Healing in Advance: Your Prehabilitation Handbook received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Alexander Watson.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
The full title is Healing in Advance: Your Prehabilitation Handbook (often abbreviated just Healing in Advance), and it was published on January 7th, 2025.
What’s the book’s first line?
“The world is full of people trying to get from one place to another.”
What’s the book about?Give us the “pitch”.
Prehabilitation is the concept of using the weeks or months leading up to a planned major medical intervention—surgery, cancer therapy, pregnancy, etc. —to incorporate a structured medical optimization program. Most people aren’t walking around day to day in their most optimal health status, and after a major procedure and subsequent inactivity during recovery, they’re often even weaker and dependent on others than before.
Formal prehabilitation clinics are usually only accessible as part of major hospital system’s organ transplantation program or cancer center. However, any forward thinking medical professional can lead their patients through a prehabilitation program, ultimately reducing patients’ risks for complications, improving their outcomes from the procedure, and empowering them throughout the process. This book is a resource for both patients and providers to motivate and inform.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
I wanted to write the book for a few reasons- the main reason is the well known glacial pace by which practitioners incorporate new evidence based practices. Because of the administrative burden most clinicians face (insurance battles, reduced reimbursements, etc.) we have less time than ever to comb through research and find useful new protocols. At first, this realization drove me to lead a team of experts as co-editor of A Prehabilitation Guide for All Providers, the first comprehensive textbook for prehabilitation. I quickly realized that this only slightly addresses the problem because the medical field would still need to identify this text as meaningful before it could make a difference in clinical practice. Instead, by translating this information into patient friendly language, anyone could read about the prehabilitation techniques and bring these insights to their medical teams. This could lead to the same adoption while empowering patients in the process.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
A new cancer diagnosis is terrifying; chronic back, hip, and knee pain are demoralizing; end stage organ disease feels like a “sword of Damocles” waiting to drop on the patient at any time. Even without a clear procedure date in mind, anyone living with these disorders can address the underlying metabolic (and other) factors to slow progression, reverse disease, or at least improve their quality of life in spite of chronic illness. This book can take anyone from feeling like their body is failing them and to becoming more in tune with the physiology that drives us all, allowing them to resume work and social activities they thought they’d lost forever. Healing in Advancedoesn’t downplay the effort required to get there, but it can illuminate a path from hopeless, debilitating disease to a hopeful future.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I’d always enjoyed writing but never saw it as a potential career/hobby for a few reasons. The first reason was a series of poor evaluations on my middle school (seriously) “timed writing” exercises. Ideally, your score is above your grade level. Yet, in 6th grade my scores were a discouraging “6, 6, 6, Off Topic (OT).” A decade later, I thought I’d take a stab at writing fiction, unbeknownst to me that the storyline I was drafting was very similar to the movie the Machinist, which I hadn’t even seen! I also received some critical feedback from my Dad (traditionally verysupportive) who, in regards to the dialogue I’d written, stated “Alex, human beings don’t speak like that.”
As you could imagine, this was a mix of both discouraging and motivating to refine my writing skills. Medical training forced me to read volumes of jargon-y pieces of writing, but I also found time to fall in love with the meditative state of listening to audiobooks- particularly nonfiction books related to life in medicine, entrepreneurship, etc. It inspired me to get back into writing and then, ideally, inspire others for radical self improvement
Is this the first book you’ve written?
I wrote this concurrently with the accompanying textbook. Word of advice to others: don’t do that. One at a time!
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I am a physician, practicing a mix of prehabilitation/medical weight loss care and “performance medicine.” The latter is exactly what it sounds like: medicine geared towards improving the physical performance of athletes, weekend warriors, or anyone who is past the “prehab phase” and just wants to see exactly what their bodies are now capable of doing.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
As much as I can possibly afford to spend on it. This usually comes out to a few hours per week, spent on our Admire Medical blog and, now, the next book in the series…
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best part is having the flexibility to write when time affords instead of being held to a rigid deadline. There’s also the indie community—much like the small business community—which is very supportive and collegial. The hardest part is that my day job substantially limits how much time I can actually dedicate to writing. I love practicing medicine, of course, but would also love the chance to be able to write consistently and influence more lives than can be impacted through a typical medical practice’s reach.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
If you haven’t already, check out the book Write, Publish, Repeat. Any advice I’d come up with would either be stolen from there or less helpful than the pearls in that book. The audiobook is also narrated very well.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
Sure, assuming it was with the right publisher and if there were some perks included. I’d never be so bold as to think I could deserve an advance, but should one come my way it could be my opportunity for a brief sabbatical (or reduction in hours at the practice). In fact, I do have a book proposal on medical entrepreneurship currently in consideration with a major publisher at the moment.
Of course there are other benefits. In particular, everyone else involved with HIAwould quickly agree with me when I say that I could have done more on the marketing/promotional side, but my first professional commitment is always the medical practice since many people’s livelihoods depend on its success. Working with a traditional publisher could bolster the marketing muscle as well if my time holds me back from doing more.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
If by “fortune” you mean paying off my student loans, this is definitely a motivating factor! Fortunately, my primary motivation for writing is something a bit more altruistic. Our medical practice Admire Medical is forced to operate on a membership-based model since the insurance system in our country is “unfriendly” to new startups… to dramatically understate the power dynamic. I’m motivated to put out these kinds of resources to disseminate information to those for whom a membership-based practice is simply unaffordable. At the least, these patients can bring the ideas to their own medical team for consideration.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
If this is asking “Which book (of your current interests/ideas…)” I’m completely fired up about the next book in the Advance series in which I’ll be sharing insights on optimizing physical performance. Healing in Advance had to come first, but I think Winning in Advancewill have a broader audience and offer a different kind of inspirational message.
If this is asking “Which book (written by someone else…),” I’d say Outlive by Peter Attia. This book was a huge inspiration to my writing, just as Peter’s medical philosophies influenced the direction of my medical training as well.