A Simple Regimen You Can Live With -- Weil's Latest Book Continues On The Natural Path To Wellness

In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Faust," the title character asks the devil for good health. The devil replies:

All right, you need no sorcery

And no physician and no dough.

Just go into the fields and see

What fun it is to dig and hoe;

Live simply and keep all your thoughts

On a few simple objects glued;

Restrict yourself and eat the plainest food.

That is the surest remedy:

At 80, you would still be young.

To which Faust responds:

I am not used to that and can't,

I am afraid to start now to work with hoe and spade.

For me a narrow life like that is too small.

Unlike Faust, who was not willing to work for a healthy life in Goethe's 200-year-old drama, people today seem eager for advice on helping themselves to good health.

Dr. Andrew Weil's reign atop the bestseller lists is part of that trend. His advice in "8 Weeks to Optimum Health" (Knopf, $23) is no Faustian panacea. Nor does he tell his readers to sell the condo, move to Montana and eat nothing that hasn't sprouted. In fact, most of the 276-page book is a do-it-yourself, week-by-week guide on how to slowly shift your diet and activities to practices conducive to good health and long life.

Weil's simple, common-sense message seems to play particularly well in Seattle, where he spoke at a packed University Book Store event last week. In March, he answered callers' questions during a KCTS-TV fund-raiser that aired his PBS special on the eight-week regimen. Seattleites' questions were similar to those from other cities where the broadcast has aired, "but the volume of interest was exceptional," Weil said. "The audience was very responsive."

Not all ills can be cured

People are realizing doctors cannot cure all their ills, he maintains. They are ready to listen to what they can do to help themselves. At least that's the message he's gotten from the 10,000 questions submitted to his "Ask Dr. Weil" Web site - www.drweil.com

His staff culls seven questions each week for Weil to answer. One month the site logged 2.2 million hits.

This botanist-turned-M.D.'s previous book, "Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself," remains atop The New York Times' nonfiction paperback bestseller list, where it has been for 35 weeks. "Optimum Health," the latest of his seven books on health and alternative healing, also is selling briskly.

The fact that holistic medicine is making money and news does not surprise Weil. He has believed in a broader sense of healing since earning a bachelor's degree in ethnobotany in 1964 and graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1968. He does seem to be genuinely and pleasantly surprised to be an integral player.

A real shift

"I think there is a real cultural shift happening," Weil said. "I think it is rapidly entering the mainstream and I think the main mode of force now is economic. To be in a position where I can influence in such a pivotal way is great."

Weil is critical of alternative quackery and misuse, such as the more than 15 fatal overdoses from the herbal stimulant Ephedra, which is used in moderation to treat upper respiratory ailments in traditional Chinese medicine. But he refutes criticism of alternative treatments lacking randomized studies on three levels.

One, if a treatment such as acupuncture, massage therapy or meditation helps a patient focus on healing and then recover, then the treatment works whether or not it has been scientifically proved: In healing, the mind matters.

Second, alternative treatments are not the only ones that have not be subjected to randomized testing: Some conventional treatments have only been time-tested as well.

Third, medical doctors are not familiar with some of the studies that do exist for alternative medicine. And more are being done. Dan Cherkin, a Ph.D. epidemiologist and Group Health researcher, is launching a randomized study of acupuncture, massage and self-care education on people with chronic back pain. He said Seattle, with state-mandated insurance payments for alternative care, is ahead of the game when it comes to seeking information and acceptance about alternative care.

Ahead in alternative treatment

"What we don't realize here in Washington is how far ahead of the rest of the country we are in the use of alternative treatment," Cherkin said.

Weil is in part a reluctant spokesman for alternative treatment. He admits unease with his newfound celebrity. But his Harvard background and of-the-earth demeanor suit him as the consummate diplomat for moving between the worlds of holistic and conventional medicine. He was trained in Western medicine. His roots are deep in botany. He's apprenticed with naturopaths and osteopaths. He's fluent in both medical and alternative jargon.

Conventional medicine excels in treatment of trauma, acute bacterial infections, surgical emergencies. But only 15 percent to 20 percent of society's ills require the intensive cost and technology of conventional care, Weil estimates. Weil, who isn't religious but is "philosophically inclined toward Buddhism," said patients need to participate in their healing; faith is part of the cure.

"For the majority of ailments - headaches, insomnia, arthritis, digestive ailments - there are methods out there in the world of alternative medicine that are better, cheaper, safer than what is in conventional medicine. I'm just asking people to pay attention to when it should be used and when it shouldn't."

In a recent Life magazine photograph, Weil was literally "of the earth," cradling a sprig of peppermint with his body and bald crown caked in mud: "When he first asked me to do it, I said, `No way.' " The photographer, Joe McNally, convinced Weil by showing him his modest portraits of naked Olympians. Weil likes the photo, but fears it will be forever resurrected, as it has been for the latest Time magazine profile.

Weil's home outside Tucson borders on a mountainous park where he mountain bikes, walks and gardens. He lives with his wife, Sabine Kremp, their daughter and Kremp's three children from a previous marriage. His parents were not physicians; they owned a hat shop in Philadelphia. "I had grown up in a rowhouse in Philadelphia with little opportunity to spend time in nature, let alone the wilderness," he writes.

Weil, 54, was raised during an era when alternative therapies were considered cuckoo - but he had a vegetarian aunt. An only child, he was her charge on Saturdays, and she introduced him to health-food stores.

First book

After graduating from medical school, Weil volunteered at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco for a year, dropping out of practice to write his first book, "The Natural Mind: A New Way of Looking at Drugs and the Higher Consciousness." In 1971 he won a fellowship and began a four-year journey through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to study plants and techniques for healing. He settled in Arizona upon his return.

His smile radiates contentment with the way life has played out his accomplishments. He based his latest book on his lifelong research, experience and experimentation. He knows change is hard. But he has also witnessed patients embarking on enormous change when faced with the motivation to change their lives to improve their health. With the proper coaxing and encouragement, he says people can find the motivation to bolster their health before it fails.

Weil says the medical profession needs to catch up with the American public. A 1993 New England Journal of Medicine survey revealed a third of Americans used alternative treatments such as chiropractic, prayer or meditation, special diets, vitamins - and most did not tell their medical doctors. The study persuaded many in the medical profession to take another look. For doctors unfamiliar with alternative treatment, the looming problem is where to go for information on prescribing nutrition, vitamins, herbs and meditation, Weil said.

This July, Weil opens the University of Arizona's new program for integrative medicine, the nation's first post-graduate alternative medical training. Weil, who directs the program, has taught at the university since 1983. He is nearly giddy with anticipation.

"I think medicine just got off track in the enthusiasm for technology," Weil said. "My mission is to bring medicine back in balance with nature."