Diseases such as Alzheimer’s erase parts of one’s memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don’t simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging, addressing not only the indignities caused by the condition but also by the rhetoric surrounding it. Harper asks essential questions about the nature of our outsize fear of dementia, the stigma this fear may create, and what it might mean for us all to try to “vanish well.”Weaving together personal stories with theology, history, philosophy, literature, and science, Harper confronts our elemental fears of disappearance and death, drawing on her own experiences with people with dementia both in the U.S. health-care system and within her own family. In the course of unpacking her own stories and encounters—of leading a prayer group on a dementia unit; of meeting individuals dismissed as “already gone” and finding them still possessed of complex, vital inner lives; of witnessing her grandfather’s final years with Alzheimer’s and discovering her own heightened genetic risk of succumbing to the disease—Harper engages in an exploration of dementia that is unlike anything written before on the subject.Expanding our understanding of dementia beyond progressive vacancy and dread, On Vanishing makes room for beauty and hope, and opens a space in which we might start to consider better ways of caring for, and thinking about, our fellow human beings. It is a rich and startling work of nonfiction that reveals cognitive change as an essential aspect of what it means to be mortal.

    You can't be a woman or girl (or, increasingly, a man or boy) in America today and not grapple with the size and shape of your body, your daughter's body, other women's bodies. Even the most confident people have to find a way through a daily gauntlet of voices and images talking, admonishing, warning us about what size we should be, how much we should weigh, what we should eat and what we shouldn't. Obsessing about weight has become a ritual and a refrain, punctuating our every relationship, including the ones with ourselves. It's time to change the conversation around weight. Harriet Brown has explored the conundrums of weight and body image for more than a decade, as a science journalist, as a woman who has struggled with weight, as a mother, wife, and professor. In this book, she describes how biology, psychology, metabolism, media, and culture come together to shape our ongoing obsession with our bodies, and what we can learn from them to help us shift the way we think. Brown exposes some of the myths behind the rhetoric of obesity, gives historical and contemporary context for what it means to be "fat," and offers readers ways to set aside the hysteria and think about weight and health in more nuanced and accurate ways.

    

    It is William Nolen's story of his transformation from student to practitioner, from a brash medical school graduate to a surgeon possessing skill and judgment. And, as happens in the best memoirs, with his brilliant flash of self-discovery William Nolen illuminates the world outside himself.First published in 1970, The Making of a Surgeon received critical acclaim and touched a world audience. The book's universal themes propelled it to the rarefied heights of a best seller. In this reprinted edition, with a foreword by the author's daughter, his classic returns.

    It left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain--a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors and descending deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease which according to CDC definitions does not actually exist: the chronic form of Lyme disease, a hotly contested condition that devastates the lives of tens of thousands of people but has no official recognition--and no medically approved cure.From a rural dream house that now felt like a prison, Douthat's search for help takes him off the map of official medicine, into territory where cranks and conspiracies abound and patients are forced to take control of their own treatment and experiment on themselves. Slowly, against his instincts and assumptions, he realizes that many of the cranks and weirdos are right, that many supposed hypochondriacs are victims of an indifferent medical establishment, and that all kinds of unexpected experiences and revelations lurk beneath the surface of normal existence, in the places underneath.The Deep Places is a story about what happens when you are terribly sick and realize that even the doctors who are willing to treat you can only do so much. Along the way, Douthat describes his struggle back toward health with wit and candor, portraying sickness as the most terrible of gifts. It teaches you to appreciate the grace of ordinary life by taking that life away from you. It reveals the deep strangeness of the world, the possibility that the reasonable people might be wrong, and the necessity of figuring out things for yourself. And it proves, day by dreadful day, that you are stronger than you ever imagined, and that even in the depths there is always hope.

