Donna Jackson Nakazawa: The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and ...

Barbara Kline, LCSW, just forwarded a fascinating interview broadcast yesterday on "NPR Midday:"

The life of journalist and author Donna Jackson Nakazawa took a dramatic turn when she experienced numb limbs, muscle spasms, poor reflexes and a host of other medical problems.

Stricken with Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disease that sent her into years of physical therapy and doctors’ visits, her life boiled down to basic survival. Things turned around for Nakazawa when she met a Johns Hopkins doctor who introduced her to mind-body therapies. She chronicles that journey in "The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy and My Life."​

In The Mindbody Prescription, Dr. Sarno is clear that autoimmune disorders aren't TMS but that emotions may play an important role. In that spirit, Donna was able to recover about 90% of her lost functionality using mind-body interventions that she describes in the interview and details in the book.

The book looks tremendous because she, as a science writer, she is able to summarize vast swaths of cutting edge mind-body science and make it relevant to our lives. She hits all of the best science: ACE, mindfulness, meditation, amygdala/brain regions, cortisol/allostatic load, psychoneuroimmunology, enjoying life, breath, yoga, laughter yoga, etc.

For reference, ACE, or the Adverse Childhood Events study just came up in this thread:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/thread...mental-health-problems-and-chronic-pain.3793/

Psychoneuroimmunology is a major interest of Dr. Gabor Mate's in his book, When The Body Says No:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/videos-on-mindbody-and-childhood-stresses.3880/
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/dr-gabor-maté-on-the-the-stress-disease-connection.1307/

Even laughter yoga has come up recently here (only touched on briefly at the end of the interview):
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/thread...e-you-laugh-in-this-subforum.3750/#post-22783

The full audio of the 50 minute interview is available at the WYPR web site:
http://wypr.org/post/last-best-cure

Finally, if you're more visual, here is 3 minute video of the author at a book reading:

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For those who haven't listened to this interview, I can highly recommend it. I'm not thrilled with the host, but the author herself is wonderful. She is smart and very well informed, but manages to make everything very relevant to daily life.

Here's the link to the NPR interview:
http://wypr.org/post/last-best-cure

You can download the full 50 minute interview to your mp3 player or phone using the following link:
http://cpa.ds.npr.org/wyprmain/audio/2014/02/Healing.mp3

I just got her book and am looking forward to checking it out.