Lissa Rankin knew she was going to be a doctor at the age of seven. The daughter of a respected physician, educated at Duke University, University of South Florida, and Northwestern University, she followed a successful career trajectory as an ob-gyn. But Dr. Rankin's focus shifted away from traditionally practiced Western medicine through a combination of personal and professional experiences with illness and ailing patients whose symptoms - and eventual successful treatments - defied conventional attitudes towards medicine. Dr. Rankin now presents her groundbreaking synthesis of this research in her first public television program, Mind Over Medicine: The Science of Healing Yourself. Dr. Rankin demonstrates how the brain is the most important organ for our optimal health, and she explains how thoughts, feelings and beliefs have been proven to alter the body's physiology. She explains the body's innate ability to self-repair and how we can control these self-healing mechanisms with the power of the mind. During the program, she provides viewers with techniques to activate the relaxation response and to reduce the stress response - both critical to putting the body into the state in which self-healing can take place. She also teaches viewers how to use a new model of whole health as a guide to living an optimally healthy life.