    But her discomfort only intensified, leaving her feeling frustrated and perplexed. As she searched for better solutions, she exposed a much bigger problem. Costing roughly $100 billion a year, spine medicine—often ineffective and sometimes harmful —exemplified the worst aspects of the U.S. health care system.The result of six years of intensive investigation, Crooked offers a startling look at the poorly identified risks of spine medicine, and provides practical advice and solutions. Ramin interviewed scores of spine surgeons, pain management doctors, physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians, exercise physiologists, physical therapists, chiropractors, specialized bodywork practitioners. She met with many patients whose pain and desperation led them to make life-altering decisions, and with others who triumphed over their limitations.The result is a brilliant and comprehensive book that is not only important but essential to millions of back pain sufferers, and all types of health care professionals. Ramin shatters assumptions about surgery, chiropractic methods, physical therapy, spinal injections and painkillers, and addresses evidence-based rehabilitation options—showing, in detail, how to avoid therapeutic dead ends, while saving money, time, and considerable anguish. With Crooked, she reveals what it takes to outwit the back pain industry and get on the road to recovery.

    Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of medicine and genetics, brings the breakthroughs of precision medicine to vivid life through the real diagnostic journeys of his patients and the tireless efforts of his fellow doctors and scientists as they hunt to prevent, predict, and beat disease.Since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, the price of genome sequencing has dropped at a staggering rate. It’s as if the price of a Ferrari went from $350,000 to a mere forty cents. Through breakthroughs made by Dr. Ashley’s team at Stanford and other dedicated groups around the world, analyzing the human genome has decreased from a heroic multibillion dollar effort to a single clinical test costing less than $1,000. For the first time we have within our grasp the ability to predict our genetic future, to diagnose and prevent disease before it begins, and to decode what it really means to be human.In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Ashley details the medicine behind genome sequencing with clarity and accessibility. More than that, with passion for his subject and compassion for his patients, he introduces readers to the dynamic group of researchers and doctor detectives who hunt for answers, and to the pioneering patients who open up their lives to the medical community during their search for diagnoses and cures. He describes how he led the team that was the first to analyze and interpret a complete human genome, how they broke genome speed records to diagnose and treat a newborn baby girl whose heart stopped five times on the first day of her life, and how they found a boy with tumors growing inside his heart and traced the cause to a missing piece of his genome.These patients inspire Dr. Ashley and his team as they work to expand the boundaries of our medical capabilities and to envision a future where genome sequencing is available for all, where medicine can be tailored to treat specific diseases and to decode pathogens like viruses at the genomic level, and where our medical system as we know it has been completely revolutionized.

    Across age groups, from baby boomers and their parents to millennials and even children, more and more people—women especially—are hearing that their thyroids are to blame for their fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, memory issues, aches and pains, tingles and numbness, insomnia, hair loss, hot flashes, sensitivity to cold, constipation, bloating, anxiety, depression, heart palpitations, loss of libido, restless legs, and more. Everyone wants to know how to free themselves from the thyroid trap.As the thyroid has gotten more and more attention, though, these symptoms haven’t gone away—people aren’t healing. Labeling someone with “Hashimoto’s,” “hypothyroidism,” or the like doesn’t explain the myriad health issues that person may experience. That’s because there’s a pivotal truth that goes by unnoticed: A thyroid problem is not the ultimate reason for a person’s illness. A problematic thyroid is yet one more symptom of something much larger than this one small gland in the neck. It’s something much more pervasive in the body, something invasive, that’s responsible for the laundry list of symptoms and conditions attributed to thyroid disease.In Medical Medium Thyroid Healing, Anthony William, the Medical Medium, reveals an entirely new take on the epidemic of thyroid illness. Empowering readers to become their own thyroid experts, he explains in detail what the source problem really is, including what’s going on with inflammation, autoimmune disease, and dozens more symptoms and conditions, then offers a life-changing toolkit and many new recipes to rescue the thyroid and bring readers back to health and vitality. It’s an approach unlike any other, and as his millions of fans and followers will tell you, it’s the approach that gets results.MORE on BOOK 3 of the MEDICAL MEDIUM SERIES:If you’ve struggled with any chronic health issue, you’re not alone—you are one among millions confronting the mysterious symptoms that medical communities have begun to connect with thyroid illness. Like so many, you want the greater truth about the thyroid.We’ve already waited 100-plus years for real insights from medical communities into thyroid problems, and they haven’t come. Even the most recent expert opinions don’t yet have a handle on what’s really behind your suffering. Hashimoto’s is not the body attacking itself. There’s more to thyroid cancer than we’re being told. You’re not hopeless if you don’t have a thyroid anymore. Thyroid illness should not be blamed on your genes. Today’s thyroid diagnoses do not explain your years of suffering with mystery symptoms.You shouldn’t have to wait another 10, 20, 30, or more years for scientific research to find the real answers. If you’re stuck in bed, dragging through your days, or feeling lost about your health, you shouldn’t have to go through one more day of it, let alone another decade. You shouldn’t have to watch your children go through it, either.The meaning behind today’s widespread thyroid illness is so much bigger than anyone has yet discovered—what you’re about to read is unlike any information you’ve ever seen. It’s time for you to take control and become a true thyroid expert. Discover the real reasons and the healing path for dozens of symptoms and conditions, including:ACHES AND PAINSANXIETY AND DEPRESSIONAUTOIMMUNE DISEASEBRAIN FOG AND FOCUSCANCEREPSTEIN-BARR VIRUSPREGNANCY COMPLICATIONSFATIGUEMONONUCLEOSISFIBROMYALGIA AND CFSHAIR THINNING AND LOSSHASHIMOTO’S THYROIDITISHEADACHES AND MIGRAINESHEART PALPITATIONSVERTIGOHYPERTHYROIDISMHYPOTHYROIDISMMENOPAUSAL SYMPTOMSMYSTERY WEIGHT GAINSLEEP DISORDERSTINGLES AND NUMBNESS“Since reading Medical Medium Thyroid Healing, I have expanded my approach and treatments of thyroid disease and am seeing enormous value for patients. The results are rewarding and gratifying.”— from the foreword by Prudence Hall, M.D., founder and medical director of The Hall Center

