the one about stress on pages 76 and 77) you will find tests you can take to measure how this factor affects your life now.

The key lessons of these practices are summarized on page 181 as a 13 point pleasure formula.

One impressive part of the book was that the authors look at the implications of following these practices if these scientific studies are later overturned by newer research. Their argument that following this advice will do no harm seems persuasive.

Although I was aware of much of this kind of research from reading other books, I found many studies here that I had not read about before. Of particularly interest was the new research that the immune system can be conditioned to become stronger.

The big surprise for me was to see that one quiz showed my stress level to be apparently much greater than I would have subjectively described it as being. I wonder if you can build up an immunity to feeling stressed, even as potentially stress-inducing situations occur. Also, I wonder if different factors affect individuals differently. I find considerable pleasure in some of the "stressful" events on the list.

After you finish enjoying applying this book's "pleasure in moderation" lessons for a few days, I suggest that you think back to other things you have done in the past that have brought you stress reduction, contentment, moderate pleasure, or peace. How can you also incorporate those activities and elements into your life now?

Give a boost to the moderate enjoyment instincts of those you meet!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A POSITIVE ATTITUDE CAN ACTUALLY MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER!, November 5, 2001

By	Sandra D. Peters "Seagull Books" (Prince Edward Island, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Most of us are quite aware that a positive attitude helps us feel better but fewer people are aware of why. A positive attitude stimulates certain hormones and enzymes that strengthen our immune system and can give us an overall feeling of improved well being. In this book the reader will learn how stress, tension, anger, loneliness, depression and negative feelings in general can lead to a variety of physical ailments. It also shows how positive influences in our life can improve our health and contribute to a longer life. Music, biofeedback, prayer, meditation, happy fulfilling relationships, pets and basic responses, such as laughing or the feeling of a warm touch not only increase our emotional state of well being, but they can actually improve our physical state as well. Stress is a personal affair. Each one of us must discover what activities cause us stress and which ones help to relieve our stress and soothe away inner tensions.

As a counsellor, it has become apparent to me that many individuals often recognize when they are under stress, but most people are not able to determine for themselves the "degree" of stress that plaques them. A prime example of this is high blood pressure. One individual may have apparent symptoms while another may have no significant symptoms at all until a stroke or heart attack strikes. "Feeling Good Is Good For You" is an excellent book which helps the reader understand the connection between mind and body, and how, to a certain extent, we can control the state of our well being. There has obviously been an extensive amount of research undertaken in writing this book, and it is one well worth reading.