Book picks similar to
The Alzheimer's Prevention Program: Keep Your Brain Healthy for the Rest of Your Life by Gary Small
health
nonfiction
non-fiction
self-help
From Fatigued to Fantastic!
Jacob Teitelbaum - 1996
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFIDS) and fibromyalgia are illnesses characterized by severe long-term fatigue, achiness, "brain fog," and recurrent infections, among other symptoms. The conditions are frequently misdiagnosed and patients often receive confusing and misleading information from health practitioners.Dr. Teitelbaum, one of the country's leading experts on CFIDS and fibromyalgia, has experienced and overcome these illnesses himself. In this revised edition of his landmark book, he examines the possible causes of the disorders and provides instructions for patients on how to eliminate them, using both natural and pharmacological methods. He offers compelling evidence that these disorders can be treated effectively, and provides the latest scientific research and cutting-edge discoveries about these diseases as well as sound, compassionate advice on dealing with them. Notes. Index.
The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease
Marc Lewis - 2015
The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. As a result, most treatment based on the disease model fails. Lewis shows how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery. This is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.
The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health
Justin Sonnenburg - 2015
The microbiota interacts with our bodies in a number of powerful ways; the Sonnenburgs argue that it determines in no small part whether we’re sick or healthy, fit or obese, sunny or moody. The microbiota has always been with us, and in fact has coevolved with humans, entwining its functions with ours so deeply, the Sonnenburgs show us, humans are really composite organisms having both microbial and human parts. But now, they argue, because of changes to diet, antibiotic over-use, and over-sterilization, our gut microbiota is facing a “mass extinction event,” which is causing our bodies to go haywire, and may be behind the mysterious spike in some of our most troubling modern afflictions, from food allergies to autism, cancer to depression. It doesn’t have to be this way.The Good Gut offers a new plan for health that focuses on how to nourish your microbiota, including recipes and a menu plan. In this groundbreaking work, the Sonnenburgs show how we can keep our microbiota off the endangered species list and how we can strengthen the community that inhabits our gut and thereby improve our own health. The answer is unique for each of us, and it changes as you age. In this important and timely investigation, the Sonnenburgs look at safe alternatives to antibiotics; dietary and lifestyle choices to encourage microbial health; the management of the aging microbiota; and the nourishment of your own individual microbiome. Caring for our gut microbes may be the most important health choice we can make.
Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life
Max Lugavere - 2018
After his mother was diagnosed with a mysterious form of dementia, Max Lugavere put his successful media career on hold to learn everything he could about brain health and performance. For the better half of a decade, he consumed the most up-to-date scientific research, talked to dozens of leading scientists and clinicians around the world, and visited the country’s best neurology departments—all in the hopes of understanding his mother’s condition.Now, in Genius Foods, Lugavere presents a comprehensive guide to brain optimization. He uncovers the stunning link between our dietary and lifestyle choices and our brain functions, revealing how the foods you eat directly affect your ability to focus, learn, remember, create, analyze new ideas, and maintain a balanced mood.Weaving together pioneering research on dementia prevention, cognitive optimization, and nutritional psychiatry, Lugavere distills groundbreaking science into actionable lifestyle changes. He shares invaluable insights into how to improve your brain power, includingthe nutrients that can boost your memory and improve mental clarity (and where to find them);the foods and tactics that can energize and rejuvenate your brain, no matter your age;a brain-boosting fat-loss method so powerful it has been called “biochemical liposuction”; andthe foods that can improve your happiness, both now and for the long term.With Genius Foods, Lugavere offers a cutting-edge yet practical road map to eliminating brain fog and optimizing the brain’s health and performance today—and decades into the future.
The Cancer Code
Jason Fung - 2020
Jason Fung returns with an eye-opening biography of cancer in which he offers a radical new paradigm for understanding cancer—and issues a call to action for reducing risk moving forward. Our understanding of cancer is slowly undergoing a revolution, allowing for the development of more effective treatments. For the first time ever, the death rate from cancer is showing a steady decline . . . but the “War on Cancer” has hardly been won.In The Cancer Code, Dr. Jason Fung offers a revolutionary new understanding of this invasive, often fatal disease—what it is, how it manifests, and why it is so challenging to treat. In this rousing narrative, Dr. Fung identifies the medical community’s many missteps in cancer research—in particular, its focus on genetics, or what he terms the “seed” of cancer, at the expense of examining the “soil,” or the conditions under which cancer flourishes. Dr. Fung—whose groundbreaking work in the treatment of obesity and diabetes has won him international acclaim—suggests that the primary disease pathway of cancer is caused by the dysregulation of insulin. In fact, obesity and type 2 diabetes significantly increase an individual’s risk of cancer.In this accessible read, Dr. Fung provides a new paradigm for dealing with cancer, with recommendations for what we can do to create a hostile soil for this dangerous seed. One such strategy is intermittent fasting, which reduces blood glucose, lowering insulin levels. Another, eliminating intake of insulin-stimulating foods, such as sugar and refined carbohydrates.For hundreds of years, cancer has been portrayed as a foreign invader we’ve been powerless to stop. By reshaping our view of cancer as an internal uprising of our own healthy cells, we can begin to take back control. The seed of cancer may exist in all of us, but the power to change the soil is in our hands.