    As an awkward, magic-obsessed adolescent, nothing was further from his reality than the catwalks of Paris or the hallways of glossy magazine publishers. A gifted writer and shrewd cultural observer, Peres eventually took the leap—even when it meant he had to fake a sense of belonging in a new world of famed fashion designers, celebrities, and some of media’s biggest names. But he had a secret: opiates.Peres’s career as an editor at W magazine and Details is well known, but little is known about his private life as a high-functioning drug addict. In As Needed for Pain, Peres lays bare for the first time the extent of his drug use—at one point a 60-pill-a-day habit.By turns humorous and gripping, Peres’s story is a cautionary coming-of-age tale filled with unforgettable characters and breathtaking brushes with disaster. But the heart of the book is his journey from outsider to insecure insider, what it took to get him there, and how he found his way back from a killing addiction. As Needed for Pain offers a rare glimpse into New York media’s past—a time when print magazines mattered—and a rarefied world of wealth, power, and influence. It is also a brilliant, shocking dissection of a life teetering on the edge of destruction, and what it took to pull back from the brink.

    Bit by bit a mysterious illness stole away the pieces of his life: First, it took the strength of his legs, then his voice, and his ability to eat. Finally, even the sound of a footstep in his room became unbearable. The Puzzle Solver follows several years in which he desperately sought answers from specialist after specialist, where at one point his 6'3" frame dropped to 115 lbs. For years, he underwent endless medical tests, but doctors told him there was nothing wrong. Then, finally, a diagnosis: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis.In the 80s, when an outbreak of people immobilized by an indescribable fatigue were reported near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, doctors were at a loss to explain the symptoms. The condition would alternatively be nicknamed Raggedy Ann Syndrome or the Yuppie Disease, and there was no cure or answers about treatment. They were to remain sick.But there was one answer: Whitney's father, Ron Davis, PhD, a world-class geneticist at Stanford University whose legendary research helped crack the code of DNA, suddenly changed the course of his career in a race against time to cure his son's debilitating condition.In The Puzzle Solver, journalist Tracie White, who first wrote a viral and award-winning piece on Davis and his family in Stanford Medicine, tells his story. In gripping prose, she masterfully takes readers along on this journey with Davis to solve one of the greatest mysteries in medicine. In a piercing investigative narrative, closed doors are opened, and masked truths are exposed as Davis uncovers new proof confirming that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a biological disease.At the heart of this book is a moving story that goes far beyond medicine, this is a story about how the power of love -- and science -- can shine light in even the darkest, most hidden, corners of the world.

    By turns humorous and moving, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain interweaves Gazzaniga’s scientific achievements with his reflections on the challenges and thrills of working as a scientist.