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

Name: Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix
Brand: Simon & Schuster Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Matthew Wood
ISBN: 9781797187051

Author: Matthew Wood, Stephen Harrod Buhner

Narrator: Ryan Paige

Unabridged: 8 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Simon & Schuster/ Inner Traditions

Published: 03/11/2025

Categories: Nonfiction, Medical, Alternative Medicine, Health & Fitness

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

• 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.

About Matthew Wood

Matthew Wood has been a practicing herbalist for more than forty years. He is an internationally known teacher and author with more than ten books to his credit, including The Book of Herbal Medicine, The Earthwise Herbal, Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix, and A Shamanic Herbal. Matthew has an MSc in herbal medicine from the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine (accredited, U. of Wales). He lives in the Midwest.

About Stephen Harrod Buhner

Stephen Harrod Buhner (1952–2022) was an Earth poet and the award-winning author of many books on nature, indigenous cultures, the environment, and herbal medicine. He comes from a long line of healers including Leroy Burney, Surgeon General of the United States under Eisenhower and Kennedy, and Elizabeth Lusterheide, a midwife and herbalist who worked in rural Indiana in the early nineteenth century. The greatest influence on his work, however, was his great-grandfather C.G. Harrod who primarily used botanical medicines, also in rural Indiana, when he began his work as a physician in 1911. Stephen's work has appeared or been profiled in publications throughout North America and Europe including Common Boundary, Apotheosis, Shaman's Drum, The New York Times, CNN, and Good Morning America. www.gaianstudies.org

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rod

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'......more

Goodreads review by Ana

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 actuall......more

Quotes

“Brilliant! A substantial and important addition to our understanding of the human body, chronic disease, and herbal medicine.”

“Matthew Wood is among the most respected and well-known herbalists of our era and is the author of several brilliant textbooks on herbal medicine. Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix is his opus and masterpiece. Exceptionally well written and impeccably researched, this book debunks the popular theory that cells of the body function as independent units existing independently of one another. Instead, he meticulously reveals in easy-to-understand terms the implications of the extracellular matrix, the inner ocean in which the cells exist, and how this simple switch hugely impacts our understanding of healing. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in health, healing, and medicine.”

“Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix is a deep examination of the scientific justification of concepts discussed in traditional systems of medicine for millennia--that the human organism is a living wholeness unto itself, not a compilation of unintelligent biochemical and cellular machinery. This groundbreaking text reveals the truth of how our bodies function at a fundamental level and how we can rejuvenate our health on all levels with natural, holistic approaches to healing. It’s akin to the discovery of the heliocentric model of our solar system but for the understanding and practice of holistic medicine . . . truly revolutionary.”

“Matthew Wood’s book turns biomedical physiology on its head and presents a science-based holistic perspective on how and why herbs really work. His finest book yet!”

“In his groundbreaking book, Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix, Matthew Wood brings us a more balanced scientific perspective and further proves the basic tenet of holism while condemning reductionism as a model for how biological systems work. A revolutionary work poised to overthrow the conceptual foundation of modern science and its therapeutic models and drug therapies, this book directs treatment toward the individual as a whole and blows the lid off a ‘onesize-fits-all’ approach to modern pharmacology and compares our situation to that of Galileo and the Church. I recommend this book for all students of herbalism, holistic medicine, and the curative arts.”

“Matthew Wood’s brilliant new book definitively establishes the scientific basis of holistic healing. Wood shows how optimal health--homeostasis--is in the extracellular matrix, the fundamental basis of alternative medicine. Drugs circumvent the self-regulation of our bodies and are creating more diabetes, cardiovascular distress, and cancer, yet holistic therapies improve the cellular environment and our bodies’ balance. I especially admire this book because Wood brings in Arthur Firstenberg’s research on the intensifying electromagnetic frequencies as the cause of much modern disease. The extracellular matrix that transports our bodily fluids is very sensitive to these frequencies that may be causing the huge rise in inflammation today. This is a must-read for herbalists, acupuncturists, chiropractors, energy therapists, bodyworkers, and anyone directing their own path to healing.”

"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 does not provide all the answers, it rather asks the questions we might have 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. Matthew Wood’s herbals and reference books on Western herbalism are exceptional."