The Disease Delusion

Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, and Happier Life

By: Jeffrey S. Bland

Narrated by: Brett Barry

For decades, Dr. Jeffrey Bland has been on the cutting edge of Functional Medicine, which seeks to pinpoint and prevent the cause of illness, rather than treat its symptoms. Managing chronic diseases accounts for three quarters of our total healthcare costs, because we’re masking these illnesses with pills and temporary treatments, rather than addressing their underlying causes, he argues. Worse, only treating symptoms leads us down the path of further illness.

In The Disease Delusion, Dr. Bland explains what Functional Medicine is and what it can do for you. While advances in modern science have nearly doubled our lifespans in only four generations, our quality of life has not reached its full potential. Outlining the reasons why we suffer chronic diseases from asthma and diabetes to obesity, arthritis and cancer to a host of other ailments, Dr. Bland offers achievable, science-based solutions that can alleviate these common conditions and offers a roadmap for a lifetime of wellness.

Life changer

This book is phenomenal. I have worked in an acute healthcare setting for nearly 30 years and yet this field is almost entirely new to me. During the course of this book Dr Bland has completely changed my outlook on the causes and management of chronic illness. I have no idea whether I will stick to it, but at the moment I am determined to radically change my diet, because I am now convinced that a careful choice of diet (combined with exercise, which I already do enough of) is the key to staying healthy in the long term and avoiding chronic illness.

At first I thought he was a bit of a quack and I wondered if I was wasting my time and my Audible credit, but as the story unfolded I became completely captivated and convinced by the evidence presented.

I am now going to listen again. I've downloaded the PDF and I'm going to try to implement the lifestyle changes. There are even recipes in the PDF, and I'm going to give those a go!

I loved this book!

This book was a great eye opener. Be sure to have a pen and some paper handy while reading. It really opened my eyes not just to the folly of our current health system, but also to my own sluggish systems that need rejuvenation. Excellent book. I'll be listening to it a second time to recapture anything I might have missed.

Fascinating and a page turner

I never had read/ listened to a book with such fervor. Great book so informative and helpful! Thank you Dr.Bland for being GODS vessel to bring all of this knowledge to us!

Such a wealth of information

So glad I live right here in the PNW, as I'd love to find an experienced Functional Dr. to provide feedback on a medical issue I have... additionally, I have a real question. What can be done for people with LOW blood pressure? The focus seems to be on those with high BP, but I've always had low, my whole life, and it's getting worse.
Thank you to KP Khalsa for recommending this hugely informative book.

Generally quite good but some weak spots

It's interesting to see an author write about mistakes made in the past in medicine and particularly in nutrition and nutritional science, and then go on to promote his own views of what proper nutrition is without having a lot of evidence or studies in many cases to back it up.

I tend to largely ignore any author the writes that saturated fat is bad. Does that mean vegetable oil, which I can agree is harmful, or grass-fed butter and virgin coconut oill which do more to promote health than most other foods? Don't expect a detailed discussion here since all saturated fat is deemed to be harmful to one's health without a single study or other piece of evidence listed in support of that claim.

Further, the Mediterranean diet is clearly the author's focus as the nutritional cure-all. He cites Dean Ornish's diet, which is massively and in my view dangerously low in healthy fats, and claims that all of the benefits from the Ornish diet are due to the food. However, the Ornish diet recommends meditation, various forms of stress relief, quitting smoking and several other things, so could it be that the diet is even slightly unhealthy and these other factors more than make up for that to lead to a positive result?

Overall, the book was okay. The author should insist that when his book has numbered lists (it has many of these) that these should likely be removed and added on a website for separate viewing. There are cumbersome and not worthwhile content when listening to an audiobook.

It certainly seems to me that many scientists/researchers and now writing books (i.e. Oxygen Effect, Telomere Effect) where very little new research or in depth consideration of issues are raised and instead the authors basically decide to write about a wide varitety of issues that they basically have no experience with. At least this book was an improvement in that regard. Hopefully the author will do some reading of the current research on whole foods based modified ketogenic diets and then I suspect the advice re: Mediterranean diets (at least as the only reasonable option) will change considerably.