Author: Cynthia Li

Publisher Reveal Press: 

ISBN: 978-1684032051

A Hundredth Monkey Syndrome

This is the story of an incredible woman doctor who while battling a severely debilitating disease made a comeback to her erstwhile professional and personal lives, with renewed vigor and a mission aimed at redefining the way medicine is generally practised. In doing so, she also contributes to the development of the newly emerging concept of functional medicine, where the body is viewed as an integrated whole of differently interacting systems which work together to provide optimal health.

This book consists of three sections. In the first part, the author starts with the events that could have led to her physical incapacitance. The second section is about how the author dealt with the kind of thinking that led to the problem and how, she reorganized her life so that her erstwhile challenges were overcome. The third section, entitled, “How to Heal” is a condensation of the steps that the author used, to heal her situation.

The narrative starts with the author introducing herself as the daughter of Chinese immigrants to the USA. She had had a normal but unremarkable childhood, apart from being labelled as “hypersensitive”. She went on to medical school, where she met her first husband, Kurt. She got married, but also widowed in quick succession. She moved to San Francisco, from Texas. There, she met a social activist called David. He was to become her new husband. They had two daughters together, called Rosa and Sonia. It was in consonance with delivering Rosa, her first child, that her troubles began.

Unpleasant symptoms started to appear. They persisted despite efforts to ignore them and pretend as if they had never happened. The arrival of a new family member disturbs the family equilibrium, and though this problem is fairly common, it takes some getting used to. Her physical symptoms were first diagnosed as hyperthyroidism due to postpartum thyroiditis, a condition that was hereditary from her parents side.

On a visit to China, her symptoms took over her body and she  was hospitalized. Her symptoms only escalated and they just seemed to get worse. They had even affected her  relations with her husband. But before she let all hell break loose, she took a grip over herself and used the steps of the scientific method that she had learnt in medical school in order to heal herself and her family. Further, she allowed herself to receive help from others, not just family, whose intentions she sensed were beneficial. How she dealt with her situation is the subject of this book.

A couple of impressions that I have gleaned from reading this book. 

The first is that it advocates a synergistic way of navigating a debilitating health challenge. 

 A second focal point is that this book deals with  is the enormous amount of pollutants in the air we breathe, the water we  drink and the food that we eat and that the general public is unaware of. Cleaning these toxins out from our living space, requires sustained effort and discipline.

This book highlights the role of a new and upcoming way of regarding the body, i.e. as an interlinkage of systems which work together synergistically. Why this is important, is that consulting a doctor in  a developed country involves too much paperwork, so that quality time between doctor and patient is drastically reduced. Empathy , that rare emotion between doctor and patient is not at a premium today as diagnoses are only based on progressively  expensive diagnostic tests. In what is now called ”functional medicine”, diagnoses today are made by going into a patient´’s past history and then taking action, thus allowing the causes that have allowed the symptoms to surface and aggravate, to emerge. In section3, Cynthia Li, provides a list of medical practitioners and medical associations who have dedicated their lives to the new ways of healing the body, that have emerged through practicing “functional medicine.”

I recommend this book very highly.