Best of
Medicine

2019

War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line


David Nott - 2019
    From Sarajevo under siege in 1993 to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out lifesaving operations in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major metropolitan hospital. He is now widely acknowledged as the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world.War Doctor is his extraordinary story, encompassing his surgeries in nearly every major conflict zone since the end of the Cold War, as well as his struggles to return to a “normal” life and routine after each trip. Culminating in his recent trips to war-torn Syria—and the untold story of his efforts to help secure a humanitarian corridor out of besieged Aleppo to evacuate some 50,000 people—War Doctor is a blend of medical memoir, personal journey, and nonfiction thriller that provides unforgettable, at times raw, insight into the human toll of war.

Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom


Katherine Eban - 2019
    Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects.The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings? A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.

Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come


Richard Preston - 2019
    Now comes a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, an urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses—from the #1 bestselling author of The Hot Zone, soon to be a National Geographic original miniseries.This time, Ebola started with a two-year-old child who likely had contact with a wild creature and whose entire family quickly fell ill and died. The ensuing global drama activated health professionals in North America, Europe, and Africa in a desperate race against time to contain the viral wildfire. By the end—as the virus mutated into its deadliest form, and spread farther and faster than ever before—30,000 people would be infected, and the dead would be spread across eight countries on three continents.In this taut and suspenseful medical drama, Richard Preston deeply chronicles the outbreak, in which we saw for the first time the specter of Ebola jumping continents, crossing the Atlantic, and infecting people in America. Rich in characters and conflict—physical, emotional, and ethical—Crisis in the Red Zone is an immersion in one of the great public health calamities of our time.Preston writes of doctors and nurses in the field putting their own lives on the line, of government bureaucrats and NGO administrators moving, often fitfully, to try to contain the outbreak, and of pharmaceutical companies racing to develop drugs to combat the virus. He also explores the charged ethical dilemma over who should and did receive the rare doses of an experimental treatment when they became available at the peak of the disaster. Crisis in the Red Zone makes clear that the outbreak of 2013–2014 is a harbinger of further, more severe outbreaks, and of emerging viruses heretofore unimagined—in any country, on any continent. In our ever more interconnected world, with roads and towns cut deep into the jungles of equatorial Africa, viruses both familiar and undiscovered are being unleashed into more densely populated areas than ever before.The more we discover about the virosphere, the more we realize its deadly potential. Crisis in the Red Zone is an exquisitely timely book, a stark warning of viral outbreaks to come.

The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It


Marty Makary - 2019
    Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of price-gouging, middlemen, and a series of elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable.The Price We Pay offers a roadmap for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.

The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir


Steffanie Strathdee - 2019
    What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world.Frantic, Steffanie combed through research old and new and came across phage therapy: the idea that the right virus, aka "the perfect predator," can kill even the most lethal bacteria. Phage treatment had fallen out of favor almost 100 years ago, after antibiotic use went mainstream. Now, with time running out, Steffanie appealed to phage researchers all over the world for help. She found allies at the FDA, researchers from Texas A&M, and a clandestine Navy biomedical center -- and together they resurrected a forgotten cure.

That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour


Sunita Puri - 2019
    Sunita Puri knew from a young age that the gulf between her parents' experiences and her own was impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and spirituality. Between days spent waiting for her mother, an anesthesiologist, to exit the OR, and evenings spent in conversation with her parents about their faith, Puri witnessed the tension between medicine's impulse to preserve life at all costs and a spiritual embrace of life's temporality. And it was that tension that eventually drew Puri, a passionate but unsatisfied medical student, to palliative medicine--a new specialty attempting to translate the border between medical intervention and quality-of-life care.Interweaving evocative stories of Puri's family and the patients she cares for, That Good Night is a stunning meditation on impermanence and the role of medicine in helping us to live and die well, arming readers with information that will transform how we communicate with our doctors about what matters most to us.

Letters from the Pit: Stories of a Physician's Odyssey in Emergency Medicine


Patrick Crocker - 2019
    Every day the staff of emergency rooms throughout the world are saving lives - 24/7/365. Dr. Patrick Crocker provides us an intimate glimpse into the growing mind of an emergency physician, from residency to retirement. Told in a unique first-person stream of consciousness style, you are right in the middle of the action, looking over the doctor's shoulder while he works. In this compilation of notable, frightening, funny, sad, and poignant cases, you'll see Dr. Crocker's struggles to Do No Harm in the most challenging of situations. Through these stories, you'll see him find the delicate balance between help and harm, empathy and self-preservatio

The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia


Nathan Filer - 2019
    How we perceive it—and how we treat people living with it—is at the core of how we understand mental health. But what do we really know? How much time do we spend listening? Do we truly comprehend this complex and often contradictory diagnosis?In The Heartland , Nathan Filer, mental-health nurse and award-winning writer, takes us on a journey into the psychiatric wards he once worked on. He also invites us to spend time with world-leading experts, and with some extraordinary people who share their stories about living with this strange and misunderstood condition. The Heartland debunks myths, challenges assumptions, and offers fresh insight into what it means to be mad, and what it means to be human.

Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next


Timothy Faust - 2019
    It's cheaper than our current model, and most Americans (and their doctors) already want it. So what's the deal with our current healthcare system, and why don’t we have something better?In Health Justice Now, Timothy Faust explains what single payer is, why we don't yet have it, and how it can be won. He identifies the actors that have misled us for profit and political gain, dispels the myth that healthcare needs to be personally expensive, shows how we can smoothly transition to a new model, and reveals the slate of humane and progressive reforms that we can only achieve with single payer as the springboard.In this impassioned playbook, Faust inspires us to believe in a world where we could leave our job without losing healthcare for ourselves and our kids; where affordable housing is healthcare; and where social justice links arm-in-arm with health justice for us all. Single payer is the tool—health justice is the goal!

Breaking & Mending: A Doctor’s Story of Burnout and Recovery


Joanna Cannon - 2019
    I was mentally and physically broken. So fractured, I hadn't eaten properly or slept well, or even changed my expression for months. I sat in a cubicle, behind paper-thin curtains, listening to the rest of the hospital happen around me, and I shook with the effort of not crying. I was an inch away from defeat, from the acceptance of a failure I assumed would be inevitable, but I knew I had to carry on. I had to somehow walk through it.Because I wasn't the patient. I was the doctor."A frank account of mental health from both sides of the doctor-patient divide, from the bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie, based on her own experience as a doctor working on a psychiatric ward.

When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon


Joshua D. Mezrich - 2019
    Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, transplanting organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he illuminates the extraordinary field of transplantation that enables this kind of miracle to happen every day.When Death Becomes Life is a thrilling look at how science advances on a grand scale to improve human lives. Mezrich examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the inspiring and heartbreaking stories of his transplant patients. Combining gentle sensitivity with scientific clarity, Mezrich reflects on his calling as a doctor and introduces the modern pioneers who made transplantation a reality—maverick surgeons whose feats of imagination, bold vision, and daring risk taking generated techniques and practices that save millions of lives around the world.Mezrich takes us inside the operating room and unlocks the wondrous process of transplant surgery, a delicate, intense ballet requiring precise timing, breathtaking skill, and at times, creative improvisation. In illuminating this work, Mezrich touches the essence of existence and what it means to be alive. Most physicians fight death, but in transplantation, doctors take from death. Mezrich shares his gratitude and awe for the privilege of being part of this transformative exchange as the dead give their last breath of life to the living. After all, the donors are his patients, too.When Death Becomes Life also engages in fascinating ethical and philosophical debates: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? What defines death, and what role did organ transplantation play in that definition? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich’s riveting book is a beautiful, poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.

Some Days You Can’t Save Them All


Ronnie E. Baticulon - 2019
    But a physician’s incorrect diagnosis will always be a matter of life and death. Dr. Baticulon’s dispatches from the country’s leading public hospital are told in language that requires no further acrobatics. How do you tell a mother that the smiling ten-year-old boy in her arms will not survive the following week? How do you tell a little girl she’ll never be able to go home to play because her parents can’t afford P54,000 for her surgery? How do you live with yourself after breaking a promise to save an eight-year-old boy’s life? Like the trenches of war zones, the operating room is the frontline of life’s most difficult questions. Here are a neurosurgeon’s gripping ruminations on hope and loss."—Lourd De Veyra"Ronnie Baticulon follows in the footsteps of many other physicians for whom the task of understanding and healing humanity did not stop at the clinic or the operating room. They used words and language not only for their patients but also for themselves—a long and distinguished line from Rabelais, Chekhov, and Maugham to Michael Crichton, Richard Selzer, Oliver Sacks, and of course our own Jose Rizal and Arturo Rotor. Dr. Baticulon is a worthy addition to that tradition."—Jose Y. Dalisay Jr.

Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present


Frank M. Snowden III - 2019
    In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare. A multidisciplinary and comparative investigation of the medical and social history of the major epidemics, this volume touches on themes such as the evolution of medical therapy, plague literature, poverty, the environment, and mass hysteria. In addition to providing historical perspective on diseases such as smallpox, cholera, and tuberculosis, Snowden examines the fallout from recent epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola and the question of the world’s preparedness for the next generation of diseases.

Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine


Thomas Hager - 2019
    It could be an oddball researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough technology, or an unexpected but welcome side effect discovered during clinical trials. Piece together these stories, as Thomas Hager does in this remarkable, century-spanning history, and you can trace the evolution of our culture and the practice of medicine.  ​Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.

Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas


Adam Kay - 2019
    With twenty-five tales of intriguing, shocking and incredible Christmas incidents, the British public will finally appreciate the sacrifices made and the challenges faced by the unsung heroes of the NHS.Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas will be fully illustrated (as tastefully as possible) and will delight all of Adam’s fans throughout the festive period of Christmas 2019 and for many years to come.

