Book picks similar to
Changing Normal: How I Helped My Husband Beat Cancer by Marilu Henner
non-fiction
health
nonfiction
memoir
Prozac Nation
Elizabeth Wurtzel - 1994
A collective cry for help from a generation who have come of age entrenched in the culture of divorce, economic instability, and AIDS, here is the intensely personal story of a young girl full of promise, whose mood swings have risen and fallen like the lines of a sad ballad.
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
Elisabeth Tova Bailey - 2010
While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world. Intrigued by the snail’s molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer, providing a candid and engaging look into the curious life of this underappreciated small animal. Told with wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence and provides an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.
A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives
Kelly Brogan - 2016
It is a symptom.Recent years have seen a shocking increase in antidepressant use the world over, with 1 in 4 women starting their day with medication. These drugs have steadily become the panacea for everything from grief, irritability, panic attacks, to insomnia, PMS, and stress. But the truth is, what women really need can’t be found at a pharmacy.According to Dr. Kelly Brogan, antidepressants not only overpromise and underdeliver, but their use may permanently disable the body’s self-healing potential. We need a new paradigm: The best way to heal the mind is to heal the whole body.In this groundbreaking, science-based and holistic approach, Dr. Brogan shatters the mythology conventional medicine has built around the causes and treatment of depression. Based on her expert interpretation of published medical findings, combined with years of experience from her clinical practice, Dr. Brogan illuminates the true cause of depression: it is not simply a chemical imbalance, but a lifestyle crisis that demands a reset. It is a signal that the interconnected systems in the body are out of balance – from blood sugar, to gut health, to thyroid function– and inflammation is at the root.A Mind of Your Own offers an achievable, step-by-step 30-day action plan—including powerful dietary interventions, targeted nutrient support, detoxification, sleep, and stress reframing techniques—women can use to heal their bodies, alleviate inflammation, and feel like themselves again without a single prescription.Bold, brave, and revolutionary, A Mind of Your Own takes readers on a journey of self-empowerment for radical transformation that goes far beyond symptom relief.
The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
Jennifer Worth - 2002
The colorful characters she meets while delivering babies all over London--from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lives to the woman with twenty-four children who can't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city's seedier side--illuminate a fascinating time in history. Beautifully written and utterly moving, The Midwife will touch the hearts of anyone who is, and everyone who has, a mother.
Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers
David Perlmutter - 2013
Perlmutter, the devastating truth about the effects of wheat, sugar, and carbs on the brain, and a 4-week plan to achieve optimum health.In Grain Brain, renowned neurologist David Perlmutter, MD, blows the lid off a finding that's been buried in medical literature for far too long: carbs are destroying your brain. Even so-called healthy carbs like whole grains can cause dementia, ADHD, anxiety, chronic headaches, depression, decreased libido, and much more. Groundbreaking and timely, Grain Brain shows that the fate of your brain is not in your genes, it's in the food you eat. Dr. Perlmutter explains what happens when your brain encounters common ingredients in fruit bowls and bread, how statins may be erasing your memory, why a diet high in "good fats" is ideal, and how to spur the growth of new brain cells at any age. And his revolutionary 4-week plan will show you how to keep your brain healthy and sharp while dramatically reducing your risk for debilitating neurological disease -- without drugs. Featuring a blend of cutting-edge research, real-life stories of transformation, and accessible, practical advice, Grain Brain teaches you how to take control of your "smart genes," regain wellness, and enjoy lifelong health and vitality.
SEAL Survival Guide: Active Shooter and Survival Medicine Excerpt
Cade Courtley - 2016
Think and act like a Navy SEAL, and you can survive anything. The world is a dangerous place. You can live scared—or be prepared. “We never thought it would happen to us.” It's difficult to imagine encountering an active shooter situation, but the reality is that modern life is unpredictable and dangerous. Don’t live in fear or rely on luck. Learn the SEAL mindset: Be prepared, feel confident, and know exactly how to escape a life-threatening situation such as a mass shooting. Former Navy SEAL and preeminent American survivalist Cade Courtley delivers step-by-step instructions anyone can master in the illustrated, user-friendly SEAL Survival Guide. Don’t be taken by surprise. Fight back, protect yourself, and beat the odds. Check out this excerpt and then purchase the essential manual no one in the twenty-first century should be without.
