Dr Jeff Rediger, a world-leading Harvard psychiatrist, has spent the last fifteen years studying thousands of individuals from around the world, examining the stories behind extraordinary cases of recovery from terminal illness.

Rapidly decreasing body weight by 2½st (16kg) will take most people below their personal fat threshold, dramatically lowering their risk. For this reason, “the book goes through the steps that people need to follow to lose a substantial amount of weight and then keep it off”. This doesn't provide any single golden bullet - as we are all different, and there are as many different combinations of things that can mess with our DNA as there are people on the planet - but what it does offer is hope, and WONDER. And it really is a wonderful thing to hear such positive stories and how with a mix of science, self-belief, and love, we really do have the power to confront death, and ultimately learn to truly live, because of it.When it comes to spontaneous healing, skepticism abounds. Doctors are taught that "miraculous" recoveries are flukes, and as a result they don't study those cases or take them into account when treating patients. This is all interesting and warmly related, and Rediger mainly avoids woo, as you would hope a medically trained person would – though there is one dispiriting section in which he excitedly suggests that quantum physics might explain how the mind can affect the body. How, exactly? Oh, just because quantum physics apparently “is showing us that some of the laws of the universe that we thought of as fixed or immutable are, in fact, not”. Actually, quantum physics, too, is grounded in immutable laws. The author is in a hurry, too, to dismiss the possibility that a couple of his case studies happened to be especially “high responders” to chemotherapy drugs that they did, in fact, take, while also embracing their unique individuality. I'm not a religious person AT ALL but this book looks at the affect of prayer, meditation and other more spiritual activities on the outcomes of patients given terminal prognoses.

Modest words for a man whose “useful contribution to society” has given hope to the 3.9m people diagnosed with the condition in the UK and who has shown doctors a new way to fight a disease which causes 185 amputations and 700 premature deaths every week. Visualize yourself confronting the situation head-on and then walking out the other side. And then do it. Once you walk toward a problem, it may turn out to be not the tiger you thought it was but a shadow on the wall that looked like one.Marchant explores the possibilities of psychology-based approaches to improving physical well-being in this open-minded, evidence-based account… A powerful and critically-needed conceptual bridge.” Publishers Weekly (starred review) Those who experienced spontaneous remissions had something important in common, whether their illnesses were chronic or terminal: something inside them rose up, saying they were people rather than prognoses. There is a lot of work being done with that little “may”. From a scientific standpoint, there is a severe issue of selection bias in the narratives the book offers. Rediger does not, after all, tell any stories about people who became ill and then changed their diet, avoided stress, embraced love, and faced up to their inevitable extinction – and still died anyway. You would think there would be no shortage of such discouraging tales. Without a sense of whether they, as you might suspect, vastly outweigh the cases of amazing recovery, it is hard to draw firm conclusions. The introduction even claims that the author has discovered “the foundation for a new model of medicine”, but it would be irresponsible to suggest anyone decline hospital treatment in favour of positive thinking. In the meantime, the author himself at one point boasts that it is almost impossible for him to become ill. Given the timing of his book’s publication, one can only hope he is right. The second half of the book miserably spiraled into something I had no interest in reading. Tolhurst removed the focus on recording the albums and his experience with the band and started to give lengthy descriptions on the topic of his, at this point full-blown, alcoholism. Very understandable, might I add, as it was such a big part of Tolhurst's life and impacted his relationships with the band members very much, but it just wasn't something I was particularly interested in. In Cure, the award-winning science writer Jo Marchant travels a wide terrain of ideas – from hypnosis to meditation, from placebos to positive visualisation – rescuing each from the realm of pseudoscience. Drawing on the very latest research Jo discusses the potential – and the limitations – of the mind’s ability to influence our health, and explains how readers can make use of the findings in their own lives. Praise for Cure:

The book is in two parts, in the first of which he introduces the reader to a variety of case studies of those who have had such seemingly ‘miraculous’ remissions and astounded their physicians. Part Two looks at their post-prognosis life-styles in some detail to discern whether there are any commonalities that might provisionally be evidence that suggests what might be the reason for such uncommon outcomes. On our first day of school, Robert and I stood at the designated stop at Hevers Avenue with our mothers, and that's when we met for the very first time. We were five years old." This is a million miles from “fat shaming”, he says, and it is up to each person to decide for themselves whether they are too heavy for their own health and happiness. “What I can point out as a doctor are the circumstances that come about when people have crossed their personal fat threshold,” he says. “There’s no judgment on a person who happens to be heavy, compared with someone who happens not to be. It’s about helping individuals who would otherwise run into trouble.” A pioneering Harvard psychiatrist uncovers the lost connections between the mind, body and immune systemThis is an assumption that would be convenient—quantum mechanics at one level, and Newtonian mechanics and the world as it appears to be at another—but so far, every step up the ladder into larger particles has resulted in continuing, indisputable evidence that this world does not behave quite as our traditional scientific canon would have us believe. When I was told that an earring in my right ear was the equivalent of declaring to the world that I was gay, which I wasn't, I promptly had it pierced twice. The time for being polite was over. We were confrontational because we had to be." This is one of the most eloquent, intimate memoirs I have ever read. It is so beautifully descriptive, in a way only a true artists can express. He is able to paint a picture of bleakness and colour with the same flair. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of reading this book, not just because I love The Cure and am interested in hearing what Lol has to say, but because it is also easy and gentle to read. Taylor decided to write the book because, even though most diabetes experts in the UK have now accepted that his rapid weight loss programme works, many doctors in Europe and the USA remain unconvinced. “It’s not easy to get new ideas accepted in medicine. So it will be a while before this gets into the textbooks and generations of doctors are taught about it.” More recently, 2011 saw a momentous reunion tour with his former bandmates and Lol performing with The Cure again for the first time in over twenty years.