Andrew Weil

“We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation.”

“You can't afford to get sick, and you can't depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It's up to you to protect and maintain your body's innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live.”

“It's rare - too rare, I have to say - for botanists to become doctors.”

“For many in the modern world, carving out time for both traditional seated meditation and exercise has become close to impossible.”

“Even low-calorie diets and vigorous exercise fail to work in the long term for at least some people.”

“Genuine happiness comes from within, and often it comes in spontaneous feelings of joy.”

“Carbohydrate density is simple to calculate -- just divide the quantity of carbohydrate in food by the weight of the food. The more carbs packed into a given gram of food, the higher its carbohydrate density.”

“I'm still not comfortable recommending that people eat saturated fat with abandon, but it's clear to me that sugar, flour and oxidized seed oils create inflammatory effects in the body that almost certainly bear most of the responsibility for elevating heart disease risk.”

“A beautiful bouquet or a long-lasting flowering plant is a traditional gift for women, but I have recommended that both men and women keep fresh flowers in the home for their beauty, fragrance, and the lift they give our spirits.”

“Conscious breath control is a useful tool for achieving a relaxed, clear state of mind.”

“We're all affected by music. It has the power to inspire, uplift us, change our moods, and even alter consciousness.”

“American businesses are struggling to pay outrageous, exploitive insurance bills for their employees, hampering our ability to compete globally.”

“I think instead [of happiness] we should be working for contentment... an inner sense of fulfillment that's relatively independent of external circumstances.”

“In my view, prescribing antidepressant drugs is too often a quick and easy substitute for developing treatment plans that address the totality of health concerns and lifestyle factors that have an impact on wellness, including emotional wellness.”

“Fitting a walk into a busy life can be challenging, so I suggest walking rather driving to work or to run errands as often as you can - in other words, think of walking as alternative transportation.”

“As an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1960s, I was fascinated by my visits to psychologist B.F. Skinner's laboratory.”

“Low levels of vitamin D in the population as a whole suggest that most people need to take a vitamin D supplement. This may be especially true for seniors, as the ability to synthesize vitamin D in the skin declines with age.”

“Each day as I travel through downtown Tucson, I am amazed at how quickly the most ancient of human behaviors have changed. For as long as there have been Homo sapiens - roughly 200,000 years - people have filled their lives principally with two activities: talking directly with other people, and doing physical things.”

“There's a great deal of scientific evidence that social connectedness is a very strong protector of emotional well-being, and I think there's no question that social isolation has greatly increased in our culture in, say, the past 50 years, past 100 years.”

“If we can make the correct diagnosis, the healing can begin. If we can't, both our personal health and our economy are doomed.”