The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis: How to Improve Bone Strength and Reduce Your Fracture Risk
R. Keith Mccormick - 2009
While medication can sometimes help, it won't fully address the underlying causes of your osteoporosis or osteopenia. To restore bone health, you'll need a targeted program combining the best bone-building strategies from traditional and holistic medicine. The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis distills these complex strategies into a whole-body plan you can begin today to dramatically improve your bone strength and overall vitality.This comprehensive guide includes information on:What to eat for stronger bonesChoosing bone-building supplements and osteoporosis medicationsFoods and medications that may be contributing to bone lossSigns and symptoms that can help you monitor your bone healthHow lab tests can help you personalize your plan
Emotional Female
Yumiko Kadota - 2021
A self-confessed workaholic, she regularly put 'knife before life', knowing it was all going to be worth it because it would lead to her longed-for career.But if the punishing hours in surgery weren't hard enough, she also faced challenges as a young female surgeon navigating a male-dominated specialty. She was regularly left to carry out complex procedures without senior surgeons' oversight; she was called all sorts of things, from 'emotional' to 'too confident'; and she was expected to work a relentless on-call roster - sometimes seventy hours a week or more - to prove herself.Eventually it was too much and Yumiko quit.Emotional Female is her account of what it was like to train in the Australian public hospital system, and what made her walk away.Yumiko Kadota is a voice for her generation when it comes to burnout and finding the resilience to rebuild after suffering a physical, emotional and existential breakdown. This is a brave, honest and unflinching work from a major new talent.
Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts (Kindle Single)
Sunetra Gupta - 2013
As recently as 1918, a pandemic of influenza claimed over 50 million lives worldwide. The advent of drugs and vaccines led to an era of hope when we thought our battles with infectious disease were won, but our optimism has been eroded by the recognition that many pathogens have the capacity to transform themselves and escape our efforts to eradicate them. Are we now facing an inevitable repeat of a calamity such as the 1918 influenza pandemic or the Black Death? Can we anticipate and thwart such an event, or are we wilfully creating the conditions that would promote the emergence of new and highly virulent human infectious disease?Sunetra Gupta is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford specialising in infectious diseases. She holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of London. She has been awarded the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific research. She is also a novelist whose books have been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Southern Arts Literature Prize, shortlisted for the Crossword Award, and longlisted for the DSC and Orange Prizes.
Memoirs of a Former Fatty: How one girl went from fat to fit
Gemma Reucroft - 2016
I was also so chronically unfit that I couldn’t manage more than one flight of stairs without getting seriously out of breath. I was eating my way to a whole host of health problems and my knees were knackered. Now nearly four years on, I am over 80lbs lighter and a whole heck of a lot fitter. I’m now training to be a Personal Trainer so that I can help other people like me. This is why I have written this book. Along the way I learned a lot, and came up with some ideas of my own about how and why people lose weight….or don’t. This is my story.
Family Medical History: Unknown/Adopted: How One Inquiry Led to Many Unexpected Discoveries
Nancy Kacirek Feldman - 2014
They would ask her about her family’s health history, and she would hear the doctor’s familiar sigh after she answered, “I don’t know, I’m adopted.”Being perfectly happy with the loving family she had, Feldman never took an interest in finding her biological parents until diagnosed with a disease that she passed on to her son. Suddenly, Nancy’s lack of family history was affecting someone else.Writing to the Nebraska Children’s Home Society for help, the adoption agency assigned Nancy’s case to Rebecca Crofoot. This began a 17-year journey between the two women who were determined to find information about a family that might not know, or want to know, Nancy existed.Family Medical History: Unknown/Adopted is a heart-warming story of personal, medical, genealogical and emotional discovery.
