Dirk Benedict Book:

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Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy: A True Story of Discovery, Acting, Health, Illness, Recovery And Life Reviews:
An unconvincing tale
2009-09-07 - Dirk Benedict has written a most thoughtful and interesting book about his experiences with relationships, lifestyle, diet, and health, but as a prostate cancer survivor myself I felt let down by his claim that he overcame this disease by a macrobiotic diet alone. A careful reading will find that at no time did he have a biopsy to determine if he had prostate cancer or not, and other tests available today did not exist in 1975.
So how does he know he had cancer? Because he had sent a Polaroid photo of himself to an "Italian scientist" who from 6,000 miles away had divined from the photo's "aura" that he had a tumor and treatment was paramount. Yes, it's true that he had an enlarged prostate (presumably from a Digital Rectal Examination), painful urination, and he had blood in the urine, but these are also indicators for non-cancerous Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH, enlarged prostate) and/or inflammation and infection of the prostate (Prostatitis), as well as prostate cancer.
Whether he overcame a severe case of BPH and Prostatitis using a macrobiotic diet is interesting, but claiming to be cured of CANCER when he might have had no such thing is misleading at best. Unfortunately, other authors have taken this up and claim that Benedict "cured his prostate cancer" by a macrobiotic diet.


interesting read
2009-04-24 - This book is interesting. Often crude and graphic. Could have done without the rough language. Good advice though and my husband is following much of it. Thanks

Good read, good philosophy, but got to question it
2008-08-21 - The life of Dirk Benedict, the benefits of a macrobiotic diet, taking control of your own health instead of using pills, that's what this book is about. I loved the book, but if you're an A-Team or Battlestar Galactica fan, I'm not so certain you'd want to hear much about Benedict's advocation of a vegetarian diet & how he believes he beat cancer through it.

I am a practicing medical doctor, so hear me out on my opinion on his views on diet & cancer. I very much support much of what Benedict says--perhaps about 80-90% of it. He mentions going vegetarian, incorporating a macrobiotic diet & excercise saved his life in more ways than 1. Take into consideration that Benedict wrote this in a day & age when cutting down harmful fats, excercising & eating "whole" foods were seen as a harmful fad. It is understandable why he writes his opinions in a tone that is somewhat preaching & angry. Its actually quite revolutionary that he had these views in the 70s, since this seemed to only catch on in the 90s.

I also strongly support that people in general need to take control of their health through diet & excercise & not really on the doctor for wellness. Its unfortunate, but the pharmaceutical industry & managed care have created something I nickname "fast food medicine". They only want us to see patients for about 15 minutes, give them a pill & see the next one. They don't want us sitting with our patients & educating them about health. No, they will not outright claim this but all the financial incentives push us in this direction. In several places, I can only get paid for a 15 minute check. If I don't prescribe a med, I might not get reimbursed. Doctors are pushed to treat sickness, but not promote wellness. Those that promote wellness often are doing it at a loss of pay because they care.

Some of the approaches that Benedict did to treat his cancer without medication or surgery have now been validated by modern science to have a positive effect. Several meats today for example as a result of factory farming have several unwanted chemicals. E.g. cows are fed feed with tetracycline, which stays in the meat & ends up in our own system. Hormones in animal meats can possibly affect the prostate. Some nutrients in vegetarian products have now been identified to be healthy for the prostate that were not known in the 70s to have this effect. Reducing calories has been found to help treat cancer because it starves cancer cells. So, Benedict's approach to treating his own cancer which was seen as ludicrous back in the 70s-80s, now doesn't sound impossible with this knowledge that wasn't known then by western medicine.

However as a doctor, I really need to point out 3 parts of the book that I question & cannot advocate. I am not saying they're not true (I don't know), just saying that I could never reccomend them to a patient. I could never tell a patient with protstate cancer to simply & only use diet. Benedict also believes that someone who was a something of a spiritual health guru accurately diagnosed his cancer by simply seeing a polaroid photo of him, and this person had a skill at detecting illness because of the properties of a polaroid photo. Keeping the most open mind possible (and this is a stretch), perhaps this person did have these metaphysical powers. Maybe its miracle on the order of Lourdes, but if science accepted miracles simply on the word of another, we'd be accepting 100 mistakes for every real benefit. Besides, if this really worked, why didn't this person allow himself to be researched? I do need to add that Benedict did go to traditional western doctors who then reconfirmed that he did indeed have prostate cancer (another reviewer claims Benedict did not do this, I double checked, he did). Finally, the last point is yes, I agree that several doctors have a closed minded approach to eastern medicine, but there are several today that are more open minded & know perhaps even more than he does on this matter. Andrew Wiel, M.D. for example has used a scientific approach to study eastern medicine & has found much of it to work.
All in all did I enjoy the book? Yes, very much so. Just wanted to point out the above. Outside those portions, I very much loved this book & hope you will try it out.


Very impressive self healing documentary
2008-08-16 - A very exiting to read book, a true adventure, life or death, with a happy end. I read it in one sitting.

This book's story matches my personal experiences, even though my health problems were not the same, they were equally critical. Sometimes, and in this case too, health problems that would lead to a soon death can be eliminated by understanding how your body works, giving your body the food it needs and COMPLETELY, I mean TOTALLY, avoid junk food. What is equally important, and it shines through between the lines, is a relaxed mind set.

A few related books:

Macrobiotic Diet

Cooking the Whole Foods Way: Your Complete, Everyday Guide to Healthy, Delicious Eating with 500 VeganRecipes, Menus, Techniques, Meal Planning, Buying Tips, Wit, and Wisdom

Christina Cooks: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Whole Foods But Were Afraid to Ask

Glow

Good Read -- Bad Feed
2008-05-30 - Yes, Dirk Benedict is apparently a great guy, and a healthy guy (putting his cigar-tobacco addiction in parentheses)...I especially like his comment to a drunken sassbacker when he appeared on a British TV reality show (not in this book, but in DB's Wikipedia article).

In this, his auto-bio, Dirk Benedict (Dirk--"Small dagger" and I wouldn't get too loud about that; Benedict from the Latin meaning "well-spoken"; his birth name is Niewoehner) claims he cured himself of prostate cancer. What fun!

Until we find out:
A) Dirk NEVER WAS DIAGNOSED BY A MEDICAL DOCTOR with cancer. He tells all...how he was diagnosed from a Polaroid negative shot of his whole body, by an Italian psychic...since Dirk refused further medical workup beyond a digital rectal examination.

B) Prostate cancer is ALMOST NEVER developed by men under age 30.

Yes, the guy's funny; the guy's bold; the guy's a success in his own rugged individualist way...and the guy just MIGHT be completely mistaken and therefore be misleading you and you and you Mr. American Public, and me. I'm a guy who did develop prostate cancer, age 55, tried nutritional therapy for a year while the PSA went up and up...and when I left the low-risk range, opted for robotically assisted laparoscopic total prostatectomy. My surgeon told me "The cancer was out to the margins of the sample." In other words, a little more, and it would have been metastatic.

If you like your stories short and sweet, you can Google on metastatic prostate cancer and learn this(from the WebMD site): "Currently, no treatments can cure advanced prostate cancer."

If you want to believe macrobiotics cures all cancer, please explain what happened with Michio Kushi, who developed cancer and opted for surgery, his wife Aveline, who died of cancer, and their daughter, Lily, who died of cancer?

Dirk Benedict rolls a good story, but he might be blowing smoke.
You can put that seegar in your mouth and chomp it.