Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix: The Science of Healing at the Cellular Level

by Matthew Wood, Stephen Harrod Buhner (Foreword)

• Examines the function of the extracellular matrix, the inner ocean that unifies all our cells and controls them in a coordinated and integrated fashion • Explores how the extracellular matrix builds and repairs itself and how holistic therapy can be applied based on this knowledge • Introduces new and old holistic and herbal protocols for treatment of the matrix The cells in our bodies are not independent units. They do not control their own feeding, elimination, migration, or reproduction; they are controlled by signals from the extracellular matrix (ECM) that surrounds them. This all-encompassing inner ocean unifies all our cells and controls them in a coordinated and integrated fashion. Revealing the stunning implications of the extracellular matrix, Matthew Wood shows how it clearly explains the actions and efficacy of holistic therapies. He explores the groundbreaking research of Alfred Pischinger, who discovered the ECM in 1975, as well as the role of the matrix in transmitting and enacting the genetic code, including the roles of the mitochondria, the nucleus, and ribosomes. Wood explains how modern drugs, directed at specific receptors on the cell membrane, interfere with bodily self-regulation. He details how holistic therapies modify the environment of the cell and strengthen the whole, bringing the body back to homeostasis and consequently offering true healing.

Genres: Health, Science

262 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 28, 2021

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Matthew Wood has been a practicing herbalist since 1982. In a period when many authors and lecturers are merely "arm chair herbalists" who offer theories and opinions based on book learning, and others have turned to the exotic traditions of India or China, he has been an active practitioner of traditional Western herbalism. He has helped tens of thousands of clients over the years, with many difficult health problems. While Matthew believes in the virtue of many other healing modalities, he has always been inspired to learn, preserve, and practice the tradition of herbal medicine descending to us from our European, Anglo-American, and Native American heritage. He is a member of the American Herbalists Guild (registered herbalist) and has earned his Masters of Science degree from the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine (accredited by the University of Wales).

Matthew has lectured in all parts of the United States, from Georgia to Maine, New York to California, and Santa Fe to Sperryville, Virginia. He has also taught in Canada, Scotland, England, and Australia. He is known throughout the world as an excellent teacher of herbal medicine. He is also the author of four acclaimed books on herbal medicine, published by North Atlantic Books, in Berkeley, CA:

Seven Herbs, Plants as Teachers (1987)
Vitalism, The History of Herbalism, Homeopathy, and Flower Essences, originally entitled The Magical Staff (1993)
The Book of Herbal Wisdom (1998)
The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism (2004)

Reviews

[Elizabeth Ruth-Abramian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find that Matthew Wood’s presentation of Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix brings into focus a number of concepts in alternative ways of thinking about health. While the book doesn’t provide all the answers, it rather asks the questions we might ask about human health and disease. The author proposes new angles, a different perspective (his key word) and a whole array of ideas about the microbiome and the cellular terrain.

“Perspective” is Wood’s term for a way of looking at the phenomena of life. He recommends taking into account the cell’s environment, otherwise known as the extracellular matrix...

Matthew Wood’s herbals and reference books on Western herbalism are exceptional. His style is both casual and discriminating while the subject he represents is profoundly complex. Here my point is that the author’s experience with herbs and herbalism is not self-limiting to plants, however consuming they are. Wood’s intent to inquire, pursuing frontiers of knowledge is essential to healing. And I’m so happy Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix is on my reference shelf.

Read more in my post.

[Rod Endacott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me the information I needed to understand healing . . . a good thing to know these days! It helped to have taken college level biology courses, though still much was over my head. But what I gleaned is enough to say "I now get it" - holistic healing, healing with nature, with my body's inherent abilities, is the only way to go. This puts herbalism, and other holistic practices which honor what the author Matthew Wood calls the "Extracellular Matrix", as the intelligent means to health. There is so much that could be said relative to this approach; it changes, no, it substantiates that which I have intuitively believed about my health and healing to such an extent that I will never look at illness the same. This book has changed my life.

[Ana Isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book made me sit up and pay attention! Firstly it’s packed with information on physiology, but most importantly it made me question everything I thought I knew about medicine. Matthew Wood introduces us to a world little known or understood, the solution that holds our cells and actually influences them. I found this book inspiring!

Watch Matthew discuss this book on In The Light- Growing Your Soul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFgv6...

[Cherie Grousset · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing !