The facts surrounding how male-centric medicine impacts women's health every day are chilling: in the ER, women are more likely to receive a psychiatric diagnosis with regard to opioid use, while men are more likely to be referred for detoxification; the more vocal women become about their pain, the more likely their providers are to prescribe either inadequate or inappropriate pain relief medication; women often present with nontraditional symptoms of stroke, which causes delays in recognition by both them and their health professionals; and a government accountability study found that 80% of drugs that are withdrawn from the market are due to side effects that happen to women (a result of testing drugs mostly on men).Leading expert on sex and gender medicine Dr. Alyson McGregor focuses on the key areas where these differences are most potentially harmful, addressing:Cardiac and stroke diagnosis and treatment in women;Prescription and dosing of pharmaceuticals;Subjective evaluation of women's symptoms;Pain and pain management;Hormones and female biochemistry (including prescribed hormones);How economic status, race, and gender identity are additional critical factors.Not only does Dr. McGregor explore these disparities in depth, she shares clear, practical suggestions for what we can do. A work of riveting expose, revelatory insights into the medical establishment and actionable guidance for putting this information to use, Sex Matters is an empowering roadmap for reinventing modern medicine -- and for self-care.

    Applying the same objective criteria to legal and illegal substances, an argument is made that legality is not a clear measure for harm. Tackling a variety of questions, such as Which is more harmful—Ecstasy or alcohol? Can addiction be cured? and Does the "War on Drugs" have serious unintended effects that can hurt children?, this analysis equips readers with the ability to make educated decisions regarding drugs both personally and in their communities. Broadening the scope of the discussion, a framework is explored for formulating national drug policies that will minimize a myriad of harms—social, medical, criminal, financial, and environmental.

    50 million Americans struggle with back pain, headaches, or some other pain that resists all treatment. Desperate pain sufferers are told again and again that there is no cure for chronic pain. Psychotherapist Alan Gordon was in grad school when he started experiencing chronic pain and it completely derailed his life. He saw multiple doctors and received many diagnoses, but none of the medical treatments helped. Frustrated with conventional pain management, he developed Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), a mind-body protocol to eliminate chronic pain. He subsequently founded the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles to bring his treatment to other pain sufferers.PRT is rooted in neuroscience, which has shown that while chronic pain feels like it's coming from the body, in most cases it's generated by misfiring pain circuits in the brain. PRT is a system of psychological techniques that rewires the brain to break out of the cycle of chronic pain.The University of Colorado at Boulder recently conducted a large randomized controlled study on PRT, and the results are remarkable. By the end of the study, the majority of patients were pain-free or nearly pain-free. What's more, these dramatic changes held up over time. The Way Out brings PRT to readers. It combines accessible science with a concrete, step-by-step plan to teach sufferers how to heal their own chronic pain.

    Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.

    It was developed by internationally recognized neuroscientists and teachers Marian C. Diamond and Arnold B. Scheibel in association with highly acclaimed teacher and anatomist Lawrence M. Elson, creator of Coloring Concepts. This coloring book is designed for a wide range of users: informal learners, students of psychology and the biological sciences, medical, dental, nursing, and other health professional students, and students and workers in the neurosciences. The unique, highly developed coloring process makes this book an effective learning device for such a diverse audience. The material included here represents the state-of-the-art knowledge about the brain and how it works. Each plate of illustrations has been carefully designed to yield maximum information when colored. The accompanying text has been creatively integrated with the coloring process to enhance understanding and retention.

    By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is--just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed.Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel to Illness as Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.These two essays now published together, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

    Though referenced like a work of research, Brizedine's writing style is fully accessible. Brizendine provides a fascinating look at the life cycle of the female brain from birth ("baby girls will connect emotionally in ways that baby boys don't") to birthing ("Motherhood changes you because it literally alters a woman's brain-structurally, functionally, and in many ways, irreversibly") to menopause (when "the female brain is nowhere near ready to retire") and beyond. At the same time, Brizedine is not above reviewing the basics: "We may think we're a lot more sophisticated than Fred or Wilma Flintstone, but our basic mental outlook and equipment are the same." While this book will be of interest to anyone who wonders why men and women are so different, it will be particularly useful for women and parents of girls.

    Unfortunately, most of us will experience at least one of these conditions during our lives. The goal of this book is to help people with chronic illness explore healthy ways to live with physical or mental conditions. A healthy way to live with a chronic illness is to seek soundness of body and mind and work to overcome physical and emotional issues. The challenge is to learn how to function at your best regardless of the difficulties living with a chronic condition can present. The goal is to achieve the things you want to do and to get pleasure from life. That is what this book is all about. By showing readers how to become active self-managers through problem solving, goal setting, and action planning while also presenting the basics of healthy eating, exercise, relaxation, and emotional empowerment, Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions offers readers a unique and exciting opportunity—the chance to take back one’s life and enjoy it to the fullest extent possible while living with chronic illness. Originally based on a five-year study, this completely revised 5th edition has grown to include the feedback of medical professionals and people with chronic conditions all over the world.

