The Healing Power of Doing Good - Softcover

Allan Luks; Peggy Payne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595175910 ISBN 13: 9780595175918

Publisher: iUniverse, 2001

Synopsis

Conventional wisdom has always held that when we help others, some of the good we do flows back to us. That satisfaction has always been thought to be largely emotionalfeeling good when you do good. Now important, widely discussed research shows that helping others regularly produces significant health benefits as wellin fact, it has effects similar to those many of us experience when we exercise.It is almost impossible to read this book without wanting to do good. Both for those who are already volunteering and for those who are considering it, this valuable personal guide tells you how to choose an activity thats right for you, how to maximize the health benefits, and how to overcome the main obstacle to getting started: lack of time.The Healing Power of Doing Good reaffirms and explains that when we care for others we care for ourselves. It is an important book for those suffering from chronic health problems as well as the health conscious, anyone interested in how our mind affects our body, and people in the helping professions. And it reminds us that never has there been such a need for caring as there is today.

About this title

About the Author:

Allan Luks, an internationally recognized health and social services leader, led the first research which linked the emotional and physical health benefits gained by those who regularly help others. He is also the author of Will America Sober Up?, You Are What You Drink, and the editor of Having Been There. He has initiated health promotion laws that have become national models and written extensively for newspapers and magazines.Peggy Payne is a writer whose articles appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Science Digest, Family Circle, McCalls, and many others. The author of a novel, Revelations, she lives in Chatham County, North Carolina.

From Library Journal:

It is widely accepted as fact that helping others--specifically strangers, not just family and friends--makes one feel good. Luks's purpose is to show exactly how one's physical health, not just emotional well-being, is improved through helping others. He writes about "helper's high," something akin to the phenomenon which runners experience from the release of endorphins. Actual accounts of how individuals have been healed through helping run throughout the book. Can holding abandoned babies really cure a backache? It seems so! Such caring might reduce the growing violence of our society, Luks proposes. The book ends with a list of and information about health organizations that encourage volunteers. Highly recommended.
- John Moryl, Yeshiva Univ. Lib., New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0595175910
• ISBN 13: 9780595175918
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 404