Your Gut has a Mind of It's Own, The Second Brain

[Guest guest]

This is a brief book review of the book bearing the above title and written by

Gershon, MD on Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestines. I

also posted it for the gallbladder group at cure-zone.

If, like the author, I were from New York I could sum up my review in one

word: " Fuggitaboutit " . Since I'm from Minnesota I will use a Norski review:

Ufda! " .

If a lifelong surgeon wrote a book, we would expect much glorification and

rationale for surgery uber alles. Since Dr Gershon is a conventional research

neurologist I should have known it would be about conventional research

neurology. It is. Unfortunately for the readers this is a doctor that has never

treated a patient in his life, nor would he know how. He tells in painful detail

how he stood by as his grandmother died on the surgery table from a

botched stomach surgery. Later, he tells the sad story of watching his mother

die from a botched stomach surgery. Hummm. Maybe there was a pattern

there but it apparently went right by Dr.Research. No insights or observations

came through to him

I bought the book to learn more about the gall bladder but found this subject

to be one of his many weak ones. This chapter begins with a story about

another doctor he knows, and that upon meeting this Dr. Mawe at a

party he thought of the gall bladder because the guy was Irish and maybe he

" was thinking about green things " . Throughout the book when he attempts to

cover a topic that exposes his his embarrassing lack of understanding, and

this is quite often, he tries to divert the readership with a lame joke. He

ends

the gall bladder section by saying " as for me, the gall bladder has become a

source only of vicarious pleasure and cultural enrichment. I read about the

gall bladder, and take pride in 's accomplishments, but I do not, myself,

investigate it. " O....K....

He gives nary a single clue why stones form or where they come from but he

states that " Gallstones are dangerous " . (profound) and that " stones may lie in

wait, insidiously holed up in the gall bladder, then, seemingly for no reason,

catastrophe erupts " . Then of course " surgeons have got to go in and get it

out " . My favorite quote was " the signal that the gall bladder is sick beyond

redemption is severe pain in the upper right quadrant of the abdomen,

radiating through to the back and right shoulder " . Beyond redemption? What

does that mean?

There is neither dietary information in this book nor an acknowledgement of

the effects of thoughts and emotions on the gut. To make his case for the

" second brain " he feels he must poo-poo any case for anxiety-induced

ailments. On top of all that, one has to listen to how they " scientifically

explored " the connection of stress with gastric ulcers. It involved monkeys

strapped in chairs and electrical shocks but that is all I can stomach to tell

you. This is a man who has used animal experiments for his entire 30 year

career (he doesn't personally use monkeys) but he feels obliged to tell you in

a long endnote that lab animals " like " helping us because " the live in

air-conditioned spacious quarters and eat food that they love and that is good

for them " .

He also believes that when governments spend money for scientific research,

such as his, of course, they are really saving the country money. He believes

that American health is in such a great state of affairs because of all the

grant

money spent on scientific research. He believes Americans are healthy and

owe all that to the men and women who develop such great drugs to make us

healthy. If we keep spending money we will pretty soon have a nifty drug for

everything! Ever the optimist, he says it's far cheaper than surgery. So, by

this reasoning a punch in the mouth is far better than getting hit by a baseball

bat.

When you get near the end of the book you realize that he has spent his

entire career studying one thing, the developmental causal factors in the fetus

for Hirschsprung Disease (hereditary megacolon). All this by using knockout

mice that have been created to display a man-made form of the disease. If

only he would have written a book about the one thing he knows something

about. If only he could have gotten out of the lab a bit and practiced medicine.

If only he could write. Oh, hell, I could go on and on but my gastric lining is

getting chapped, pass the Tums.

Will in Minneapolis