The Knife’s Edge: The Heart and Mind of a Cardiac Surgeon


Stephen Westaby - 2019
    His thirty-five-year career has been characterised by fearlessness and ruthless ambition; leaving empathy at the hospital door as thousands of patients put their lives in his hands.For heart surgeons, the inevitable cost of failure is death and in The Knife’s Edge, Westaby reflects on the unique mindset of those who are drawn to this exhilarating and often tragic profession. We discover the pioneers who grasped opportunities and took chances to drive innovation and save lives. Often difficult, uninhibited and fearless, theirs is a field constantly threatened by the risk of public failure.Like those before him, Westaby refuses to draw the line in his search of a lifetime solution to problems of the heart. His determination is unerring – a steadfastness underpinned by his unusual mind. But as we glimpse into the future of cardiac surgery, for all its remarkable scientific advancement, one question remains: within the confines of socialised medical healthcare systems, how can heart surgeons – individuals often hardwired with avoidance of self-doubt, a penchant for glory and a flagrant disregard for authority – truly flourish?

Daughter of Family G: A Memoir of Cancer Genes, Love and Fate


Ami McKay - 2019
    In 1895 her great-great aunt, Pauline Gross, a seamstress in Ann Arbor, Michigan, confided to a pathology professor at the local university that she expected to die young, like so many others in her family. Rather than dismiss her fears, the pathologist chose to enlist Pauline in the careful tracking of those in her family tree who had died of cancer. Pauline's premonition proved true--she died at 46--but because of her efforts, her family (who the pathologist dubbed 'Family G') would become the longest and most detailed cancer genealogy ever studied in the world. A century after Pauline's confession, researchers would identify the genetic mutation responsible for the family's woes. Now known as Lynch syndrome, the genetic condition predisposes its carriers to several types of cancer, including colorectal, endometrial, ovarian and pancreatic. In 2001, as a young mother with two sons and a keen interest in survival, Ami McKay was among the first to be tested for Lynch syndrome. She had a feeling she'd test positive: her mother's side of the family was riddled with early deaths and her own mother was being treated for the disease. When the test proved her fears true, she began living in "an unsettling state between wellness and cancer," and she's been there ever since. Intimate, candid, and probing, her genetic memoir tells a fascinating story, teasing out the many ways to live with the hand you are dealt.

Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope into Action


David Fajgenbaum - 2019
    But things changed dramatically when he began suffering from inexplicable fatigue. In a matter of weeks, his organs were failing and he was read his last rites. Doctors were baffled by his condition, which they had yet to even diagnose. Floating in and out of consciousness, Fajgenbaum prayed for a second chance, the equivalent of a dramatic play to second the game into overtime.Miraculously, Fajgenbaum survived--only to endure repeated near-death relapses from what would eventually be identified as a form of Castleman disease, an extremely deadly and rare condition that acts like a cross between cancer and an autoimmune disorder. When he relapsed while on the only drug in development and realized that the medical community was unlikely to make progress in time to save his life, Fajgenbaum turned his desperate hope for a cure into concrete action: Between hospitalizations he studied his own charts and tested his own blood samples, looking for clues that could unlock a new treatment. With the help of family, friends, and mentors, he also reached out to other Castleman disease patients and physicians, and eventually came up with an ambitious plan to crowdsource the most promising research questions and recruit world-class researchers to tackle them. Instead of waiting for the scientific stars to align, he would attempt to align them himself.More than five years later and now married to his college sweetheart, Fajgenbaum has seen his hard work pay off: A treatment he identified has induced a tentative remission and his novel approach to collaborative scientific inquiry has become a blueprint for advancing rare disease research. His incredible story demonstrates the potency of hope, and what can happen when the forces of determination, love, family, faith, and serendipity collide.

The Undying


Anne Boyer - 2019
    For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness.A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others.A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious.

Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story


Leah Hazard - 2019
    No food for ten. And a ward full of soon-to-be mothers… Welcome to the life of a midwife. Life on the NHS front line, working within a system at breaking point, is more extreme than you could ever imagine. From the bloody to the beautiful, from moments of utter vulnerability to remarkable displays of strength, from camaraderie to raw desperation, from heart-wrenching grief to the pure, perfect joy of a new-born baby, midwife Leah Hazard has seen it all.Through her eyes, we meet Eleanor, whose wife is a walking miracle of modern medicine, their baby a feat of reproductive science; Crystal, pregnant at just fifteen, the precarious, flickering life within her threatening to come far too soon; Star, birthing in a room heady with essential oils and love until an enemy intrudes and Pei Hsuan, who has carried her tale of exploitation and endurance thousands of miles to somehow find herself at the open door of Leah’s ward.Moving, compassionate and intensely candid, Hard Pushed is a love letter to new mothers and to Leah’s fellow midwives – there for us at some of the most challenging, empowering and defining moments of our lives.

Priced Out: The Economic and Ethical Costs of American Health Care


Uwe Reinhardt - 2019
    Famously bipartisan, he advised presidents and Congress on health reform and originated central features of the Affordable Care Act. In Priced Out, Reinhardt offers an engaging and enlightening account of today's U.S. health care system, explaining why it costs so much more and delivers so much less than the systems of every other advanced country, why this situation is morally indefensible, and how we might improve it.The problem, Reinhardt says, is not one of economics but of social ethics. There is no American political consensus on a fundamental question other countries settled long ago: to what extent should we be our brothers' and sisters' keepers when it comes to health care? Drawing on the best evidence, he guides readers through the chaotic, secretive, and inefficient way America finances health care, and he offers a penetrating ethical analysis of recent reform proposals. At this point, he argues, the United States appears to have three stark choices: the government can make the rich help pay for the health care of the poor, ration care by income, or control costs. Reinhardt proposes an alternative path: that by age 26 all Americans must choose either to join an insurance arrangement with community-rated premiums, or take a chance on being uninsured or relying on a health insurance market that charges premiums based on health status.An incisive look at the American health care system, Priced Out dispels the confusion, ignorance, myths, and misinformation that hinder effective reform.

Radical: The Science, Culture, and History of Breast Cancer in America


Kate Pickert - 2019
    That is, until she was unexpectedly diagnosed with an aggressive type of breast cancer at the age of 35. As she underwent more than a year of treatment, Pickert realized that the popular understanding of breast care in America bears little resemblance to the experiences of today's patients and the rapidly changing science designed to save their lives. After using her journalistic skills to navigate her own care, Pickert embarked on a quest to understand the cultural, scientific and historical forces shaping the lives of breast-cancer patients in the modern age.Breast cancer is one of history's most prolific killers. Despite billions spent on research and treatments, it remains one of the deadliest diseases facing women today. From the forests of the Pacific Northwest to an operating suite in Los Angeles to the epicenter of pink-ribbon advocacy in Dallas, Pickert reports on the turning points and people responsible for the progress that has been made against breast cancer and documents the challenges of defeating a disease that strikes one in eight American women and has helped shape the country's medical culture.Drawing on interviews with doctors, economists, researchers, advocates and patients, as well as on journal entries and recordings collected over the author's treatment, Radical puts the story of breast cancer into context, and shows how modern treatments represent a long overdue shift in the way doctors approach cancer -- and disease -- itself.

ER Days


Nick Casto - 2019
    Such was the opening line to many patient encounters in the emergency departments and clinics where I spent my career as a physician. Shadow me back through the years in a series of vignettes that will give you a peek into a world of medicine that few on the outside ever see. Along the way you may laugh a little, tear up a bit or even learn something, but through it all you will experience the highs and lows of the day to day practice of emergency and urgent care medicine. Put on your scrubs and come join me now: your first shift working in the emergency department is about to begin.

Playing God: The Evolution of a Modern Surgeon


Anthony Youn - 2019
    But as you will see in Playing God, earning an M.D. is just the first step to becoming a real physician.In this page-turning, thrilling, and moving memoir, Dr. Anthony Youn reveals that the true metamorphosis from student to doctor occurs not in medical school but in the formative years of residency training and early practice. It is only through actually saving and losing patients, taking on the medical establishment, wrestling with financial and emotional survival, and fighting for patients’ lives that a young doctor becomes a mature and competent physician.Dr. Youn takes you from the operating rooms of a university surgery residency program to the gleaming offices of top Beverly Hills plastic surgeons to opening the doors of his empty clinic as a new doctor with no money, no patients, and mountains of debt. Playing God leaves you with an unexpected answer to that profound question: “What does it mean to be a doctor?” In Playing God, you will take a journey through the world of surgery, hospitals, and the practice of medicine unlike any that you have traveled before.

In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids


Travis Rieder - 2019
    Enduring half a dozen surgeries, the drugs he received were both miraculous and essential to his recovery. But his most profound suffering came several months later when he went into acute opioid withdrawal while following his physician’s orders. Over the course of four excruciating weeks, Rieder learned what it means to be “dope sick”—the physical and mental agony caused by opioid dependence. Clueless how to manage his opioid taper, Travis’s doctors suggested he go back on the drugs and try again later. Yet returning to pills out of fear of withdrawal is one route to full-blown addiction. Instead, Rieder continued the painful process of weaning himself.Rieder’s experience exposes a dark secret of American pain management: a healthcare system so conflicted about opioids, and so inept at managing them, that the crisis currently facing us is both unsurprising and inevitable. As he recounts his story, Rieder provides a fascinating look at the history of these drugs first invented in the 1800s, changing attitudes about pain management over the following decades, and the implementation of the pain scale at the beginning of the twenty-first century. He explores both the science of addiction and the systemic and cultural barriers we must overcome if we are to address the problem effectively in the contemporary American healthcare system.In Pain in America is not only a gripping personal account of dependence, but a groundbreaking exploration of the intractable causes of America’s opioid problem and their implications for resolving the crisis. Rieder makes clear that the opioid crisis exists against a backdrop of real, debilitating pain—and that anyone can fall victim to this epidemic.

Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution


Jennifer Block - 2019
    In Everything Below the Waist, Jennifer Block asks: Why is the life expectancy of women today declining relative to women in other high-income countries, and even relative to the generation before them? Block examines several staples of modern women's health care, from fertility technology to contraception to pelvic surgery to miscarriage treatment, and finds that while overdiagnosis and overtreatment persist in medicine writ large, they are particularly acute for women. One third of mothers give birth by major surgery; roughly half of women lose their uterus to hysterectomy.Feminism turned the world upside down, yet to a large extent the doctors' office has remained stuck in time. Block returns to the 1970s women's health movement to understand how in today's supposed age of empowerment, women's bodies are still so vulnerable to medical control--particularly their sex organs, and as result, their sex lives.In this urgent book, Block tells the stories of patients, clinicians, and reformers, uncovering history and science that could revolutionize the standard of care, and change the way women think about their health. Everything Below the Waist challenges all people to take back control of their bodies.

Doctor Dogs: How Our Best Friends Are Becoming Our Best Medicine


Maria Goodavage - 2019
    In this groundbreaking book, Goodavage brings us behind the scenes of cutting-edge science at top research centers, and into the lives of people whose well-being depends on their devoted, highly skilled personal MDs (medical dogs). With her signature wit and passion, Goodavage explores how doctor dogs are becoming our happy allies in the fight against dozens of physical and mental conditions.We meet dogs who detect cancer and Parkinson's disease, and dogs who alert people to seizures and diabetic lows or highs and other life-threatening physical ailments. Goodavage reveals the revolutionary ways dogs are helping those with autism, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. And she introduces us to intrepid canines who are protecting us from antibiotic-resistant bugs, and to dogs who may one day help keep us safe from epidemic catastrophe. Their paycheck for their lifesaving work? Heartfelt praise and a tasty treat or favorite toy.The emotional element in Doctor Dogs delivers as powerfully as the science. You don't have to be a dog lover to care deeply about what these dogs are doing and what we are learning from them--although if you're not a dog lover, you probably will be by the end of the book.

No Such Thing as a Snow Day: A Collection of Reader-Submitted Medical Stories


Kerry Hamm - 2019
    First responders share unique baby names, we hear stories about clueless newbies, bitter veterans, and patients with good intentions but bad ideas. We also hear more about the not-so-happy side of this industry. Grab a blanket, a mug of hot chocolate, and cozy up in front of the fire to catch up with submissions from people like you!

Neurofitness: The Real Science of Peak Performance from a College Dropout Turned Brain Surgeon


Rahul Jandial - 2019
    Rahul Jandial is on the cutting edge of the latest advancements in neuroscience. This fascinating book draws on Dr. Jandial’s broad-spectrum expertise and brings together the best of various fields-–surgery, science, brain structure, the conscious mind–-all to explain the bigger picture of brain health and rejuvenation. It is a journey into his operating room, around the world on his surgical missions, inside his laboratory, and to the outer edges of neuroscience to reveal the latest brain breakthroughs that are turning science fiction into reality, translating their implications for everyday life. Busting myths along the way, Jandial helps readers get wired for success at work and school, perform better when the pressure is on, boost memory, control stress and emotions, minimize pain, stick to a healthy eating plan, unleash creativity, raise smarter kids, and stay sharp as they age. Combining the treatment guidelines he gives his patients, the most promising concepts from frontier science, and the smartest super-achiever hacks, he provides practical takeaways for optimizing brain function and leading a healthier, happier, more productive life.

Dear People, with Love and Care, Your Doctors


Debraj Shome - 2019
    Narrated by some of the most celebrated doctors from across the world, Dear People, with Love and Care, Your Doctors weaves together inspirational and personal stories of medical excellence and brilliance, interjected with feelings of triumph, loss, fear, strength, valour and empathy.

Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them: Schizophrenia Through a Mother's Eyes


Simonetta Carr - 2019
    Yet, this condition is more frequent than most people imagine. Simonetta Carr shares her story as the mother of a son with schizophrenia and offers suggestions to others who find themselves in similar situations. Her hard-won insights are augmented with wisdom from psychiatrists, pastors, and people who successfully live with this condition.

Just One More Question: Stories from a Life in Neurology


Niall Tubridy - 2019
    He shares the stories of encounters that are, by turn, poignant, dramatic and funny.Using simple and illuminating language Tubridy also explains well-known conditions like multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease and Parkinson's and and brings us into the examining room as he accompanies patients with these diagnoses on their challenging path.In addition, he reflects candidly on the reasons he, a doctor's son, went into medicine, how he has been tested, and what he has learned about people - and about himself - along the way.

The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last


Azra Raza - 2019
    A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.

Can Medicine Be Cured?: The Corruption of a Profession


Seamus O'Mahony - 2019
     'A deeply fascinating and rousing book' Mail on Sunday. 'What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O'Mahony's scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty' The Times. Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be 'conquered' ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion.

Long Walk Out of the Woods: A Physician's Story of Addiction, Depression, Hope, and Recovery


Adam B. Hill - 2019
    Adam B. Hill, suffers stress and disillusionment with the culture of medicine, leading to alcoholism, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Then while in recovery, he loses a mentor to suicide, revealing the extent of the burnout epidemic in the medical field. By sharing his harrowing story, Dr. Hill shows how this problem manifests, considers ways to address it, and confronts commonplace attitudes regarding self-care, recovery/treatment, empathy, and vulnerability amongst medical practitioners. His book is a road map for better practices at a time when doctors around the world are struggling in silence. Long Walk Out of the Woods is a game-changing personal narrative and prescriptive book. It expands on Dr. Hill's famous 2017 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine, "Breaking the Stigma: A Physician’s Perspective on Recovery and Self-Care."

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness


Anne Harrington - 2019
    She shows how the stalling of early twentieth century efforts in this direction allowed Freudians and social scientists to insist, with some justification, that they had better ways of analyzing and fixing minds.But when the Freudians overreached, they drove psychiatry into a state of crisis that a new “biological revolution” was meant to alleviate. Harrington shows how little that biological revolution had to do with breakthroughs in science, and why the field has fallen into a state of crisis in our own time.Mind Fixers makes clear that psychiatry’s waxing and waning biological enthusiasms have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors, including immigration, warfare, grassroots activism, and assumptions about race and gender. Government programs designed to empty the state mental hospitals, acrid rivalries between different factions in the field, industry profit mongering, consumerism, and an uncritical media have all contributed to the story as well.In focusing particularly on the search for the biological roots of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington underscores the high human stakes for the millions of people who have sought medical answers for their mental suffering. This is not just a story about doctors and scientists, but about countless ordinary people and their loved ones.A clear-eyed, evenhanded, and yet passionate tour de force, Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future, both for those who suffer and for those whose job it is to care for them.

Did He Save Lives?: A Surgeon's Story


David Sellu - 2019
    There followed a sequence of extraordinary events that led to David being prosecuted and convicted for the patient’s death and sent to prison. His licence to practise medicine was suspended, his career cut short. Events that took place later showed that this was an unfair trial with tinges of racism, and he won an appeal against his conviction and is now a free man. But the damage had already been done. This book tells his extraordinary story for the first time, in his own words.

Nurses On The Inside: Stories Of The HIV/AIDS Epidemic In NYC


Ellen Matzer - 2019
    It is the story of two nurses who witnessed the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic from the frontline. It focuses on their lives and their experiences. Some of the story is raw, sometimes graphic, but familiar for people with HIV infection, family members, friends, and other nurses and medical professionals such as Ellen and Valery. There were hundreds of nurses who went through what Ellen and Valery experienced. They want to tell this story to give a voice to a generation lost, encouraging the world to remember one simple thing: this history cannot be repeated.

Critical: Science and stories from the brink of human life


Matt Morgan - 2019
    Michael Mosley'This book is marvellous: buy it, share it, recommend it.... We are fortunate to have dedicated, caring and humble folks such as Doc Morgan on the Critical Care front line. We are even better off when a writer can capture all that this exciting, mad, glorious and even exasperating job means. If you work in healthcare, know somebody that does, or simply inhabit a body then this book is for you: in fact it's critical.' Peter Brindley, Professor of Critical Care Medicine, Anesthesiology, Medical Ethics University of Alberta'Just wonderful. I love the exploration of what it means to survive, at what cost and so on. Such an important factor and it's a real problem with what we do. An old surgeon once told me ‘just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. Operating is the easiest thing in the world, not doing so is incredibly challenging’. A lovely book.' Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS Cardiothoracic and Transplant Surgeon and author of Can You Die of a Broken Heart?‘An illuminating, compassionate insight into the fascinating world of intensive care.’ Leah Hazzard, author of Hard PushedCritical is an intelligent, compelling and profoundly insightful journey into the world of intensive care medicine and the lives of people who have forever been changed by it. Being critically ill means one or more of your vital organs have failed – this could be your lungs, your heart, your kidneys, gut or even your brain. Starting with the first recognised case in which a little girl was saved by intensive care in 1952 in Copenhagen, Matt writes brilliantly about the fascinating history, practices and technology in this newest of all the major medical specialties. Matt guides us around the ICU by guiding us around the body and the different organs, and in this way, we learn not only the stories of many of the patients he’s treated over the years, but also about the various functions different parts of the body.   He draws on his time spent with real patients, on the brink of death, and explains how he and his colleagues fight against the odds to help them live. Happily many of his cases have happy endings, but Matt also writes movingly about those cases which will always remain with him – the cases where the mysteries of the body proved too hard to solve, or diagnoses came too late or made no difference to the outcome.

Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth


Dána-Ain Davis - 2019
    This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income white women in the United States. D�na-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.While poor and low-income black women are often the "mascots" of premature birth outcomes, this book focuses on professional black women, who are just as likely to give birth prematurely. Drawing on an impressive array of interviews with nearly fifty mothers, fathers, neonatologists, nurses, midwives, and reproductive justice advocates, D�na-Ain Davis argues that events leading up to an infant's arrival in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and the parents' experiences while they are in the NICU, reveal subtle but pernicious forms of racism that confound the perceived class dynamics that are frequently understood to be a central factor of premature birth.The book argues not only that medical racism persists and must be considered when examining adverse outcomes--as well as upsetting experiences for parents--but also that NICUs and life-saving technologies should not be the only strategies for improving the outcomes for black pregnant women and their babies. Davis makes the case for other avenues, such as community-based birthing projects, doulas, and midwives, that support women during pregnancy and labor are just as important and effective in avoiding premature births and mortality.