The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat
Stephan Guyenet - 2017
And certainly no one wants to overeat for years, become overweight, and end up with a high risk of diabetes or heart disease--yet two thirds of Americans do precisely that. Even though we know better, we often eat too much. Why does our behavior betray our own intentions to be lean and healthy? The problem, argues obesity and neuroscience researcher Stephan J. Guyenet, is not necessarily a lack of willpower or an incorrect understanding of what to eat. Rather, our appetites and food choices are led astray by ancient, instinctive brain circuits that play by the rules of a survival game that no longer exists. And these circuits don’t care about how you look in a bathing suit next summer.To make the case, The Hungry Brain takes readers on an eye-opening journey through cutting-edge neuroscience that has never before been available to a general audience. The Hungry Brain delivers profound insights into why the brain undermines our weight goals and transforms these insights into practical guidelines for eating well and staying slim. Along the way, it explores how the human brain works, revealing how this mysterious organ makes us who we are.
The Wim Hof Method: Own Your Mind, Master Your Biology, and Activate Your Full Human Potential
Wim Hof - 2020
You can overcome disease, improve your mental health and physical performance, and even control your physiology so you can thrive in freezing temperatures.” With The Wim Hof Method, this trailblazer of human potential shares a method that anyone can use—not just extreme athletes or spiritual masters—to supercharge your capacity for strength, health, and happiness.Wim Hof has become a modern legend for his astounding achievements, such as withstanding extreme temperatures, breaking world records, and running barefoot marathons over deserts and ice fields. In his gripping and passionate style, Hof shares the story of how he developed his method, along with testimonials and new insights from the university research studies on its amazing results. With guidance suited for any reader—young or old, sick or healthy—you’ll learn how to harness three key elements of Cold, Breathing, and Mindset to take charge of your own mind and metabolism.Yet the most important result of Hof’s method goes beyond improved health or performance—it is a path for reconnecting with your spiritual nature. “With these practices, you awaken to your inner source of power and fulfillment,” he says. “You find you can control your destiny.”
Bob Greene's Total Body Makeover
Bob Greene - 2005
Kick-start your metabolism into high gear with Bob Greene's revolutionary new exercise and health program!
The Metabolic Storm: The Science of Your Metabolism and Why It's Making You FAT and possibly INFERTILE
Emily Cooper - 2013
It’s a book about the pure science behind why diets don’t work for the majority of people. Forget everything you have ever heard about dieting and being overweight! The Metabolic Storm addresses the science that obliterates those myths about diets and weight gain.As a doctor board certified in Obesity Medicine, Family Medicine, and Sports Medicine, Emily Cooper sees hundreds of patients who attempt every conceivable diet and spend a huge amount of time and effort exercising, yet find that their excess weight doesn’t stay off and their overall health doesn’t improve long-term. The Metabolic Storm is the result of Dr. Cooper’s 25 years of working with those patients and researching the existing science about metabolism. Cooper wants readers to understand that while everyone’s metabolism is slightly different, if you face weight issues, you might simply have been “dealt a bad hand” metabolically. It’s not your fault that you can’t lose weight or keep it off.The Metabolic Storm explains why weight and metabolic issues are not the result of laziness, lack of commitment, or absence of willpower. It introduces the breakthroughs and answers discovered, but never properly disseminated, through more than 100 years of scientific research. Once you understand the intricate systems of metabolism and hormones, you will never want to diet again. And from there begins the journey of letting go of the guilt and shame too often associated with weight issues.
The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You
Sylvia Tara - 2016
In fact, your body is actually endowed with many self-defense measures to hold on to fat. For example, fat can use stem cells to regenerate; increase our appetite if it feels threatened; and use bacteria, genetics, and viruses to expand itself. The secret to losing twenty pounds? You have to work with your fat, not against it. Tara explains how your fat influences your appetite and willpower, how it defends itself when attacked, and why it grows back so quickly. The Secret Life of Fat brings cutting-edge research together with historical perspectives to reveal fat’s true identity: an endocrine organ that, in the right amount, is critical to our health. Fat triggers puberty, enables our reproductive and immune systems, and even affects brain size.Although we spend $60 billion annually fighting fat, our efforts are often misinformed and misdirected. Tara expertly illustrates the complex role that genetics, hormones, diet, exercise, and history play in our weight, and The Secret Life of Fat sets you on the path to beat the bulge once and for all.
