From the twentieth century to the present, the scientific medical establishment is taking consideration of alternative healing practices. Having witnessed positive results, medical researchers are facing urgent inquiries. According to author Reginald O. Crosley, M.D., the exotic scientific principles revealed in quantum mechanics, relativity theories, strings theory, and chaos theory, directly correspond to alternative medicines and miraculous healings.

During his career as a board-certified surgeon, Dr. John L. Turner's curiosity drove him to explore nontraditional healing techniques that broadened the scope of recovery for his patients, including energy healing, soul travel, astral projection, chanting, and meditation.

Drawing on his clinical experience, Siegel shows how we can alleviate stress and release the body's healing mechanisms. He demonstrates that when terminally ill patients take control of their illness, they change their lives beyond medical hope.

A veterinarian and an authority on holistic pet care uses case studies to demonstrate the integrative methods he has created to treat diseases that commonly afflict our pets, and highlights the courageous owners who never gave up.

What is alternative medicine? Why is it so popular? What's its future in American health care?

Medical expert Paul A. Offit, M.D., offers a scathing exposé of the alternative medicine industry, revealing how even though some popular therapies are remarkably helpful due to the placebo response, many of them are ineffective, expensive, and even deadly. Dr. Offit reveals how alternative medicine—an unregulated industry under no legal obligation to prove its claims or admit its risks—can actually be harmful to our health. Using dramatic real-life stories, Offit separates the sense from the nonsense, showing why any therapy—alternative or traditional—should be scrutinized. He also shows how some nontraditional methods can do a great deal of good, in some cases exceeding therapies offered by conventional practitioners. An outspoken advocate for science-based health advocacy who is not afraid to take on media celebrities who promote alternative practices, Dr. Offit advises, “There’s no such thing as alternative medicine. There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”

A heartwarming look at the spiritual bond between animals and humans.

The acclaimed author of Pandora’s Lunchbox and former New York Times reporter delivers an “entertaining and highly useful book that gives you the tools to understand how alternative medicine works, so you can confidently make up your own mind” (The Washington Post). We all know someone who has had a seemingly miraculous cure from an alternative form of medicine: a friend whose chronic back pain vanished after sessions with an acupuncturist or chiropractor; a relative with digestive issues who recovered with herbal remedies; a colleague whose autoimmune disorder went into sudden inexplicable remission thanks to an energy healer or healing retreat. The tales are far too common to be complete fabrications, yet too anecdotal and outside the medical mainstream to be taken seriously scientifically. How do we explain them and the growing popularity of alternative medicine more generally? In The Magic Feather Effect, author and journalist Melanie Warner takes us on a vivid, important journey through the world of alternative medicine. Visiting prestigious research clinics and ordinary people’s homes, she investigates the scientific underpinning for the purportedly magical results of these practices and reveals not only the medical power of beliefs and placebo effects, but also the range, limits, and uses of the surprising system of self-healing that resides inside us. Equal parts helpful, illuminating, and compelling, The Magic Feather Effect is a “well-written survey of alternative medicine…fair-minded, thorough, and focused on verifiable scientific research” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Warner’s enlightening, engaging deep dive into the world of alternative medicine and the surprising science that explains why it may work is an essential read.

A classic of patient empowerment, Peace, Love & Healing offered the revolutionary message that we have an innate ability to heal ourselves. Now proven by numerous scientific studies, the connection between our minds and our bodies has been increasingly accepted as fact throughout the mainstream medical community. In a new introduction, Dr. Bernie Siegel highligths current research on the relationships among consciousness, psychosocial factors, attitude and immune function. "Love and peace of mind do protect us," Siegel writes. "They allow us to overcome the problems that life hands us. They teach us to survive...to live now...to have the courage to confront each day."