Book picks similar to
Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All by Rose Shapiro
non-fiction
science
health
medicine
10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness
Alanna Collen - 2015
For every one of the cells that make up the vessel that you call your body, there are nine impostor cells hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and blood, muscle and bone, brain and skin, but also bacteria and fungi. Over your lifetime, you will carry the equivalent weight of five African elephants in microbes. You are not an individual but a colony.Until recently, we had thought our microbes hardly mattered, but science is revealing a different story, one in which microbes run our bodies and becoming a healthy human is impossible without them.In this riveting, shocking, and beautifully written book, biologist Alanna Collen draws on the latest scientific research to show how our personal colony of microbes influences our weight, our immune system, our mental health, and even our choice of partner. She argues that so many of our modern diseases—obesity, autism, mental illness, digestive disorders, allergies, autoimmunity afflictions, and even cancer—have their root in our failure to cherish our most fundamental and enduring relationship: that with our personal colony of microbes.Many of the questions about modern diseases left unanswered by the Human Genome Project are illuminated by this new science. And the good news is that unlike our human cells, we can change our microbes for the better. Collen's book is a revelatory and indispensable guide. It is science writing at its most relevant: life—and your body—will never seem the same again.
ANYWAY YOU CAN: Doctor Bosworth shares her mom's cancer journey. A Beginners Guide to Ketones for Life
Annette Bosworth - 2018
Tim Ferriss saved her life. This story will save yours," Annette Bosworth, MD. In ANYWAY YOU CAN, Dr Bosworth shares her ‘accidental’ discovery of ketosis and its wide array of health benefits as she supplemented her mom’s chemotherapy with ketones. Her story of courage, faith, and tenacity helps young and old achieve better physical, mental, and emotional health through ketosis. Dr Bosworth inspires patients to become stewards of their own health through her leadership skills, public speaking and “sticky teachable moments.” When patients ask how to turn around their chronic health problem, she answers “Fight it ANYWAY YOU CAN. Ketones for Life.”
Experiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug
Peter Pringle - 2012
student, worked on a wartime project in microbiology professor Selman Waksman's lab, searching for an antibiotic to fight infections on the front lines and at home. In his eleventh experiment on a common bacterium found in farmyard soil, Schatz discovered streptomycin, the first effective cure for tuberculosis, one of the world's deadliest diseases.As director of Schatz's research, Waksman took credit for the discovery, belittled Schatz's work, and secretly enriched himself with royalties from the streptomycin patent filed by the pharmaceutical company Merck. In an unprecedented lawsuit, young Schatz sued Waksman, and was awarded the title of "co-discoverer" and a share of the royalties. But two years later, Professor Waksman alone was awarded the Nobel Prize. Schatz disappeared into academic obscurity.For the first time, acclaimed author and journalist Peter Pringle unravels the intrigues behind one of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine. The story unfolds on a tiny college campus in New Jersey, but its repercussions spread worldwide. The streptomycin patent was a breakthrough for the drug companies, overturning patent limits on products of nature and paving the way for today's biotech world. As dozens more antibiotics were found, many from the same family as streptomycin, the drug companies created oligopolies and reaped big profits. Pringle uses firsthand accounts and archives in the United States and Europe to reveal the intensely human story behind the discovery that started a revolution in the treatment of infectious diseases and shaped the future of Big Pharma.
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
Abigail Shrier - 2020
Teenage girls are taking courses of testosterone and disfiguring their bodies. Parents are undermined; experts are over-relied upon; dissenters in science and medicine are intimidated; free speech truckles under renewed attack; socialized medicine bears hidden consequences; and an intersectional era has arisen in which the desire to escape a dominant identity encourages individuals to take cover in victim groups. Every person who has ever had a skeptical thought about the sudden rush toward a non-binary future but been afraid to express it—this book is for you.
