Customer Reviews

Saving Yourself from the Disease-Care Crisis

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Dr. Stoll has written a book that is years ahead of it's time. He introduces a fusion of conventional (allopathic) medicine and successful alternative therapies. It provides a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms that lead to chronic diseases of all kinds. More importantly, once you have read his book and understand the mechanisms you can proceed to implement therapies that will help you re-gain your health.

As a health care professional (I'm a Certified Massage Therapist and a Holistic Practitioner), I would like to recommend this book to people who would like to feel better, especially if their health conditions have not been helped by the current system. In Saving Yourself, Dr. Stoll weaves several themes. He starts by telling the fascinating story of how he changed from following only his medical school training to learning about holistic methods and becoming a holistic practitioner. He describes how this transformed his own life and the lives of his patients. Dr. Stoll presents simple remedies for healing common conditions (including some major illnesses), offers useful information about the causes and resolution of illness, and gifts us with practical resources for self-help. Most people today know that the health care system in the U.S. is not working well, but Dr. Stoll gives a unique viewpoint -- a holistic doctor's perspective. Being a holistic practitioner myself, I already knew much about the crisis of health care in our country, but this book opened my eyes even further to understand what is really happening, and why, and where caution is needed.

In this book, Dr. Stoll speaks with candor and directness, revealing his open-minded, down-to-earth, and compassionate approach to practicing medicine with the patient's best interest at heart. I found this book to be helpful, insightful, and thought-provoking. It may bring the start of a new approach to health and healing for those with chronic conditions who are wise enough to take Dr. Stoll's words and use them to move beyond internal and external limitations. It did for me. By using this book and studying the material on his website, I incorporated his ideas as part of my life and made dramatic improvements in my own chronic condition of 20 years which I thought would never change. I am grateful for the help I have received from Dr. Stoll who has so generously shared his wisdom and experience.

Health care practitioners of all types may also benefit professionally from receiving Dr. Stoll's insight and practical experience in this book, gathered through more than 40 years of helping people heal themselves. I found his words inspirational and helpful in my own practice. I read a quote this morning that made me think of Dr. Stoll: "Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training." -- Bernard Berenson. Kudos to Dr. Stoll for going beyond his training and the limitations of the health care system and bringing them to us.

Walt Stoll is an M.D. who has devoted himself to the field of alternative medicine...a decision that has earned him the scorn of many of his colleagues. He is extremely knowledgeable and he will kindly answer any questions you might have at his website.

However, I found the book to be mediocre, though the arguments for megadoses of vitamin C are interesting. One good thing though is that Walt is open to many different approaches, and this non-sectarianism (refreshing indeed) is reflected in his book.

This book may be of interest to you if you are new to alternative medicine and want an introduction to some of the concepts. However, I cannot say enough about his website. Despite the fact that it is frequented by more than a handful of fanatical hypochondriacs (such obnoxious people cannot be avoided on any website devoted to health), you may post your questions and have them answered by Dr. Stoll..usually within a day or two. You may also read his responses to others questions, which are often intriguing. Of course, you'll have to put up with other people posting about their ding-bat esoteric diets...oh well, nothing is perfect.

When I bought this book I was in the bottom of a deep, dark hole
physically. My health had totally fallen apart. I had lost 20 lbs.
and no doctor could seem to give me any explanation as to why.
I felt miserable and couldn't eat much of anything without a lot
of pain, cramping, etc. I couldn't sleep at night and my muscles
were so tight. It turned out I had fibromyalgia. I got multiple
tests done and everything came up negative, until I was hanging
out at a fibromyalgia website one night (in desperation) and most
everyone was comparing their prescription drugs and discussing
disability payments, but one gal said she wasn't on any meds and
was using alternative treatment. She told me about Dr. Stoll's
website, and from there I found a helping hand that reached down
into that dark hole I was in and showed me how to climb out of it.
Dr. Stoll didn't do it for me; he taught me how to do it. Ten
years later I still have FMS, but my weight is normal and as long
as I work Dr. Stoll's program for wellness as decribed in the book,
I feel like I have no limitations.

Basically, he uses what he calls a three-legged stool approach to
treatment -- diet, exercise and skilled relaxation techniques.
He told me in a phone coaching session that the relaxation
techniques would be the most difficult thing for me to master,
because it would seem too simplistic to help, but that it would
give me about 25% improvement, more than anything else I would do. That really made me set my mind to mastering it. Today,
I still spend about an hour each morning doing relaxation/meditation
exercises to relax my muscles. Dr.Stoll, thank you for your
generous contribution to health from this book and your healing
philosophy. Your book was so valuable that I have probably given
about 20 copies to other folks through the past ten years!

This is not a laborious reference tome, but simply a great practical guide to living in harmony with your body to achieve wellness and stay there. Even if you were to read no other books on health, there's enough packed between the covers of Saving Yourself to keep most of us humming along and feeling great for the rest of our lives.

Dr. Stoll's tale of lab rats that were impervious to rabies literally made my jaw drop. His explanation for their power to stave off such a virulent disease set the stage for me to understand his approach to achieving long-term health and vigor by staying as far as possible from the edge of the cliff and falling into disease and suffering.

Likewise, a cure for the common cold is offered in which Dr. Stoll does not take credit for anything extraordinary, instead presenting his method as a simple, common-sense approach that costs little and has worked every time for his patients for decades.

Finally, an honest and open critique of the medical-pharmaceutical complex and the political nature of licensing boards is told from an insider's point of view. Even with decades of experience under his belt, Walt Stoll shows us how difficult it is for a doctor to publicly embrace alternative health philosophies which clearly threaten the profitability and power of established western medicine and the industries that support it.

The chapters on Allergies and Nail Fungus in Dr. Walt Stoll's book, Saving Yourself from the Disease-Care Crisis alone are worth the price of the book to me. The information is easy to comprehend and the advice good.

Walt Stoll, MD, is articulate, experienced, and informative. His experience and insight is extremely helpful for someone who has little to no experience with health-related issues. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is considering to read it, whether it be for recreational, academic, or professional reasons.