Book picks similar to
Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic at the Root of Most Chronic Disease―and How to Fight It by Benjamin Bikman
health
non-fiction
science
nonfiction
The Power of When: Discover Your Chronotype--and the Best Time to Eat Lunch, Ask for a Raise, Have Sex, Write a Novel, Take Your Meds, and More
Michael Breus - 2016
Most advice centers on what to do, or how to do it, and ignores the when of success. But exciting new research proves there is a right time to do just about everything, based on our biology and hormones. As Dr. Michael Breus proves in THE POWER OF WHEN, working with your body's inner clock for maximum health, happiness, and productivity is easy, exciting, and fun. THE POWER OF WHEN presents a groundbreaking new program for getting back in sync with your natural rhythm by making minor changes to your daily routine. After you've taken Dr. Breus's comprehensive Bio-Time Quiz to figure out your chronotype (are you a Bear, Lion, Dolphin or Wolf?), you'll find out the best time to do over 50 different activities. Featuring a foreword by Mehmet C. Oz, MD, and packed with fascinating facts, fun personality quizzes, and easy-to-follow guidelines, THE POWER OF WHEN is the ultimate "lifehack" to help you achieve your goals.
Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives
Daniel J. Levitin - 2020
Pink, author of When and Drive
SUCCESSFUL AGING delivers powerful insights: - Debunking the myth that memory always declines with age - Confirming that health span--not life span--is what matters - Proving that sixty-plus years is a unique and newly recognized developmental stage - Recommending that people look forward to joy, as reminiscing doesn't promote health Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people's wisdom and experience. Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age.Successful Aging inspires a powerful new approach to how readers think about our final decades, and it will revolutionize the way we plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise.
Burn: New Science Reveals How Metabolism Shapes Your Body, Health, and Longevity
Herman Pontzer - 2021
And if we exercise and cut carbs, we'll lose more weight. Right? Wrong. In this paradigm-shifting book, Herman Pontzer reveals for the first time how human metabolism really works so that we can finally manage our weight and improve our health.Pontzer's groundbreaking studies with hunter-gatherer tribes show how exercise doesn't increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level. This was a brilliant evolutionary strategy to survive in times of famine. Now it seems to doom us to obesity. The good news is we can lose weight, but we need to cut calories. Refuting such weight-loss hype as paleo, keto, anti-gluten, anti-grain, and even vegan, Pontzer discusses how all diets succeed or fail: For shedding pounds, a calorie is a calorie.At the same time, we must exercise to keep our body systems and signals functioning optimally, even if it won't make us thinner. Hunter-gatherers like the Hadza move about five hours a day and remain remarkably healthy into old age. But elite athletes can push the body too far, burning calories faster than their bodies can take them in. It may be that the most spectacular athletic feats are the result not just of great training, but of an astonishingly efficient digestive system.Revealing, irreverent, and always entertaining, Pontzer has written a book that will change how you eat, move, and live.
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."
The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work
Yoni Freedhoff - 2013
How can fix the way we lose weight so that we make results last? Weight loss expert Dr. Yoni Freedhoff has uncovered the flawed thinking that sabotages even the most earnest weight loss efforts. The majority of dieting or weight loss programs call for regular sacrifice: Give up an entire food group; fight hunger day and night; undertake exhausting and grueling exercise regiments. These approaches are unrealistic, unhealthy, and make it nearly impossible to maintain results. Now, at last, there is hope. In The Diet Fix, Dr. Freedhoff offers a tested program for breaking down the negative thought patterns that prevent people from losing weight and keeping it off. Through the course of years of research and patient treatment, he has developed a 10-Day Reset that supports losing weight while maintaining a healthy, enjoyable lifestyle. This reset is designed to eliminate the habits that so often lead to weight gain: use it to shut down cravings, prevent indulgences from turning into binges, and break up with the scale once and for all. The 10-Day Reset can make any diet more effective, whether it’s low-carb, low-fat, meal replacement, calorie tracking, or anything in between. Whether used on its own or in conjunction with any other diet, Dr. Freedhoff’s program shows how to replace this toxic dieting mindset with positive beliefs and behaviors. It is time to break the cycle of traumatic dieting. With The Diet Fix, Dr. Freedhoff offers a groundbreaking, useable guide to begin living happily while losing permanently.
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Mary Roach - 2013
The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists—who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.Like all of Roach’s books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.
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 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
Timothy Ferriss - 2000
which 150 pages will you read? Is it possible to: Reach your genetic potential in 6 months? Sleep 2 hours per day and perform better than on 8 hours? Lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing? Indeed, and much more. This is not just another diet and fitness book.The 4-Hour Body is the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of jaw-dropping personal experimentation. From Olympic training centers to black-market laboratories, from Silicon Valley to South Africa, Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, fixated on one life-changing question: For all things physical, what are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results? Thousands of tests later, this book contains the answers for both men and women. From the gym to the bedroom, it’s all here, and it all works. YOU WILL LEARN (in less than 30 minutes each):How to lose those last 5-10 pounds (or 100+ pounds) with odd combinations of food and safe chemical cocktails.* How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends) * How to increase fat-loss 300% with a few bags of ice * How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time * How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested * How to produce 15-minute female orgasms * How to triple testosterone and double sperm count* How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks * How to reverse “permanent” injuries * How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months * How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 50 topics covered, all with real-world experiments, many including more than 200 test subjects. You don't need better genetics or more discipline. You need immediate results that compel you to continue. That’s exactly what The 4-Hour Body delivers.