Ayurveda: The Science of Self-Healing
Vasant Dattatray Lad - 1984
This beautifully illustrated text thoroughly explains history & philosophy, basic principles, diagnostic techniques, treatment, diet, medicinal usage of kitchen herbs & spices, first aid, food aid, food antidotes and much more.
Heart: A History
Sandeep Jauhar - 2018
It’s so bound up with our deepest feelings that emotional trauma causes it to change shape.Practising cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar beautifully weaves his own experiences with the defining discoveries of the past to tell the story of our most vital organ. He looks at some of the pioneers who risked their careers and their patients’ lives to better understand the heart. People like Daniel Hale Williams, who performed the world’s first documented heart surgery, and Wilson Greatbatch, who accidentally invented the pacemaker.Amid gripping scenes from the operating theatre, Jauhar interweaves stories about the patients he’s treated with the moving tale of his family’s own history of heart problems, from his grandfather’s sudden death in India – an event that sparked his life-long obsession – to the ominous signs of how he himself might die.He also confronts the limits of medical technology and argues that future progress will be determined more by how we choose to live rather than by any device we invent.
A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life
Ayelet Waldman - 2017
When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from "Lewis Carroll," Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD. As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month--bursts of productivity, sleepless nights, a newfound sense of equanimity--she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is eye-opening, often hilarious, and utterly enthralling.
Love, Medicine & Miracles
Bernie S. Siegel - 1986
A wonderful book that every patient and skeptic physician should read If we follow Bernie Siegel's advice, we may all stay younger and healthier for many more years. In these pages is found a precious secret, that of health and well-being. I thank God for bernie and his book and know that it is and will be a blessing to all humanity. Love, Medicine and Miracles deserves to be on the same shelf with Norman Cousin's Anatomy of an Illness. Bernie Siegel, M.D., practices surgery in New Haven and teaches at Yale University. In 1978, Siegal started ECaP (Exceptional Cancer Patients), a specialized form of individual and group therapy based on "carefrontation," a loving, safe, therapeutic confrontation that facilitates personal change and healing. This experience led to his desire to make everyone aware of his or her own healing potential. In 1988, he bacame president of the American Holistic Medical Association.
The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards
William J. Broad - 2012
He reveals what is real and what is illusory, in the process exposing moves that can harm or even kill. Five years in the making, The Science of Yoga draws on a hidden wealth of discovery, drama, and surprising fact to cut through the fog that surrounds contemporary yoga and to show—for the first time—what is uplifting and beneficial and what is delusional, flaky, and dangerous. At heart, it illuminates the risks and rewards.Broad describes yoga as a burgeoning global industry that attracts not only curious scientists but millions of true believers and charismatic hustlers. He takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of unknown yoga that goes from old archives in Calcutta to world capitals of medical research, from storied ashrams to spotless laboratories, from sweaty yoga studios with master teachers to the cozy offices of yoga healers. In the process, he shatters myths, lays out unexpected benefits, and offers a compelling vision of how the discipline can be improved.
Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself
Lissa Rankin - 2013
Or it’s just bad luck—and doctors alone hold the keys to optimal health. For years, Lissa Rankin, M.D., believed the same. But when her own health started to suffer, and she turned to Western medical treatments, she found that they not only failed to help; they made her worse. So she decided to take matters into her own hands. Through her research, Dr. Rankin discovered that the health care she had been taught to practice was missing something crucial: a recognition of the body’s innate ability to self-repair and an appreciation for how we can control these self-healing mechanisms with the power of the mind. In an attempt to better understand this phenomenon, she explored peer-reviewed medical literature and found evidence that the medical establishment had been proving that the body can heal itself for over 50 years. Using extraordinary cases of spontaneous healing, Dr. Rankin shows how thoughts, feelings, and beliefs can alter the body’s physiology. She lays out the scientific data proving that loneliness, pessimism, depression, fear, and anxiety damage the body, while intimate relationships, gratitude, meditation, sex, and authentic self-expression flip on the body’s self-healing processes. In the final section of the book, you’ll be introduced to a radical new wellness model based on Dr. Rankin’s scientific findings. Her unique six-step program will help you uncover where things might be out of whack in your life—spiritually, creatively, environmentally, nutritionally, and in your professional and personal relationships—so that you can create a customized treatment plan aimed at bolstering these health-promoting pieces of your life. You’ll learn how to listen to your body’s “whispers” before they turn to life-threatening “screams” that can be prevented with proper self-care, and you’ll learn how to trust your inner guidance when making decisions about your health and your life.
Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic
Scott Gottlieb - 2021
As the pandemic unfolded, Gottlieb was in regular contact with all the key players in Congress, the Trump administration, and the drug and diagnostic industries. He provides an inside account of how level after level of American government crumbled as the COVID-19 crisis advanced.A system-wide failure across government institutions left the nation blind to the threat, and unable to mount an effective response. We’d prepared for the wrong virus. We failed to identify the contagion early enough and became overly reliant on costly and sometimes divisive tactics that couldn’t fully slow the spread. We never considered asymptomatic transmission and we assumed people would follow public health guidance. Key bureaucracies like the CDC were hidebound and outmatched. Weak political leadership aggravated these woes. We didn’t view a public health disaster as a threat to our national security.Many of the woes sprung from the CDC, which has very little real-time reporting capability to inform us of Covid’s twists and turns or assess our defenses. The agency lacked an operational capacity and mindset to mobilize the kind of national response that was needed. To guard against future pandemic risks, we must remake the CDC and properly equip it to better confront crises. We must also get our intelligence services more engaged in the global public health mission, to gather information and uncover emerging risks before they hit our shores so we can head them off. For this role, our clandestine agencies have tools and capabilities that the CDC lacks.Uncontrolled Spread argues we must fix our systems and prepare for a deadlier coronavirus variant, a flu pandemic, or whatever else nature -- or those wishing us harm -- may threaten us with. Gottlieb outlines policies and investments that are essential to prepare the United States and the world for future threats.
The Patient in Room Nine Says He's God
Louis M. Profeta - 2008
The late-night passing of a beloved aunt summons a childhood bully who shows up minutes later, after twenty-five years, to be forgiven and to heal a broken doctor. This ER doctor finds God's opposite in: a battered child's bruises covered over by make-up, a dying patient whose son finally shows up at the end to reclaim the man's high-top sneakers, the rich or celebrity patients loaded with prescription drugs from doctor friends who end up addicted. But, his real outrage is directed at our cavalier treatment of the elderly, If you put a G-tube in your 80-year-old mother with Alzheimer's because she's no longer eating, you will probably have a fast track to hell.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
Matthew Walker - 2017
Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night.
Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them
Louise L. Hay - 1976
Just look up your specific health challenge and you will find the probable cause for this health issue and the information you need to overcome it by creating a new thought pattern.
Death by Food Pyramid: How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Have Ruined Our Health
Denise Minger - 2013
Shoddy science, sketchy politics and shady special interests have shaped American Dietary recommendations and destroyed our nation s health over recent decades. The phrase Death by Food Pyramid isn t shock-value sensationalism, but the tragic consequence of simply doing what we have been told to do by our own government and giant food profiteers in pursuit of health.In "Death by Food Pyramid," Denise Minger exposes the forces that overrode common sense and solid science to launch a pyramid phenomenon that bled far beyond US borders to taint the eating habits of the entire developed world.Denise explores how generations of flawed pyramids and plates endure as part of the national consciousness, and how the one size fits all diet mentality these icons convey pushes us deeper into the throes of obesity and disease. Regardless of whether you re an omnivore or vegan, research junkie or science-phobe, health novice or seasoned dieter, "Death by Food Pyramid" will reframe your understanding of nutrition science, and inspire you to take your health, and future, into your own hands."