Promises in the Dark: Walking with Those in Need Without Losing Heart


Eric McLaughlin - 2019
    Eric McLaughlin strengthens the hearts of readers to persevere in God’s calling to walk with those in need. As a missionary doctor in Africa, McLaughlin knows how walking closely with those who suffer and bearing others’ burdens can easily lead to burnout or cynicism—unless we find the path to perseverance that the Lord provides.This resource explores how to find both calling and hope, living in the tension between a difficult present and God’s promises of renewal, how to cope with despair and futility, the importance of the suffering God for those who suffer, and how the manifestations of God bring life into a dying world.McLaughlin explores how to endure in such a yet-to-be-redeemed world as ours, which is full of tragedy and heartache, pointing to God’s promises.” Description taken from https://newgrowthpress.com/promises-i...

The Physician Philosopher's Guide to Personal Finance: The 20% of Personal Finance Doctors Need to Know to Get 80% of the Results


James Turner - 2019
    Unfortunately, medical training isn't free. With the substantial debt burden facing graduating medical students, it has become increasingly important to know how to navigate the choppy waters of personal finance. With sharks in the water, no training on personal finance, and little time to spare on such an important topic, this short primer aims to teach you only what you need to know about personal finance so that you can focus on taking good care of patients. If you are ready to learn how to effectively pay down your student loans, invest efficiently, and achieve financial freedom early in your career - then this book is for you. Feel free to take a look at the introductory portion of the book through the "Look Inside" feature. Here are some of the essential topics you will learn in The Physician Philosopher's Guide to Personal Finance: ● Investing basics (compound interest, time in the market versus “timing” the market, etc.) ● Investing specifics (types of vehicles, solid investment plans, and examples) ● Specifics on how to attack your student loans ● Paying off debt versus investing (or both) at various stages ● Asset protection (life, disability, umbrella insurance, etc) ● Where to get financial advice and identifying where conflicts of interest exist ● Why lifestyle inflation matters after training and how it can wreck your life Praise for The Physician Philosopher's Guide to Personal Finance: "I have frequently told physicians and dentists that the first really good personal finance and investing book you ever read is likely to be worth $2 Million to you over the course of your life... This is a $2 Million book." - James M. Dahle, MD (The White Coat Investor) "Applying the Pareto principle, Dr. Turner has distilled his substantial knowledge and experience in personal finance into a no-nonsense book that a physician can easily read and understand in one insightful evening." - Leif M. Dahleen, MD (Physician on FIRE)

An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives


Matt Richtel - 2019
    An epic, first-of-its-kind book, entwining leading-edge scientific discovery with the intimate stories of four individual lives, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist.A terminal cancer patient rises from the grave. A medical marvel defies HIV. Two women with autoimmunity discover their own bodies have turned against them. Matt Richtel's An Elegant Defense uniquely entwines these intimate stories with science’s centuries-long quest to unlock the mysteries of sickness and health, and illuminates the immune system as never before.The immune system is our body’s essential defense network, a guardian vigilantly fighting illness, healing wounds, maintaining order and balance, and keeping us alive. Its legion of microscopic foot soldiers—from T cells to “natural killers”—patrols our body, linked by a nearly instantaneous communications grid. It has been honed by evolution over millennia to face an almost infinite array of threats.For all its astonishing complexity, however, the immune system can be easily compromised by fatigue, stress, toxins, advanced age, and poor nutrition—hallmarks of modern life—and even by excessive hygiene. Paradoxically, it is a fragile wonder weapon that can turn on our own bodies with startling results, leading today to epidemic levels of autoimmune disorders.Richtel effortlessly guides readers on a scientific detective tale winding from the Black Plague to twentieth-century breakthroughs in vaccination and antibiotics, to the cutting-edge laboratories that are revolutionizing immunology—perhaps the most extraordinary and consequential medical story of our time. The foundation that Richtel builds makes accessible revelations about cancer immunotherapy, the microbiome, and autoimmune treatments that are changing millions of lives. An Elegant Defense also captures in vivid detail how these powerful therapies, along with our behavior and environment, interact with the immune system, often for the good but always on a razor’s edge that can throw this remarkable system out of balance.Drawing on his groundbreaking reporting for the New York Times and based on extensive new interviews with dozens of world-renowned scientists, Matt Richtel has produced a landmark book, equally an investigation into the deepest riddles of survival and a profoundly human tale that is movingly brought to life through the eyes of his four main characters, each of whom illuminates an essential facet of our “elegant defense.”

The First Breath: How Modern Medicine Saves the Most Fragile Lives


Olivia Gordon - 2019
    Unveiling the intense patient-doctor relationship at work with every birth, this book reflects on the cutting-edge medicine that has saved a generation of babies, the combination of love and fear a parent feels for a child they haven’t yet met and what can happen before a baby’s first breath. Olivia Gordon was twenty-nine weeks pregnant when a scan found that her baby was critically ill. Thanks to a risky operation in utero and five months in neonatal care, her son survived. The First Breath is the first popular science book to tell the story of the fast developing fields of fetal and neonatal medicine. It explores motherhood and the female experience of medicine through Olivia’s personal story and sensitive, intimate case histories of other mothers' high risk births. The First Breath asks what it means to become the mother of a child who would not have survived birth only a generation ago, showing how doctors and nurses save the most vulnerable lives and how medicine has developed to make it possible for these lives to even begin.

Forged Through Fire: A Reconstructive Surgeon's Story of Survival, Faith, and Healing


Mark D. McDonough - 2019
    It also left Mark with burns on over 65 percent of his body. During a long and painful recovery, his faltering faith in God was strengthened by a remarkable near-death experience. Inspired to pursue a career as a plastic surgeon to help those who suffer as he has, McDonough has overcome numerous other adversities on his journey, including addiction and a stroke. Now he shares his incredible true story of survival and perseverance to bring hope and healing to those dealing with great physical and emotional pain.Anyone who has suffered or watched a loved one suffer from a personal trauma, disease, or loss that has tested or stolen their faith and exhausted their emotional resources will find real hope in this redemptive story.

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again


Eric J. Topol - 2019
    The doctor-patient relationship--the heart of medicine--is broken: doctors are too distracted and overwhelmed to truly connect with their patients, and medical errors and misdiagnoses abound. In Deep Medicine, leading physician Eric Topol reveals how artificial intelligence can help. AI has the potential to transform everything doctors do, from notetaking and medical scans to diagnosis and treatment, greatly cutting down the cost of medicine and reducing human mortality. By freeing physicians from the tasks that interfere with human connection, AI will create space for the real healing that takes place between a doctor who can listen and a patient who needs to be heard.Innovative, provocative, and hopeful, Deep Medicine shows us how the awesome power of AI can make medicine better, for all the humans involved.

A Mild Touch of the Cancer


David DownsPhil Keoghan - 2019
    This book is the story of why David would make a lousy doctor. An amazing account of David’s battle with terminal cancer (Spoiler alert – he lived.) Written with joy, curiosity and humor, this isn’t a story about cancer, it’s a story about living with optimism. With guest sections by some of NZ’s most well-known comedians, including Jeremy Corbett, Michele A’Court and Paul Ego, and an introduction by ‘The Amazing Race’s Phil Keoghan. "If there is anything to be learned, it's that you should never give up. I was laughing to the point of tears at his antics." - Phil Keoghan

Pied Piper (Modern Wicked Fairy Tales Book 14)


Selena Kitt - 2019
    William Pfeiffer is a brilliant researcher who’s never met a problem he couldn’t solve—or a woman who didn’t want to make him hers. Haley is a single mother struggling to make ends meet as a waitress who quits her job to seek Dr. Pfeiffer out on behalf of her daughter, Piper. Because Will is doing the final round of testing of his experimental device that allows the deaf to hear again. And Haley would do anything to help her little girl. But for the first time, Will encounters several problems he can’t solve. His boss, Dr. Ratte, is pushing him to get the device to market at an alarmingly rapid rate. Will has also developed feelings for the strong, beautiful young woman who has come to him for help. But her daughter is in his study and it’s an enormous conflict of interest. And just when he thinks he can’t handle another perplexing conundrum, children in the study are slipping into mysterious comas…

Home Birth On Your Own Terms: A How To Guide For Birthing Unassisted


Heather Baker - 2019
     This book covers:   * how to do your own prenatal care * common discomforts in pregnancy * herbal and homeopathy uses * supplies you need for your birth * labor stages and how to manage them * birth affirmations * avoiding issues and complications   * what to do for emergencies * postpartum care for mom and baby * how to register you baby with the state * unassisted birth stories This book is packed with photographs!! A MUST HAVE, especially in places that have little to no access to quality medical care/hospitals near the birthing mother. Reviews:  "I find this book to be an invaluable resource manual for everything you need to know to have a healthy, safe, unassisted home birth! I love the sections on herbs and homeopathics, and that every needful topic was included and written in a clear and easy to understand manner. I'll definitely reference this book during my next freebirth. It's like having a midwife on your bookshelf! "A valuable resource to prepare for your freebirth" “This book shows you how to freebirth. Giving you the information you need to control your birth and have peace with that decision.” “This is the book every pregnant woman, whether she decides to birth unassisted or not, should have in her library. It is extremely informative, yet inspiring and empowering.”  ~Julia, Labor Assistant “Home Birth On Your Own Terms is a great first stop on your journey to having an unassisted birth. If only every birthing person could know this option, and assess for themselves if this is a safe, viable option for them. Home Birth On Your Own Terms provides confidence through first-hand accounts of births AND the appropriate precautions for people to make the best choices for their birth. For anyone considering their birth options, this is an eye opener to see beyond the systemically prescribed birthing process. This book gives another perspective on what is absolutely possible, empowering, safe and healthy births.” ~ Vera Kevic, Doula “A wealth of information in one place.” "With the ever climbing epidemic of birth violence inflicted by medical professionals and the constraints birth attendants now have upon them, it’s no surprise that parents are taking a stand and birthing the way they so desire."

Summary of The Body by Bill Bryson: A Guide for Occupants


Best Book Briefings - 2019
    So often, we take our bodies for granted. We’re rarely curious about how they work and what we can do to make them work better. In The Body, Bill Bryson takes you on a tour inside your body so you can gain a better understanding of how it functions and its amazing ability to heal itself. At the times you doubt yourself, or think of yourself as less than wonderful, this summary of The Body will remind you of the miracle you truly are.

