Recovering Common Sense: Conscientious Health Care for the 21st Century

In their latest book best-selling authors and holistic health practitioners Drs. C. Norman Shealy and Sergey Sorin are joined by experimental psychologist Amber Massey-Abernathy and by health-and-wellness counselor Georgianne Ginder. Recovering Common Sense offers a program for lifelong physical emotional and spiritual health based in Five-Factor Theory (FFT) and the Five Health Basics. The authors make two claims both rather bold though backed by clinical practice and experiment. The first claim is medical: The FFT personality traits have hormonal expressions such that openness conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism-the so-called big five of FFT-are mirrored in levels of dopamine serotonin acetylcholine oxytocin anandamide and other neurotransmitters. Their second claim is medical as well but turns from brain chemistry to patterns and habits of behavior. Personality traits-neuroticism and conscientiousness particularly-correlate with health and wellness. While FFT traits are genetic in origin and change slowly over time it is their contention that one can in fact choose health by growing in conscientiousness. And as they argue the modalities of holistic medicine provide the means of growth. This book offers an outline of those modalities and of their role in conscientious health care.