    Her accessible and comprehensive method, which she calls habilitation, works to enhance communication between carepartners and patients and has proven successful with thousands of people living with dementia. Learning to Speak Alzheimer’s also offers hundreds of practical tips, including how to -Cope with the diagnosis and adjust to the disease’s progression -Help the patient talk about the illness -Face the issue of driving -Make meals and bath times as pleasant as possible -Adjust room design for the patient’s comfort -Deal with wandering, paranoia, and aggression ​“A true godsend to anyone caring for those afflicted with dementia.”—Rudolph E. Tanzi, coauthor of Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer’s Disease

    What is fueling this twenty-first century pandemic?  In this eye-opening tour de force, Steven Phillips, MD, and his former patient, singer-songwriter Dana Parish, take on the medical establishment. Backed by a trove of published data, Chronic reveals striking evidence that a broad range of microbes, including the Lyme bacteria, cause a variety of recurrent conditions and autoimmune diseases. Chronic delves into the history and science behind common infections that are difficult to diagnose and treat, debunks widely held beliefs by doctors and patients alike, shows how medicine got the facts patently wrong, and provides solutions that empower readers to get their lives back. Dr. Phillips was already an internationally renowned physician specializing in complex chronic diseases when he became a patient himself. After nearly dying from his own mystery illness, he experienced firsthand the medical community’s ignorance about the pathogens that underlie a deep spectrum of chronic conditions—from fibromyalgia, lupus, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis to depression, anxiety, and neurodegenerative disorders. Parish, too, watched her health spiral after twelve top doctors missed an underlying infection that caused heart failure and other sudden debilitating physical and psychiatric symptoms. Now, they’ve come together with a mission: to change the current model of simply treating symptoms, often with dangerous, lifelong drugs, and shift the focus to finding and curing root causes of chronic diseases that affect millions around the world.

    For most of that time, she didn't know why. All of her trips to the ER and her daily anguish, pain, and lethargy only ever resulted in one question: How could any one person be this sick? Several drug addictions, three major hospitalizations, and over $100,000 later, she finally had a diagnosis: late-stage Lyme disease. Sick is Khakpour's arduous, emotional journey—as a woman, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems—through the chronic illness that perpetually left her a victim of anxiety, living a life stymied by an unknown condition.Divided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course—New York, LA, New Mexico, and Germany—as she meditates on both the physical and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. With candor and grace, she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness, her addiction to the benzodiazepines prescribed by her psychiatrists, and her ever-deteriorating physical health. A story about survival, pain, and transformation, Sick is a candid, illuminating narrative of hope and uncertainty, boldly examining the deep impact of illness on one woman's life.

    health care system is in a state of disrepair, but the rabbit hole goes deeper than even the staunchest critics may realize. In Primal Prescription, authors Doug McGuff and Robert Murphy combine their expertise in economics and medicine to offer a shocking, disturbing, and ultimately enlightening view into America’s health care system. You’ll discover the real history of what went wrong with U.S. health care and insurance, and why current efforts to clean up the mess are only making things worse.But far from leaving you feeling helpless at the dismal—and sometimes deadly—state of affairs, Primal Prescription equips you with both the knowledge to understand the health care conundrum and the tools for navigating your way out of it. McGuff and Murphy offer an evidence-based “game plan” for taking control of your own medical care, protecting yourself and your loved ones regardless of what the future holds for the rest of the nation.Whether you’re currently tangled in America’s broken health care system or simply trying to avoid its clutches, Primal Prescription is a must-have resource for taking your health into your own hands.

    Danielle Martin sees the challenges in our health care system every day. As a family doctor and a hospital vice president, she observes how those deficiencies adversely affect patients. And as a health policy expert, she knows how to close those gaps. A passionate believer in the value of fairness that underpins the Canadian health care system, Dr. Martin is on a mission to improve medicare. In Better Now, she shows how bold fixes are both achievable and affordable. Her patients' stories and her own family's experiences illustrate the evidence she presents about what works best to improve health care for all.Better Now outlines "Six Big Ideas" to bolster Canada's health care system. Each one is centred on a typical Canadian patient, making it clear how close to home these issues strike.- Ensure every Canadian has regular access to a family doctor or other primary care provider- Bring prescription drugs under medicare- Reduce unnecessary tests and interventions- Reorganize health care delivery to reduce wait times and improve quality- Implement a basic income guarantee to alleviate poverty, which is a major threat to health- Scale up successful local innovations to a national levelPassionate, accessible, and authoritative, Dr. Martin is a fervent supporter of the best of medicare and a persuasive critic of what needs fixing.

    Natasha Campbell-McBride set up The Cambridge Nutrition Clinic in 1998. As a parent of a child diagnosed with learning difficulties, she was acutely aware of the difficulties facing other parents like her, and she has devoted much of her time to helping these families. She realised that nutrition played a critical role in helping children and adults to overcome their disabilities, and has pioneered the use of probiotics in this field.Her willingness to share her knowledge has resulted in her contributing to many publications, as well as presenting at numerous seminars and conferences on the subjects of learning disabilities and digestive disorders. Her book "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" captures her experience and knowledge, incorporating her most recent work.She believes that the link between learning disabilities, the food and drink that we take, and the condition of our digestive system is absolute, and the results of her work have supported her position on this subject. In her clinic, parents discuss all aspects of their child's condition, confident in the knowledge that they are not only talking to a professional but to a parent who has lived their experience. Her deep understanding of the challenges they face, puts her advice in a class of it's own.

    Left untouched were many of the things known to cause cancer, including tobacco, the workplace, radiation, or the global environment. Proof of how the world in which we live and work affects whether we get cancer was either overlooked or suppressed. This has been no accident. The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products, and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies-a legacy that persists to this day. This is the gripping story of a major public health effort diverted and distorted for private gain. A portion of the profits from this book will go to support research on cancer prevention.