The Angina Monologues: stories of surgery for broken hearts


Samer Nashef - 2019
    Nashef tells heart-stopping stories of transplants, bypasses, coronary artery repair, and cardiac arrest. He also delivers humane advice about medical realities rarely observed: the futility of obsessing over diet, the necessity of calculating risks, the role of decision making, the resilience of doctor and patient alike, and the threadbare brilliance of the NHS.Nashef is a magnificently warm and likeable doctor and writer; and he has the best imaginable bedside manner.

Aid from Above: Inside My Veiled World as a Flight Nurse


Kurtis A Bell - 2019
    Kurtis Bell brings over twenty years of flight nursing to bare in this no holes barred account of life working on a medical helicopter. With the most common question asked of him, "What's the worst thing you've ever seen?" He answers that from his experience and perspective. He is brutally honest and direct. He tells of the early days in Native American AIr Ambulance, when the company was just getting started. It is graphic, vivid and uncensored. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague


David K. Randall - 2019
    His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn’t noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin—a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong’s tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed ten million lives worldwide.To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable—or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, ending the career of one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation in the process, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued. Spearheading a relentless crusade for sanitation, Blue and his men patrolled the squalid streets of fast-growing San Francisco, examined gory black buboes, and dissected diseased rats that put the fate of the entire country at risk.In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue’s race to understand the disease and contain its spread—the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.

The Narcissist's Playbook: How to Win a Game You Never Intended to Play


Dana Morningstar - 2019
     The Narcissist’s Playbook can help. Dana Morningstar is a domestic violence advocate, author, podcaster, YouTuber, speaker, and group leader. She writes from personal as well as professional experience in the field of domestic violence awareness, narcissistic abuse, and advocacy. Some of the topics covered in The Narcissist’s Playbook are: - What manipulation is and isn’t. - How to spot manipulative behaviors early (and why most people struggle with this). - How and why people get caught up with manipulators, and why they have a hard time breaking free. - How to identify the emotional “hook” that is keeping you stuck in manipulation and what you can do about it. - How to effectively disable manipulation as it is happening. - How to identify the common personality traits that are frequently exploited by manipulators. You can take back your life. The Narcissist’s Playbook tells you how.

PCOS SOS: A Gynecologist's Lifeline To Naturally Restore Your Rhythms, Hormones, and Happiness


Felice Gersh - 2019
    Women with PCOS may suffer from acne, menstrual irregularity, infertility, obesity, autoimmune disease, diabetes, and heart disease. Traditionally, doctors treat symptoms one at a time, often with a new regime of pills for each symptom. This approach never addresses the underlying causes of PCOS so women and medicated but never healed.With decades of experience as a board-certified OB-GYN and Integrative Medicine doctor and with the knowledge gained from her personal PCOS journey, Dr. Felice Gersh has helped thousands of women lose weight, heal their acne, reverse their chronic diseases, and reclaim their fertility.In seven simple but revolutionary steps, PCOS SOS shows women how to beat PCOS naturally, replacing pills with powerful and scientifically-backed lifestyle interventions that harness the body's capacity to heal. Practical, easy-to-understand, and even easier to follow, PCOS SS is the guide that will help each woman with PCOS chart her personal journey to true health and wellness.

The Meaning of Pain: What it is, why we feel it, and how to overcome it


Nick Potter - 2019
    We take to our beds, swallow pills, even submit to surgery and think we are solving the problem. But what if everything you thought you knew about pain turned out to be wrong or only half the truth? In The Meaning of Pain, renowned osteopath Nick Potter draws on insights from biology, evolution and social behaviour to present a radical new understanding of pain and why we feel it. Although pain is unpleasant, it is essential – nature's way of alerting us to danger – and is often a sign that something is out of balance in our lives. Stress and anxiety corrode our health in hidden ways and, as Potter shows, understanding this is crucial to treating pain.In this sage and enlightening book, drawing on 25 years of clinical experience and success stories from his consulting room, Potter presents a timely, compelling roadmap for wellbeing, showing us how to break the vicious cycle of stress, pain and anxiety before the damage is done.

Becoming a Neurosurgeon


John Colapinto - 2019
    Bederson’s professional life is like to show all the varied facets of his work, from extensive study and research to brain operations, one-on-one consultations with patients, and even staff meetings with fellow surgeons and students. Since Mt. Sinai is a teaching hospital, we learn alongside the residents and interns how Bederson trains neurosurgeons, passing along the knowledge and skills he honed over decades. The result is a multidimensional portrait of a man and a department, a practical guide for how to enter and learn the profession, as well as a moving glimpse into the world of patients and doctors who face some of life’s most harrowing challenges.

Mast Cells United: A Holistic Approach to Mast Cell Activation Syndrome


Amber Walker - 2019
    Patients are coming out of the woodwork with chronic, debilitating, often invisible illness. Recent research estimates that 14%-17% of the population may have mast cell activation disease. Much of the medical community has never heard of the condition, and existing mainstream treatment tends to focus predominantly on pharmacological management. However, once a patient has reached a stable baseline, there are a number of other individualized approaches that can guide patients to successfully address the underlying root issues and get their lives back. This book includes: 1) an in-depth overview of mast cell activation disease, with a focus on mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS); 2) a patient story describing life with MCAS; 3) a detailed literature review and current hypotheses for disease origins; 4) a practical guide of clinical considerations for diagnosis; 5) a chapter devoted to comorbid conditions, including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, POTS, Lyme disease and much more; 6) several chapters devoted to mainstream and natural treatment options, dietary considerations, and strategies for holistic healing; 7) content from dozens of interviews with prominent MCAS experts, including specialists in allergy/immunology, hematology, functional medicine, naturopathy, psychology, nutrition, gastroenterology, physical therapy, clinical research, and more! Whether a patient, medical practitioner, or family member/friend, this book empowers readers and provides patients with concrete steps to move forward in the diagnosis and comprehensive treatment of mast cell activation syndrome.

State of the Heart: Exploring the History, Science, and Future of Cardiac Disease


Haider Warraich - 2019
    A caring and thoughtful doctor, he also writes beautifully.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times bestselling author on Modern Death In Heart of the Matter, Dr. Haider Warraich takes readers inside the ER, inside patients' rooms, and inside the history and technology of heart disease.More people die of heart disease than any other disease in the world, including even cancer. In fact, deaths from heart disease are on the rise around the world and in the United States. When any heart disease becomes advanced enough, it results in the development of heart failure. In the United States, heart failure is the most common reason for admission to the hospital. Heart failure strikes both the abject and the affluent. And yet, even the most basic facts about heart failure remain known by few who don’t work in medicine for a living. Many patients develop heart failure without having any problems with their coronary arteries. Heart failure can affect anyone at any time: a child recovering from a viral infection, a woman who has just given birth, a cancer patient who received chemotherapy or anyone with any number of common conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or sleep apnea.Warraich's signature blend of lucid writing and compelling narrative explores the complex discussion about heart failure with accessibility and compassion.

Nature's Best Remedies: Top Medicinal Herbs, Spices, and Foods for Health and Well-Being


National Geographic Society - 2019
    Divided into two sections--Nature's Cures and Nature's Pharmacopoeia--this beautifully illustrated guide provides up-to-date information on such timely topics as the perils of packaged foods and the benefits of phytochemicals, how to achieve major results with minor alterations in your food choices, the soothing benefits of essential oils, and the most effective methods for maximizing such natural home helpers as salts, vinegars, oils, and more. Innovative recipes offer easy, effective dishes that utilize multiple herbs, spices, and fresh foods for powerhouse results.

The World's Worst Diabetes Mom


Stacey Simms - 2019
    Stacey’s son was diagnosed just before he turned two. He’s now in high school! In her new book, Stacey shares how mistakes and mishaps can actually be a diabetes parent’s secret superpower.

Can You Help Me?: Inside the Turbulent World of Huntington Disease


Thomas Bird - 2019
    Having seen patients for more than 40 years, Dr Thomas Bird, a pioneerneurogeneticist, adds a human touch to this genetic brain disease that devastates persons during mid-life when they can least afford it.With a brief history of Huntington Disease and the occasional scientific detail, the true heart of the book is the human experience of the disorder: - The man who cannot stay out of prison because he is addicted to being a burglar. - Another man shoots and kills his roommate while watching television and cannot explain why he did it. - The woman with Huntington Disease copes with her depression by using Texas line dancing. - A twelve year old girl with juvenile Huntington Disease who can barely walk and talk, but her classmates rally around with touching and heartfelt support. - And the 72 year old man with late onset Huntington Disease and severe depression is made worse by ECT, but improved (for a while) with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.These are just some of the compelling stories of people of all ages and in all walks of life who feel trapped by a progressive degenerative brain disease from which there is no escape.

Bird's Eye View: Stories of a Life Lived in Health Care


Sue Robins - 2019
    Written for health professionals, each chapter offers insight into how it feels to be a vulnerable patient. Poignant and provocative, this unique book highlights the patient and family experience and includes practical wisdom to inspire us all.Praise for Bird's Eye ViewBird's Eye View should be on every healthcare training curriculum. This book opens the doorway to a new level of understanding of the health care journey. - Professor Catherine Crock AM Physician, The Royal Children's Hospital MelbourneThere are few people with Sue Robins' breadth and depth of experience. There are fewer still with her insight. In Bird's Eye View, lessons are served up with unblinking eyes, a firm hand and a gentle heart. - Andr� Picard, author of Matters of Life and DeathThis extraordinary book is a must read for health care clinicians, scholars, individuals and families. This manifesto calls for greater compassion and kindness from health care providers at every level. - Janice M. Bell, RN, PhD, Founding Editor, Journal of Family NursingAuthor BioSue Robins is a Canadian author and health care advocate. Her essays have been widely published in health care journals and newspapers, including the Canadian Medical Association Journal, The New York Times and The Globe and Mail. This is her first book.

A Better Death: Conversations about the art of living and dying well


Ranjana Srivastava - 2019
    Simon & Schuster has a great book for every listener.