Miracle Mindset: A Mother, Her Son, and Life's Hardest Lessons
J.J. Virgin - 2017
She’ll share the lessons she learned that can help you create your own resilient mindset.In 2012, JJ Virgin was in a hospital room next to her sixteen-year-old son who was struck by a hit-and-run driver and left for dead. She was told by doctors that he wouldn’t last through the night and to let him go. With every reason to give up, JJ chose instead to invest her energy into the hope that her son would not just survive, but thrive. In Miracle Mindset, she shares the lessons that gave her the courage to overcome the worst moment of her life. During this difficult time, she learned valuable personal lessons that helped her rebuild her life and find success and purpose in herself, her work, and teach her sons and community how to face their own obstacles and trials. Lessons like “Don’t Wish It Were Easier, Make Yourself Stronger” and “Your Limitations will Become Your Life” will lead you to your own personal power and purpose, even when the deck seems stacked against you. With true stories from her life, her clients, and other well-known thought leaders, she can help you transform your mindset and your daily habits to endure the difficult battles that life sends your way. Insightful, personal, and completely relatable, Miracle Mindset proves that miracles are possible when you show up, remain positive, and do the work.
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
Elyn R. Saks - 2007
She has managed to achieve this in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a "grave" prognosis—and suffering the effects of her illness throughout her life.Saks was only eight, and living an otherwise idyllic childhood in sunny 1960s Miami, when her first symptoms appeared in the form of obsessions and night terrors. But it was not until she reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital.Saks would later attend Yale Law School where one night, during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken to the emergency room, force-fed antipsychotic medication, and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed. She spent the next five months in a psychiatric ward.So began Saks's long war with her own internal demons and the equally powerful forces of stigma. Today she is a chaired professor of law who researches and writes about the rights of the mentally ill. She is married to a wonderful man.In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks discusses frankly and movingly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, and the voices in her head insisting she do terrible things, as well as the many obstacles she overcame to become the woman she is today. It is destined to become a classic in the genre.
Crazy Stupid Money (Kindle Single)
Rachel Shukert - 2015
On social media and beyond, we dish on all aspects of our personal lives: our relationships, our children, our sex lives, our health. But there's one thing that no one ever mentions-- our money. How much do we actually have? Who makes it? And how does that make us feel about ourselves? These are the uncomfortable questions that Rachel Shukert managed to avoid for years, buffered from the gnawing anxiety of her patched-together freelance living by the comfortable salary of her loving and successful husband. But when a sudden change in circumstances forced her to step up and start supporting her family for the first time, she had to face the depth of her phobias about money for the first time, and truth about the damage they had caused to her relationship. It wasn't pretty. Plates were thrown. Police were called. Accountants were vomited on -- or at least, near. And a marriage was pushed to the breaking point by the curious power that money -- or the lack of it -- has in our lives. Hilarious, painful, and searingly honest, CRAZY STUPID MONEY tells the hard truth about all the things that married people (not to mention not-quite-successful creative freelancers) never talk about but desperately wish someone would. The story of how one couple broke themselves down and struggled to come back together again, it's an unflinching look at what we talk about when we DON'T talk about money -- and how alone it makes us feel.RACHEL SHUKERT is a television writer living in Los Angeles. She is the author of five books, including the memoir EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE GREAT and the Kindle Single LET ME BE YOUR STAR. You can follow her on Twitter At @RachelShukertCover Design by Adil Dara
The Nurse's Story
Carol Gino - 1983
Of the power of Love and of tragedy redeemed by compassion. Here is a book that will shatter forever your casual assumptions about medicine, doctors, and especially about nurses.What can a nurse do for a ten-year old girl who is burned over most of her body, for whom all consciousness is pain? She tries to comfort her, to help release her from her torment, while a zealous doctor tries to play God and repeatedly forces her back to life…When a doctor can do nothing more for a terminal patient, what can the nurse do for his family?After a particularly difficult day, when a favorite patient dies, how does she leave her work behind her and convince her own healthy children and husband of her love for them?“Carol Gino has written a wonderfully moving book. She tells The Nurse’s Story with just the right blend of emotion, compassion and wisdom.” Harold S Kushner, author of “When Bad Things Happen To Good People”“A shattering, exhilarating book. A tribute to human dignity and courage.” Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather“Gritty and honest. It has a fierce compassion.” Martha Lear, author of Heart Sounds.“Riveting, wrenching. Few nurse’s have experienced the range of cases this dedicate nurse describes: cancer, burn unit, emergency room, birth, brain damage…The writer is a vigorous, optimistic, caring woman. And she exudes frankness…” Los Angeles Times