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-Ambernathy. 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.