Can changes in your psychology create physical symptoms? Is there such a thing as "non-disease"? In this utterly compelling episode, a true medical detective - Dr. Clifton Meador - explains how he came to understand that some symptoms and diseases emerge from the "life narrative" of the patient. If a doctor listens hard enough, the patient will often volunteer the reasons for his or her health struggles. He asserts that all patients should consider their diet, chemical exposures and stress levels, and partner with their doctor in a "medical detective" team in order to uncover the root causes of symptoms and illness.

Dr Meador says:

"I came to fully understand that the mind and the body were one – not separated, not disconnected. What affected one also affected the other. Sitting above all the molecules, tissues, organs, and mind of the human body was an integrated person. This person was connected to a family and perhaps to a spouse, and the family was connected to some social structure and society at large. All this social structure impinged on the person, and the person impinged on the social structure. There was a continuum all the way from society to the person to the organs and even down to the molecules. There were no separated pockets or islands. There certainly was no mind separated from a body. "

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Dr. Clifton K. Meador Biography  

Dr Clifton K Meador has been practising and teaching medicine for over 60 years. He has written fifteen books and published articles in esteemed medical journals such as NEJM. 

Fascinated by patients with symptoms of hidden origin and by patients who carried diagnoses of non-existent diseases, he recorded his experiences in his books Symptoms of Unknown Origin, Puzzling Symptoms and Fascionomas – fascinating medical mysteries. 

A Graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1955, Dr. Meador trained at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, and Vanderbilt Medical School where he completed a National Institutes for Health fellowship in Endocrinology. 

After practicing medicine, he joined the faculty of medicine at UAB, where he was Professor of Medicine and then Dean of the University of Alabama School of Medicine at UAB from 1968 – 1973. He returned to Vanderbilt and St. Thomas Hospital, serving as chief of medicine and chief medical officer of Saint Thomas from 1973 to 1998.

He then served as the first Executive Director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance from 1999 to 2012. He is professor of Medicine Emeritus at both Vanderbilt School of Medicine and Meharry Medical College.

Dr. Meador lives in Nashville, TN. His wife Ann Cowden, is a well-known portrait artist. He is father of seven children, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.