The Path to Weilness

Weil then lived on a South Dakota Indian reservation, where he studied herbal medicine and ritual healing with a Lakota medicine man named Leonard Crow Dog. In his 1972 book The Natural Mind, Weil criticized American drug policy and revealed his fondness for states of altered consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs, hypnosis and meditation. The work earned him a cult following.

As founder and director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona's Health Sciences Center, Weil has set out to reform—rather than topple, as his critics often suggest—the medical establishment he once shunned. He insists that his philosophy, which in the '70s advocated something called "stoned thinking" (perception based on intuition), hasn't changed much in the past several decades; what has changed is his reception by colleagues and a public leery of HMOs and an impersonal medical industry.

"I've always said that the body is capable of healing itself," says Weil, "and that the majority of diseases that kill and disable people are diseases of lifestyle that could be minimized if people made better choices. The culture has finally caught up with me."

"People are finally listening to Andy because he's preaching common sense," says Linda Goin, a Weil fan who swears the good doctor's prescription for broccoli changed her life. "I was diagnosed with a digestive disorder a decade ago. I was sick, I couldn't eat, and no treatment was helping. I read what Andy wrote about the antioxidants in broccoli, so I started drinking filtered water and eating broccoli, and everything settled down."

For starters, he says, we should forget about being healthy all the time. "It's unrealistic to imagine that you can never be sick. Health is cyclical: It breaks down; it reforms. Being sick is part of being alive."

And being well is easier to achieve and maintain than we believe. Weil says that the key to better health is in taking positive control with simple tasks, like learning to prepare healthful food, buying fresh flowers, taking a stress-reducing "news fast" by avoiding newspapers for one day and spending time only with kind people. His prescriptions tend to be for lifestyle changes or items found at the greengrocer: Don't drink tap water. Take vitamins. Mend a broken relationship. Volunteer. Eat more fish. Eat more garlic. Breathe.

Weil's self-health prescriptions can also tackle bigger medical problems. Genital herpes got you down? Try munching red marine algae, which Weil says inhibits the herpes virus. Halitosis? Toothpaste containing tea-tree oil can help, as can chewing fennel seeds. Migraines a bother? Eliminate chocolate, coffee and sardines from your diet. If that doesn't work, make friends with your headache. Weil writes that migraines "can be a good excuse to drop routines, focus inwardly and let stress dissipate."

Weil's critics claim that his ways are much like snake oil. They point repeatedly to his unproven therapies, which they say aren't based on any objective evidence or science. Weil's most devoted critic is former New England Journal of Medicine editor Arnold Relman, whose broadsides tend to hammer on Weil's refusal to deliver scientific evidence. "He's ambivalent, and he plays both sides of the street," Relman says of Weil. "He's smart enough to know that when he's talking to scientists and physicians, he has to offer evidence based in medical science. But when he talks to the public, he talks in a weird way, as if he believes in miracles and healing at a distance and all sorts of clearly irrational modes of therapy. What's most irritating is that he pretends he doesn't know the difference."

Weil finds Relman's ire amusing. "He's a dinosaur," Weil says. "He's the essence of that old-style, paternalistic, authoritarian physician. He always says, 'Show me the evidence, and I'll believe you.' But when I do, he says, 'You call that evidence?' I can't win."