It was January 19, 1988. The waters were calm and the skies cloudless as five fishermen set off on a week-long trip off the Costa Rican coast. Five days later, their twenty-nine-foot wooden craft was foundering against thirty-foot waves as a dreaded north wind -- El Norte -- struck with full force. Set adrift in a badly leaking vessel, they faced the perils of more storms, shark attacks, near-madness, a mutiny, and bouts of starvation and thirst. Continuously bailing, the five men endured a record 142 days lost at sea -- until they were rescued 4,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, celebrated heart surgeon and co-founder of the Complementary Care Center at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, is spearheading the health-care revolution that is yielding powerful new healing tools that will forever change the way we think of medicine. In this ground-breaking book, he describes his pioneering work--combining cutting-edge Western medicine with such Eastern techniques as acupuncture and chi-gong, as well as such controversial therapies as hypnosis, music, massage, reflexology, aromatherapy, and energy healing. The inspiring and affecting stories of his patients are the heart of this book--from the extraordinary discipline of Frank Torre, who used his professional sports training to "psych" himself into healing after heart transplant surgery, to the "impossible" recovery of blues great Johnny Copeland, who was roused from a seemingly impenetrable coma through the force of his own music. In recounting his patients' experiences, Dr. Oz forges a blueprint for the radical new medicine of the next millennium--drawing on the best from Eastern and Western therapies and empowering patients to become partners with doctors in promoting their own recovery.