The fear cure : cultivating courage as medicine for the body, mind and soul (Unabridged edition)

Few in the conventional medical world are talking about how fear can make you sick, and even fewer are suggesting that courage can be a potent medicine.

But through her work with patients struggling to overcome illness, as well as her experience with her own health, Dr Lissa Rankin realized that fear is not just a nuisance emotion that makes us unhappy; it's a serious risk factor for disease that threatens our longevity.

The body's physiological response to fear raises patients' risk for conditions from heart disease to diabetes to cancer - and even when patients know what they need to do in order to heal, fear often holds them back.

In The Fear Cure, Dr Rankin presents a breakthrough understanding of fear, courage and health, exploring the psychospiritual roots of disease and charting a path back to wellness in body and soul.

Using peer-reviewed studies and scientifically proven techniques, she shows readers how fear operates and what can be done to reduce its damaging effects. Key points include: how a fearful thought translates into physiologic changes throughout the body that disable the body's natural self-healing mechanisms; the difference between 'clean fear' (the kind that arises from a genuine, present threat) and 'dirty fear' (which leads to unnecessary stress responses that put us at risk for disease); why a fear-based approach to health care can do more harm than good; and how mustering up courage not only heals our body, it heals our entire life.

Featuring a practical six-step process aligned with New York Times bestseller Mind Over Medicine.