Psych Meds Made Simple: How & Why They Do What They Do


Ashley L. Peterson - 2019
    This book will explain pharmacology in a simplified way to help you understand the effects, both positive and negative, of psych meds, and why these effects occur. It's everything you didn't realize you wanted to know about medications!The book begins with the essentials of pharmacology and moves on to cover all the major classes of psychiatric medications. You'll learn why one medication in a particular class might be a better fit for you than another. Are you having weight gain from your medication? You'll find out why, and what other medications might be less likely to have the same side effect.I've pulled together what I've learned in my training as a nurse and (former) pharmacist and years of clinical experience, added in my personal perspective from having taken many of these medications, and distilled it down to the essential elements you need to know to take charge of your own health and illness.

Real Food On Trial: How the diet dictators tried to destroy a top scientist


Tim Noakes - 2019
    Real Food On Trial, How Diet Dictators Tried To Destroy A Top Scientist, has been called the ‘John Grisham of the non-fiction world’, a ‘blockbuster, jaw-dropping page-turner’. Another reviewer calls it a book that “should be fiction … yet it isn’t’. It is a revised and an updated edition of the groundbreaking original, Lore Of Nutrition, Challenging Conventional Dietary Beliefs, first published in South Africa in November 2017 and now for the international market.It continues the true and shocking story of a world-first: the unprecedented prosecution and persecution of Professor Tim Noakes, a distinguished scientist and medical doctor, in a multimillion rand case that stretched over more than four years. All for a single tweet giving his opinion on nutrition.Noakes and investigative journalist Marika Sboros have added up-to-date, robust scientific evidence in support of his views that launched the case against him. They have added a new chapter on the appeal hearing – a last-gasp attempt by establishment forces to overturn a comprehensive not-guilty verdict on all 10 aspects of the trumped-up charge of unprofessional conduct for the tweet.It also contains a new foreword by internationally renowned endurance swimmer and UN Patron of the Oceans, Lewis Pugh. Noakes helped Pugh be the first to swim successfully across some of the coldest oceans on the planet. A maritime lawyer by profession, Pugh writes of the passion he shares with Noakes: “for the pursuit of truth and justice and a natural antipathy towards bullies and liars”.That points a major theme of Real Food On Trial: a penetrating deep dive into the global scourge of academic bullying, or academic mobbing, as it is popularly known. The authors show how academic mobbing infects all of South Africa’s top universities at the highest levels. They probe the soft underbelly of the powerful vested interests in food and drug industries and the medical, dietetic and scientific mobsters that front them. They lay bare the heavy price that Professor Noakes has paid, professionally, emotionally and financially, for going against orthodoxy. And for daring to challenge the medical and dietary dogma that keeps people fat and sick across the globe.Pugh writes that, from the outset, he saw the trial as a freedom of speech issue. He was “troubled” when the country’s medical regulatory body, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), went to war with Noakes on the basis of his scientific opinion on nutrition. “After all, it’s one thing to deny the Holocaust or to say something that incites racial, religious hatred or violence. It’s quite another to say that you think meat, fish, chicken, eggs and dairy are good first foods for infants,” Pugh says.This book shines light into the heart of darkness of a uniquely strange scientific saga. It’s not over yet. Watch this space!

Doctor, Stay by Me


Stafford Cohen - 2019
    Stafford I. Cohen’s new book is about. DOCTOR, STICK BY ME is a medical memoir about his 51 years as a practicing cardiologist in Boston.Through a series of 44 humorous, tragic, and ultimately uplifting short stories about his patients and experiences, Dr. Cohen chronicle how medicine has changed over the years. “In today's world,” Dr. Cohen says, “it would be next to impossible for me to have the hands-on, day-to-day, year-to-year relationship with patients that I enjoyed during my career.That is a terrible shame.” Dr. Cohen’s book chronicles how today’s environment robs doctors of the reason they became doctors in the first place—to help people. It deprives patients of certainty and trust that their doctors know who they are and will always be there for them.

The Skeptic's Guide to Alternative Medicine


Steven Novella - 2019
    Acupuncture. Superfoods. Healing magnets. What does the scientific evidence really say about these and other "alternative medicine" treatments for personal wellness?How can we know if a natural remedy is safe and effective? How can people become their own best skeptical consumer of health news in the media? Join neurologist and science educator Dr. Steven Novella for a fascinating exploration of these and other important questions about the truths-and myths-behind alternative medicine.Perhaps the most important skill to have in this brave new world of ever-changing medical news is the ability to evaluate sources and information, and to think critically about how alternative medicine is marketed, regulated, and used. Dr. Novella takes a rigorous, science-based approach in exploring so-called "popular" and "cutting-edge" trends. Armed with this knowledge, listeners will be in a much better position to assess alternative pathways to physical health.Dr. Novella's 10 leading-edge lectures will answer such questions as: Do magnetic fields really have useful biological properties? Why is chiropractic treatment no more effective for pain management than simple physical therapy? Can brain games truly make one smarter or help in staving off dementia? Can homeopathic remedies, such as those derived from plants and minerals, really cure ailments? Does cupping therapy really help to reduce pain and inflammation, while increasing blood flow?Dr. Novella provides insights on the ever-widening gap between alternative medicine and

Health Disparities in the United States: Social Class, Race, Ethnicity, and the Social Determinants of Health


Donald A. Barr - 2019
    Yet wide disparities persist between social groups, and many Americans suffer from poorer health than people in other developed countries. In this revised edition of Health Disparities in the United States, Donald A. Barr provides extensive new data about the ways low socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity interact to create and perpetuate these health disparities. Examining the significance of this gulf for the medical community and society at large, Barr offers potential policy- and physician-based solutions for reducing health inequity in the long term.This thoroughly updated edition focuses on a new challenge the United States last experienced more than half a century ago: successive years of declining life expectancy. Barr addresses the causes of this decline, including what are commonly referred to as "deaths of despair"--from opiate overdose or suicide. Exploring the growing role geography plays in health disparities, Barr asks why people living in rural areas suffer the greatest increases in these deaths. He also analyzes recent changes under the Affordable Care Act and considers the literature on how race and ethnicity affect the way health care providers evaluate and treat patients.As both a physician and a sociologist, Barr is uniquely positioned to offer rigorous medical explanations alongside sociological analysis. An essential text for courses in public health, health policy, and sociology, this compelling book is a vital teaching tool and a comprehensive reference for social science and medical professionals.

How to Be a Patient: The Essential Guide to Navigating the World of Modern Medicine


Sana Goldberg - 2019
    From the routine to the unexpected, How to Be a Patient is your ultimate guide to better healthcare.Let’s face it: nobody likes going to the doctor. It can be uncomfortable, nerve wracking, expensive—and that’s just for routine care! When it’s an emergency—how do you choose between the ER, Urgent Care, or waiting-until-Monday? And for everything in between, how do you get an accurate diagnosis and timely treatment when something is off? In How to Be a Patient, registered nurse and outspoken public health advocate Sana Goldberg provides readers with an honest guide to the complicated and often-intimidating medical landscape.At once a quick-reference pocket guide and a lifelong framework for approaching your healthcare, this invaluable resource empowers readers to take charge of their wellbeing. It lifts the veil on a complicated, fractured system, giving patients the tools communicate with its players and sidestep its most vexing realities. Warm and trustworthy, Goldberg’s advice is as expert as it is easy-to-understand, as she calls on years of first-hand nursing experience to help readers confront challenges, take advantage of opportunities, and maximize insurance resources while fending off hidden fees that slip by unnoticed.From setting yourself up when all is well and making the most of routine appointments, to understanding hospital culture for a more positive experience, How to Be a Patient is relevant for readers at any age. With sections including When It’s An Emergency, When It’s Chronic, When You Have to Stand Up to Insurance, and When It’s Your Person, Goldberg ensures patients have what they need in their hands to feel informed and confident as they move through the world of modern medicine.Containing glossaries of medical jargon, lists of free, essential screenings and unnecessary medical tests, as well as helpful appendices to assist patients in tracking their family history, prescriptions, and more, How to Be a Patient is a must-have book for anyone invested in their long-term health.

Zero to Finals Medicine


Thomas Watchman - 2019
    It was created from scratch in the belief that, with better tools, you can accelerate your learning, achieve more in less time and feel more motivated along the way. The Zero to Finals books are designed to be studied from cover to cover in preparation for your exams. I have removed the waffle and focused on the key information you need for your exams. I have added helpful “Tom Tips” I have picked up during a decade of sitting medical exams, that will help you score those extra marks. The focus is on learning the concepts, vocabulary and latest guidelines so you can take the fastest route to exam success and proficiency as a new doctor.The Zero to Finals books are supplemented by the resources on the website (zerotofinals.com). There is a webpage on each topic with illustrations, diagrams, podcasts and videos that tackle the problem from every angle. You can also find carefully crafted practice questions, with feedback to help you develop your exam technique.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly Paramedic: Growing the good, breaking the bad and undoing the ugly in paramedicine


Tammie Bullard - 2019
    • Are you still the paramedic that you hoped to be on your first day in an ambulance? • Do you find yourself questioning any action or inaction at the end of some shifts? • Would your patient care be good enough for your own family in their time of need? In the current climate of increasing prehospital demand, it is more important than ever for paramedics to demonstrate optimum skill, safety and professionalism. With growing call volume, public scrutiny, legal liability and employer expectation often creating a sense of overwhelm, the ability to maintain these standards can begin to suffer. Find out how to evaluate your everyday practice using a simple, pain scale type approach. Remain at the top of your game, no matter where you’re at in your career. Using a friendly, conversational and inclusive format, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly Paramedic is an easy to follow book. Designed to be picked up, put down and picked back up again whenever and wherever, no matter how time poor you may be. • Ignite your spark, rekindle your passion or maintain existing pride in paramedicine • Sharpen your professional approach to patient care, safety & public perception • Avoid unwanted incidents, disciplinary issues & confusion in this stressful role • Enhance your reputation, mutual respect and enjoyment of prehospital care Written by a paramedic, specifically for paramedics and EMTs at every level. A relatable, scenario-based guide to growing the good, breaking the bad and undoing the ugly in all of us.

Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy


Adia Harvey Wingfield - 2019
    Wingfield argues that as these organizations become more profit driven, they come to depend on black health care professionals to perform equity work to serve increasingly diverse constituencies. Yet black workers often do this labor without recognition, compensation, or support. Operating at the intersection of work, race, gender, and class, Wingfield makes plain the challenges that black employees must overcome and reveals the complicated issues of inequality in today’s workplaces and communities.

Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North


Sarah Handley-Cousins - 2019
    But war affects the body in countless ways, many of them understudied by historians. In Bodies in Blue, Sarah Handley-Cousins expands and complicates our understanding of wartime disability by examining a variety of bodies and ailments, ranging from the temporary to the chronic, from disease to injury, and encompassing both physical and mental conditions. She studies the cases of well-known individuals, such as Union general Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, alongside many cases drawn from the ranks to provide a more comprehensive view of how soldiers, civilians, and institutions grappled with war-related disability in the Civil War-era North.During the Civil War and long after, the bodies of Union soldiers and veterans were sites of powerful cultural beliefs about duty and sacrifice. However, the realities of living with a disability were ever at odds with the expectations of manhood. As a consequence, men who failed to perform the role of wounded warrior properly could be scrutinized for failing to live up to standards of martial masculinity. Under the gaze of surgeons, officers, bureaucrats, and civilians, disabled soldiers made difficult negotiations in their attempts to accommodate impaired bodies and please observers. Some managed this process with ease; others struggled and suffered. Embracing and exploring this apparent contradiction, Bodies in Blue pushes Civil War history in a new direction.

Atul Gawande Collection 4 Books Set (The Checklist Manifesto, Being Mortal, Complications, Better a Surgeon's Notes on Performance)


Atul Gawande - 2019
    Description:- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Atul Gawande In this groundbreaking book, Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument for the checklist, which he believes to be the most promising method available in surmounting failure. Whether you're following a recipe, investing millions of dollars in a company or building a skyscraper, the checklist is an essential tool in virtually every area of our lives, and Gawande explains how breaking down complex, high pressure tasks into small steps can radically improve everything from airline safety to heart surgery survival rates. Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly detached from the reality of being mortal. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science This is a stunningly well-written account of the life of a surgeon: what it is like to cut into people's bodies and the terrifying - literally life and death - decisions that have to be made.There are accounts of operations that go wrong; of doctors who go to the bad; why autopsies are necessary; what it feels like to insert your knife into someone. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance The struggle to perform well is universal, but nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable.

Code Blue: Inside America's Medical Industrial Complex


Mike Magee - 2019
    With an eye first and foremost on the bottom line rather than on the nation's health, each sector has for decades embraced cure over care, aiming to conquer disease rather than concentrate on the cultural and social factors that determine health. This decision Magee calls the "original sin" of our health system.Code Blue is a riveting, character-driven narrative that draws back the curtain on the giant industry that consumes one out of every five American dollars. Making clear for the first time the mechanisms, greed, and collusion by which our medical system was built over the last eight decades--and arguing persuasively and urgently for the necessity of a single-payer, multi-plan insurance arena of the kind enjoyed by every other major developed nation--Mike Magee gives us invaluable perspective and inspiration by which we can, indeed, reshape the future.

How Neighborhoods Make Us Sick: Restoring Health and Wellness to Our Communities


Veronica Squires - 2019
    Geographic lack of access to food and health care increases childhood mortality. Community violence traumatizes residents. Poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing, food insecurity, racial injustice, and oppression cause physical changes in the body, resulting in disease and death. But there is hope. Loving our neighbor includes creating social environments in which people can be healthy. While working in community redevelopment and treating uninsured families, Veronica Squires and Breanna Lathrop discovered that creating healthier neighborhoods requires a commitment to health equity. Jesus' ministry brought healing through dismantling systems of oppression and overturning social norms that prevented people from living healthy lives. We can do the same in our communities through addressing social determinants that facilitate healing in under-resourced neighborhoods. Everyone deserves the opportunity for good health. The decisions we make and actions we take can promote the health of our neighbors.

False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine


Theodore Dalrymple - 2019
    

This Old Stick


Andrew Corin - 2019
    This book tells the stories of the older people around us - stories which are at once familiar and extraordinary.A range of delightful and challenging fictionalised characters are beautifully presented with warm-hearted and absorbing honesty.'This Old Stick' is an enjoyable and entertaining read, and a tool to help heal the disconnection that exists in society between those considered healthy and functional, and those who are older and considered less so.We all need to be reminded of the gifts and precious treasure the elderly bring to our community.

Seeing Patients: A Surgeon’s Story of Race and Medical Bias, With a New Preface


Augustus A. White III - 2019
    Throughout his career he has witnessed unconscious bias against nonwhite patients. Seeing Patients shares these sobering stories and outlines concrete solutions to medical inequity.

Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America


Rebecca J. Lester - 2019
    Now both a tenured professor in anthropology and a licensed social worker, she turns her ethnographic and clinical gaze to the world of eating disorders—their history, diagnosis, lived realities, treatment, and place in the American cultural imagination.  Famished, the culmination of over two decades of anthropological and clinical work, as well as a lifetime of lived experience, presents a profound rethinking of eating disorders and how to treat them. Through a mix of rich cultural analysis, detailed therapeutic accounts, and raw autobiographical reflections, Famished helps make sense of why people develop eating disorders, what the process of recovery is like, and why treatments so often fail. It’s also an unsparing condemnation of the tension between profit and care in American healthcare, demonstrating how a system set up to treat a disease may, in fact, perpetuate it. Fierce and vulnerable, critical and hopeful, Famished will forever change the way you understand eating disorders and the people who suffer with them.

Alternative Medicine: A Critical Assessment of 150 Modalities


Edzard Ernst - 2019
    The money spent on AM is considerable: the global market is expected to reach nearly US $ 200 billion by 2025, with most of these funds coming directly out of consumers’ pockets. The reasons for this popularity are complex, but misinformation is certainly a prominent factor. The media seem to have an insatiable appetite for the subject and often report uncritically on it. Misinformation about AM on the Internet (currently about 50 million websites are focused on AM) is much more the rule than the exception. Consumers are thus being bombarded with misinformation on AM, and they are ill-protected from such misinformation and therefore prone to making wrong, unwise or dangerous therapeutic decisions, endangering their health and wasting their money. This book is a reference text aimed at guiding consumers through the maze of AM. The concept of the book is straightforward. It has two main parts. The first, short section provides essential background on AM, explaining in simple terms what is (and what is not) good, reliable evidence, and addressing other relevant issues like, for instance, the placebo response, informed consent, integrative medicine, etc. The second and main part consists of 150 short chapters, topically grouped and each dedicated to one single alternative therapeutic or diagnostic method. In each of them, seven critical points are raised. These points relate to issues that are important for consumers’ decisions whether it is worth trying the method in question. Restricting the discussion to just seven points means that issues must be prioritized to those themes which are most relevant in the context of each given modality.

In the Shadow of the Eighth: My Forty Years Working for Women's Health in Ireland


Peter Boylan - 2019
    He saw women and families at their most vulnerable, their most joyous, and sometimes their most heart-broken.In the Shadow of the Eighth is the story of how a young doctor without strong views on abortion became convinced that women should be trusted to make the right decisions for their lives - and how he then did everything in his power to bring about a situation where they could.More than that, it is an engaging account of working in one of medicine's most satisfying specialities, a revealing behind-the-scenes insight into what it's like trying to make change happen, and a fascinating portrait of a society in transition.Lively, gripping, sometimes enraging but always compassionate, Peter Boylan's story is vital and encouraging reading for these turbulent times.'A comprehensive, insightful and often shocking social history of the country' Irish Independent'A hero to many (including me)' @MarianKeyes'Both personal and political ... a very important history of recent events that have utterly changed Ireland's social and political landscapes' Irish Times'A fascinating story' Matt Cooper, Today FM'The book is fabulous' Pat Kenny, Newstalk

Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives on Illness, Disability, and Medicine


Dinty W. Moore - 2019
    Bodies of Truth continues this tradition through a variety of narrative approaches by writers representing all facets of health care. And, since all of us have been or will be touched by illness or disability—our own or that of a loved one—at some point in our lives, any reader of this anthology can relate to the challenges, frustrations, and pain—both physical and emotional—that the contributors have experienced.Bodies of Truth offers perspectives on a wide array of issues, from food allergies, cancer, and neurology to mental health, autoimmune disorders, and therapeutic music. These experiences are recounted by patients, nurses, doctors, parents, children, caregivers, and others who attempt to articulate the intangible human and emotional factors that surround life when it intersects with the medical field.

Making Sense of Psychiatric Diagnosis: Understanding the DSM-5


Ashley L. Peterson - 2019
    The book is also infused with the author’s own experience as a mental health nurse and person living with depression.With the fusion of diagnostic information, clinical experience, and lived experience, this book offers a unique, well-rounded perspective on the reality of mental illness.

Human Rights Violations in Medicine: A-to-Z Action Guide


Pamela Wible - 2019
    The ultimate manual for physician and medical student self-defense.

The Neuroscience of Addiction


Francesca Filbey - 2019
    In the past decade, neuroscientific research has greatly advanced our understanding of the brain mechanisms of addiction. However this information still remains largely confined to scientific outlets. As legislation continues to evolve and the stigma surrounding addiction persists, new findings on the impact of substances on the brain are an important public health issue. Francesca Mapua Filbey gives readers an overview of research on addiction including classic theories as well as current neuroscientific studies. A variety of textual supports - including a glossary, learning objectives and review questions - help students better reinforce their reading and make the text a ready-made complement to undergraduate and graduate courses on addiction.