The Autoimmune Solution: Prevent and Reverse the Full Spectrum of Inflammatory Symptoms and Diseases
Amy Myers - 2015
Until now, conventional medicine has said there is no cure. Minor irritations like rashes and runny noses are ignored, while chronic and debilitating diseases like Crohn's and rheumatoid arthritis are handled with a cocktail of toxic treatments that fail to address their root cause. But it doesn't have to be this way.In The Autoimmune Solution, Dr. Amy Myers, a renowned leader in functional medicine, offers her medically proven approach to prevent a wide range of inflammatory-related symptoms and diseases, including allergies, obesity, asthma, cardiovascular disease, fibromyalgia, lupus, IBS, chronic headaches, and Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
Your Body's Many Cries for Water: You Are Not Sick, You Are Thirsty: Don't Treat Thirst With Medications
Fereydoon Batmanghelidj - 1992
Batmanghelidj, M.D., has identified the crisis calls of the body for water -- pain, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and more. He has discovered the key to a longer, healthier, and more vigorous life. He shares with you his medical breakthrough, that many people put their minds and bodies under intolerable and unecessary stress and become sick simply because they do not drink enough water. Unintentional dehydration leads to illness and painful, degenerative diseases that can be prevented, treated, and cure by drinking plenty of water. You will learn how to use water to:* Prevent and reverse premature aging* Eliminate pains including heartburn, back pain, arthritis, colitis pain, anginal pain, migraine headaches* Cure asthma in a few days, naturally and forever* Cure hypertension without diuretics or other medication* Lose weight effortlessly and naturally, without strict dieting
Diet Cults: The Surprising Fallacy at the Core of Nutrition Fads and a Guide to Healthy Eating for the Rest of US
Matt Fitzgerald - 2014
Everywhere we turn, someone is preaching the “One True Way” to eat for maximum health. Paleo Diet advocates tell us that all foods less than 12,000 years old are the enemy. Low-carb gurus demonize carbs, then there are the low-fat prophets. But they agree on one thing: there is only one true way to eat for maximum health. The first clue that that is a fallacy is the sheer variety of diets advocated. Indeed, while all of these competing views claim to be backed by “science,” a good look at actual nutritional science itself suggests that it is impossible to identify a single best way to eat. Fitzgerald advocates an agnostic, rational approach to eating habits, based on one’s own habits, lifestyle, and genetics/body type. Many professional athletes already practice this “Good Enough” diet, and now we can too and ditch the brainwashing of these diet cults for good.
First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
Bee Wilson - 2015
From childhood onward, we learn how big a "portion" is and how sweet is too sweet. We learn to enjoy green vegetables -- or not. But how does this education happen? What are the origins of taste? In First Bite, award-winning food writer Bee Wilson draws on the latest research from food psychologists, neuroscientists, and nutritionists to reveal that our food habits are shaped by a whole host of factors: family and culture, memory and gender, hunger and love. Taking the reader on a journey across the globe, Wilson introduces us to people who can only eat foods of a certain color; prisoners of war whose deepest yearning is for Mom's apple pie; a nine year old anosmia sufferer who has no memory of the flavor of her mother's cooking; toddlers who will eat nothing but hotdogs and grilled cheese sandwiches; and researchers and doctors who have pioneered new and effective ways to persuade children to try new vegetables. Wilson examines why the Japanese eat so healthily, whereas the vast majority of teenage boys in Kuwait have a weight problem -- and what these facts can tell Americans about how to eat better. The way we learn to eat holds the key to why food has gone so disastrously wrong for so many people. But Wilson also shows that both adults and children have immense potential for learning new, healthy eating habits. An exploration of the extraordinary and surprising origins of our tastes and eating habits, First Bite also shows us how we can change our palates to lead healthier, happier lives.
Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting
Darya Pino Rose - 2009
Foodist is a new approach to healthy eating that focuses on what you like to eat, rather than what you should or shouldn’t eat, while teaching you how to make good decisions, backed up by an understanding of what it means to live a healthy lifestyle.Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting is filled with tips on food shopping, food prep, cooking, and how to pick the right restaurants and make smart menu choices.
The Body: A Guide for Occupants
Bill Bryson - 2019
Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.
The Hormone Reset Diet: Heal Your Metabolism to Lose Up to 15 Pounds in 21 Days
Sara Gottfried - 2015
But when you develop resistance to your seven major metabolic hormones--cortisol, thyroid, testosterone, growth hormone, leptin, insulin, and estrogen--your body adjusts by increasingly raising your hormone levels and ultimately slowing down your metabolism. And a slower metabolism leads to weight gain and difficulty losing weight. The solution, Dr. Sara Gottfried contends, is to reset the efficiency of your hormones by repairing and growing new hormone receptors.Based on leading scientific research, The Hormone Reset Diet is her proven weight loss and energy program to reverse hormone resistance in just three weeks. It will help you: Boost your metabolism and calorie burning by growing new and fresh thyroid receptors; Increase your weight loss by re-balancing estrogen and progesterone receptors; Reverse your aging by resetting glucocorticoid receptors (for better processing cortisol).For the last twenty years, this Harvard-MIT educated physician has helped thousands of women address the root hormonal causes of what bothers them most: excess weight, lack of energy, aging, and illness. Going beyond her bestselling The Hormone Cure, this program is the next generation of her deep understanding of hormonal optimization for rapid weight loss.