Healthy Pleasures

Imagine a medical treatment that can decrease heart disease, boost immune function, relieve depression, and block pain—whose only side effect is that it makes you feel good. It’s safe, inexpensive, and readily available, No, it’s not a miracle drug; rather, these benefits come from the experience of pleasure itself. And this pleasure prescription is filled in the internal pharmacy of the brain.Psychologist Robert Ornstein and physician David Sobel deliver the latest scientific evidence that pleasures—from saunas to siestas, chocolate to charity—and positive attitudes—from happiness to optimism—are not only enjoyable but also good for you.

A psychologist and a physician deliver the inspiring message that what pleases us - improves our health.

Called “brilliant, liberating, and life-changing” by Paul Ehrlich, Healthy Pleasures offers the tools to make pleasure the centerpiece of a long and happy life.

Publishers Weekly

``At nearly every turn, pleasure has gotten a bad name,'' write the authors, who tell us that in pursuit of longevity Americans have become overly abstemious. Psychologist Ornstein and Sobel, director of preventive medicine at the Kaiser-Permanente HMO, believe that eradicating all of life's pleasures--whether chocolate, alcohol or even an occasional puff of tobacco--represents a far more serious threat to our well-being than whatever damage may be wreaked by occasionally indulging. Deploring what they call ``medical terrorism,'' they point out that some once-dire findings on health hazards have been reversed, disputed or exaggerated. The authors' secret for happiness: forget asceticism in the name of health. We should touch each other more often, learn to take life a little more lightly, partake in some form of gentle physical exercise, nap when necessary and learn to be less self-centered generally. If this advice seems a touch obvious, it may bear repeating nonetheless. 75,000 printing; Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club alternate; first serial to American Health Magazine; major ad/promo. (June)

Robert Ornstein, Ph.D., is a psychologist, brain researcher, and writer. He co-wrote The Psychology of Consciousness, which has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, and more recently, The Healing Brain.