What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength
Scott Carney - 2017
Our ancestors crossed the Alps in animal skins and colonized the New World in loin cloths. They evaded predators and built civilizations with just their raw brainpower and inner grit. But things have changed and now comfort is king. Today we live in the thrall of constant climate control and exercise only when our office schedules permit. The technologies that we use to make us comfortable are so all-encompassing that they sever the biological link to a changing environment. Now we hate the cold and the heat. We suffer from autoimmune diseases. And many of us are chronically overweight. Most of us don't even realize that natural variation—sweating and shivering—is actually good for us. What Doesn't Kill Us uncovers how just about anyone can reclaim a measure of our species' evolutionary strength by tapping into the things that feel uncomfortable. When we slightly reimagine how our body fits into the world, we can condition ourselves to find resilience in unfamiliar environments. The feeling that something is missing from our daily routines is growing and has spawned a movement. Every year, millions of people forgo traditional gyms and push the limits of human endurance by doing boot camp style workouts in raw conditions. These extreme athletes train in CrossFit boxes, compete in Tough Mudders and challenge themselves in Spartan races. They are connecting with their environment and, whether they realize it or not, are changing their bodies. No one exemplifies this better than Dutch fitness guru Wim Hof, whose remarkable ability to control his body temperature in extreme cold has sparked a whirlwind of scientific study. Because of him, scientists in the United States and Europe are just beginning to understand how cold adaptation might help combat autoimmune diseases and chronic pains and, in some cases, even reverse diabetes. Award winning investigative journalist, Scott Carney dives into the fundamental philosophy at the root of this movement in three interlocking narratives. His own journey culminates in a record bending 28-hour climb up to the snowy peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro wearing nothing but a pair of running shorts and sneakers.
Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You
Jenara Nerenberg - 2020
Being a journalist, she dove into the research and uncovered neurodiversity—a framework that moves away from pathologizing “abnormal” versus “normal” brains and instead recognizes the vast diversity of our mental makeups. When it comes to women, sensory processing differences are often overlooked, masked, or mistaken for something else entirely. Between a flawed system that focuses on diagnosing younger, male populations, and the fact that girls are conditioned from a young age to blend in and conform to gender expectations, women often don’t learn about their neurological differences until they are adults, if at all. As a result, potentially millions live with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergences, and the misidentification leads to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and shame. Meanwhile, we all miss out on the gifts their neurodivergent minds have to offer.Divergent Mind is a long-overdue, much-needed answer for women who have a deep sense that they are “different.” Sharing real stories from women with high sensitivity, ADHD, autism, misophonia, dyslexia, SPD and more, Nerenberg explores how these brain variances present differently in women and dispels widely-held misconceptions (for example, it’s not that autistic people lack sensitivity and empathy, they have an overwhelming excess of it).Nerenberg also offers us a path forward, describing practical changes in how we communicate, how we design our surroundings, and how we can better support divergent minds. When we allow our wide variety of brain makeups to flourish, we create a better tomorrow for us all.
The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits
Judson Brewer - 2017
. . on addiction.”—Ezra Klein, New York Times.“Accessible and enjoyable. The Craving Mind brilliantly combines the latest science with universal real-life experiences—from falling in love to spending too much time with our phones.”—Arianna Huffington We are all vulnerable to addiction. Whether it’s a compulsion to constantly check social media, binge eating, smoking, excessive drinking, or any other behaviors, we may find ourselves uncontrollably repeating. Why are bad habits so hard to overcome? Is there a key to conquering the cravings we know are unhealthy for us? This book provides groundbreaking answers to the most important questions about addiction. Dr. Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has studied the science of addictions for twenty years, reveals how we can tap into the very processes that encourage addictive behaviors in order to step out of them. He describes the mechanisms of habit and addiction formation, then explains how the practice of mindfulness can interrupt these habits. Weaving together patient stories, his own experience with mindfulness practice, and current scientific findings from his own lab and others, Dr. Brewer offers a path for moving beyond our cravings, reducing stress, and ultimately living a fuller life.
Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life
Sari Solden - 1995
This book includes a chapter on friendship for women with ADHD.
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
Steve Silberman - 2015
Along the way, he reveals the untold story of Hans Asperger, the father of Asperger’s syndrome, whose “little professors” were targeted by the darkest social-engineering experiment in human history; exposes the covert campaign by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner to suppress knowledge of the autism spectrum for fifty years; and casts light on the growing movement of "neurodiversity" activists seeking respect, support, technological innovation, accommodations in the workplace and in education, and the right to self-determination for those with cognitive differences.