The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles


Nicole Redvers - 2019
    Many traditional healing techniques and medicines are often assumed to be archaic, outdated, or unscientific compared to modern Western medicine. Nicole Redvers, a naturopathic physician and member of Deninu K'ue First Nation, analyzes modern Western practices using evidence-informed indigenous healing practices from around the world - from sweat lodges and fermented foods to Ayurvedic doshas and meditation.Organized around various sciences, such as physics, genetics, and microbiology, the book explains the connection between traditional medicine and current research around epigenetics and quantum physics, for example, and includes over 600 citations. Redvers, who has traveled and worked with indigenous groups around the world, shares the knowledge and teachings of health and wellness that have been passed down through the generations, tying this knowledge with current scientific advances. Knowing that the science backs up the traditional practice allows us to have earlier and more specific interventions that integrate age-old techniques with the advances in modern medicine and technology.©2019 Nicole Redvers (P)2020 North Atlantic Books

Natural & Safe: The Handbook: Family Planning with Sensiplan


Malteser Arbeitsgruppe NFP - 2019
    Originally developed in Germany over a period of decades by the Arbeitsgruppe NFP ("NFP Working Group") at the international aid agency Malteser International, and with help from the German Ministry of Health. Natural & Safe: The Handbook describes the method and its applications in detail and is an important Sensiplan resource. It is designed to work in conjunction with Natural & Safe: The Workbook, a practice manual that provides practice charts, case examples, and specific instruction for using the method throughout various phases of life. Both volumes are translated now for the first time in English.

Endometriosis: it's not in your head, it's in your pelvis


Bethany Stahl - 2019
    Stahl recounts her life from eleven to twenty-six years old. She shares the hardships of crippling pain, depression, sex, infertility, and the struggle to find a doctor to take her symptoms seriously.Join her in uncovering the truth as she strives to find the silver lining to living with an "invisible illness".ALSO INCLUDES: Symptom checklistSurgery checklistExamples of the financial cost of endometriosisPages to keep notes and more!

Getting Wrecked: Women, Incarceration, and the American Opioid Crisis


Kimberly Sue - 2019
    As incarceration has become a predominant American social policy for managing the problem of drug use, including the opioid epidemic, this book examines how prisons and jails have attempted concurrent programs of punishment and treatment to deal with inmates struggling with a diagnosis of substance use disorder. An addiction physician and medical anthropologist, Kimberly Sue powerfully illustrates the impacts of incarceration on women’s lives as they seek well-being and better health while confronting lives marked by structural violence, gender inequity, and ongoing trauma.

Plucked: Chicken, Antibiotics, and How Big Business Changed the Way the World Eats


Maryn McKenna - 2019
    In this riveting investigative narrative, McKenna dives deep into the world of modern agriculture by way of chicken: from the farm where it's raised directly to your dinner table. Consumed more than any other meat in the United States, chicken is emblematic of today's mass food-processing practices and their profound influence on our lives and health. Tracing its meteoric rise from scarce treat to ubiquitous global commodity, McKenna reveals the astounding role of antibiotics in industrial farming, documenting how and why "wonder drugs" revolutionized the way the world eats--and not necessarily for the better. Rich with scientific, historical, and cultural insights, this spellbinding cautionary tale shines a light on one of America's favorite foods--and shows us the way to safer, healthier eating for ourselves and our children.This book was previously published in hardcover with the title Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats.

More than Medicine: The Broken Promise of American Health


Robert M. Kaplan - 2019
    Yet U.S. citizens lag behind in life expectancy and quality of life. Robert Kaplan marshals extensive data to make the case that U.S. health care priorities are sorely misplaced—invested in attacking disease, not in solving social problems that engender disease in the first place.

Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics (2 Volumes)


Robert M. Kliegman - 2019
    This fully revised edition continues to provide the breadth and depth of knowledge you expect from Nelson, while also keeping you up to date with new advances in the science and art of pediatric practice. Authoritative and reader-friendly, it delivers the information you need in a concise, easy-to-use format for everyday reference and study. From rapidly changing diagnostic and treatment protocols to new technologies to the wide range of biologic, psychologic, and social problems faced by children today, this comprehensive 2-volume reference keeps you on the cutting edge of the very best in pediatric care.Includes more than 70 new chapters, including Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases, Approach to Mitochondrial Disorders, Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, Zika, update on Ebola, Epigenetics, Autoimmune Encephalitis, Global Health, Racism, Media Violence, Strategies for Health Behavior Change, Positive Parenting, and many more.Features hundreds of new figures and tables throughout for visual clarity and quick reference.Offers new and expanded information on CRISPR gene editing; LGBT health care; gun violence; vaccinations; immune treatment with CAR-T cells; new technology in imaging and genomics; new protocols in cancer, genetics, immunology, and pulmonary medicine; and much more.Provides fresh perspectives from four new associate editors: Nathan J. Blum of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; Karen Wilson of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York; Samir S. Shah of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center; and Robert C. Tasker of Boston Children's Hospital.Provides regular updates online, written exclusively for Nelson.Remains your indispensable source for definitive, evidence-based answers on every aspect of pediatric care. Enhanced eBook version included with purchase. Your enhanced eBook allows you to access all of the text, figures, and references from the book on a variety of devices.

Rethinking Adult ADHD: Helping Clients Turn Intentions Into Actions


J Russell Ramsay - 2019
    In Rethinking Adult ADHD: Helping Clients Turn Intentions Into Actions, Dr. J. Russell Ramsay provides a first-of-its-kind exploration of the common beliefs that underlie and reinforce ADHD in adults, and offers a blueprint to help clients overcome ADHD symptoms using cognitive behavior therapy. The book explores research on negative thoughts and beliefs in adults with ADHD, specifically the belief, or lack thereof, in one's ability to persistently and consistently carry out the steps required to achieve one's goals. This manifests in what Dr. Ramsay describes as self-distrust thoughts and self-mistrust beliefs, and which leads to escape-avoidance coping patterns. To address these problems, he targets emotional, behavioral, and relationship problems for work in therapy. Clinical case illustrations show how traditional cognitive change tactics can be adapted to treatment of adult ADHD, to foster the implementation of coping strategies and essential skills. These cognitive approaches serve as an essential ligament in treatment, designed to help adults with ADHD more consistently turn their intentions into actions.

Read This Before Medical School: How to Study Smarter and Live Better While Excelling in Class and on your USMLE or COMLEX Board Exams


Chase DiMarco - 2019
    Herein, we provide you with the hard-won tips, tools, and insights that helped us to excel during those four grueling years. Beyond providing study tips, we draw on inspiration from fields like psychology, neuroscience, education, business, and even self-help to assemble a complete guide to accelerate your development as a medical student and future physician. You’ll even get our personal recommendations for outside resources, such as specific websites and apps, that gave us a leg-up during medical school. NO OTHER book offers this much information, assembled together in one place, and without the fluff. Below are some of the key topics we chose to cover: - Study tips to help you sail through classes- Test-taking strategies to help you ace the USMLE and/or COMLEX board exams- Accelerated learning techniques like speed reading, memory palaces, and mind mapping- Time-management and productivity hacks- Tools for self-assessment to track your development- Advice on wellness, work-life balance, and burnout prevention

Pcos SOS: A Gynecologist's Lifeline To Naturally Restore Your Rhythms, Hormones, and Happiness


Felice Gersh - 2019
    Women with PCOS may suffer from acne, menstrual irregularity, infertility, obesity, autoimmune disease, diabetes, and heart disease. Traditionally, doctors treat symptoms one at a time, often with a new regime of pills for each symptom. This approach never addresses the underlying causes of PCOS so women are medicated but never healed.With decades of experience as a board-certified OB-GYN and Integrative Medicine doctor and with the knowledge gained from her personal PCOS journey, Dr. Felice Gersh has helped thousands of women lose weight, heal their acne, reverse their chronic diseases, and reclaim their fertility.In seven simple but revolutionary steps, PCOS SOS shows women how to beat PCOS naturally, replacing pills with powerful and scientifically-backed lifestyle interventions that harness the body's capacity to heal. Practical, easy-to-understand, and even easier to follow, PCOS SOS is the guide that will help each woman with PCOS chart her personal journey to true health and wellness.

The Heart of ACT: Developing a Flexible, Process-Based, and Client-Centered Practice Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy


Robyn D. Walser - 2019
    Using the tips and strategies in this professional guide, you’ll develop a flexible, grounded, and client-centered practice.With this comprehensive resource, you’ll learn to cultivate an organic, process-driven practice, grounded in the heart of the therapeutic relationship and responsive to clients in the moment. The Heart of ACT is designed to mimic the supervision experience by presenting material in thought-provoking chapters grounded in real-life clinical situations and challenges.In the book, you’ll also find supervision dialogues inspired by Walser's work with her supervisees, Carlton Coulter and Manuela O’Connell. Carlton and Manuela comment and ask questions related to the material in the book and their own ACT learning process. These are then addressed by Walser in a dialogue designed to assist clinicians in connecting to the material. These sections mimic the helpful mentoring process of one-on-one training and supervision, and offer insights into specific therapeutic challenges that can unfold in structured conversation.As the applications of ACT grow, so does the need for up-to-date professional resources. Unlike many advanced ACT books that focus on procedures and techniques, The Heart of ACT focuses on the heart of the therapeutic relationship, as well as the “soft skills” that are difficult to describe, but which often mark the difference between a merely good clinician and an excellent one. If you’re looking to take your ACT delivery to a new, exciting level, this book is a must-have addition to your professional library.

State of Health: Pleasure and Politics in Venezuelan Health Care under Chávez


Amy Cooper - 2019
    With lively and accessible storytelling, Amy Cooper chronicles the pleasure people experienced accessing government health care and improving their quality of life. From personalized doctor’s visits to therapeutic dance classes, new health care programs provided more than medical services. State of Health offers a unique perspective on the significance of the Bolivarian Revolution for ordinary people, demonstrating how the transformed health system succeeded in exciting people and recognizing historically marginalized Venezuelans as bodies who mattered.

All in a Doctor's Day: Memoirs of an Irish Country Practice


Lucia Gannon - 2019
    Tipperary – husband and children in tow – Dr Lucia Gannon was a blow-in determined to build a practice that would provide solace for the sick, worried and confused.Journey with her as she builds a life in this tight-knit community. Meet the wily pensioner trying to pass an eye exam to continue her career as a dangerous driver; the lonely widower who needs someone to take the time to listen; the stressed teenager coping with an eating disorder and the frightened elderly woman who doesn’t want to leave her home.Discover what it means to be the one people bring their problems to – problems that are not always medical, but still require discretion, kindness and a willingness to provide a listening ear to those on the tricky journey of life.