Book picks similar to
When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests by Leana Wen
non-fiction
medical
medicine
nonfiction
Prescription for Nutritional Healing: A Practical A-to-Z Reference to Drug-Free Remedies Using Vitamins, Minerals, Herbs & Food Supplements
Phyllis A. Balch - 1990
With more than five million copies sold, Prescription for Nutritional Healing is the most trusted, comprehensive source on dietary supplements, vitamins, minerals, and herbs. A pioneer in the field of nutritional healing, Phyllis Balch passionately and meticulously researched and compiled this groundbreaking book. Now, a generation later, her message has more relevance than ever: consume fresh foods, avoid processed foods and those high in saturated fat, and optimize your intake of essential nutrients with the right supplements. Today's well-stocked vitamin and natural-health stores can be confusing, and people need Balch's clear, concise, landmark guide. To help them make sense of the mind-numbing array of choices that are available, readers of Prescription for Nutritional Healing will: - learn the basics of good nutrition; - find out how to balance vitamins and minerals so that the body can properly absorb both; - determine how best to treat 250 problems-from abscesses to wrinkles-using herbs, nutrition, and supplements; and - get the facts on other complementary therapies, like ayurveda, biofeedback, chiropractic care, and more. Prescription for Nutritional Healing is an essential resource for every health-minded consumer.
Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It's So Hard to Stop
Anna Lembke - 2016
In the United States alone, 16,000 people die each year as a result of prescription opioid overdose. But perhaps the most frightening aspect of the prescription drug epidemic is that it’s built on well-meaning doctors treating patients with real problems.In Drug Dealer, MD, Dr. Anna Lembke uncovers the unseen forces driving opioid addiction nationwide. Combining case studies from her own practice with vital statistics drawn from public policy, cultural anthropology, and neuroscience, she explores the complex relationship between doctors and patients, the science of addiction, and the barriers to successfully addressing drug dependence and addiction. Even when addiction is recognized by doctors and their patients, she argues, many doctors don’t know how to treat it, connections to treatment are lacking, and insurance companies won’t pay for rehab. Full of extensive interviews—with health care providers, pharmacists, social workers, hospital administrators, insurance company executives, journalists, economists, advocates, and patients and their families— Drug Dealer, MD, is for anyone whose life has been touched in some way by addiction to prescription drugs. Dr. Lembke gives voice to the millions of Americans struggling with prescription drugs while singling out the real culprits behind the rise in opioid addiction: cultural narratives that promote pills as quick fixes, pharmaceutical corporations in cahoots with organized medicine, and a new medical bureaucracy focused on the bottom line that favors pills, procedures, and patient satisfaction over wellness. Dr. Lembke concludes that the prescription drug epidemic is a symptom of a faltering health care system, the solution for which lies in rethinking how health care is delivered.
The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age
Steven R. Gundry - 2019
But aging does not have to mean decline. World-renowned surgeon Dr. Steven Gundry has been treating mature patients for most of his career. He knows that everyone thinks they want to live forever, until they hit middle age and witness the suffering of their parents and even their peers. So how do we solve the paradox of wanting to live to a ripe old age—but enjoy the benefits of youth?This groundbreaking book holds the answer. Working with thousands of patients, Dr. Gundry has discovered that the “diseases of aging” we most fear are not simply a function of age; rather, they are a byproduct of the way we have lived over the decades. In The Longevity Paradox, he maps out a new approach to aging well—one that is based on supporting the health of the “oldest” parts of us: the microorganisms that live within our bodies.Our gut bugs—the bacteria that make up the microbiome—largely determine our health over the years. From diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s to common ailments like arthritis to our weight and the appearance of our skin, these bugs are in the driver’s seat, controlling our quality of life as we age.The good news is, it’s never too late to support these microbes and give them what they need to help them—and you—thrive. In The Longevity Paradox, Dr. Gundry outlines a nutrition and lifestyle plan to support gut health and live well for decades to come. A progressive take on the new science of aging, The Longevity Paradox offers an action plan to prevent and reverse disease as well as simple hacks to help anyone look and feel younger and more vital.
Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution: The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars
Richard K. Bernstein - 1997
BERNSTEIN'S DIABETES SOLUTION is a unique resource that covers both adult- and childhood-onset diabetes, explains step-by-step how to normalize blood sugar levels and prevent or reverse complications, and offers detailed guidelines for establishing a treatment plan. Readers will find fifty gourmet recipes, in addition to a comprehensive discussion of diet, obesity, and new drugs to curb carbohydrate craving and overeating.Now in its fourth edition, the book presents up-to-the-minute information on insulin resistance, blood-testing devices, measuring blood sugar, new types of insulin, gastroparesis and other issues, as well as updated diet guidelines. DR. BERNSTEIN'S DIABETES SOLUTION is the one book every diabetic must own.
The Brain Fog Fix: Reclaim Your Focus, Memory, and Joy in Just 3 Weeks
Mike Dow - 2015
Some people call it “ADHD,” “scatter brain,” or “brain fog.” And some people simply say they “just don’t feel like themselves”—and haven’t for a long time. People are thinking and feeling worse than ever. Why? Because our brains are not getting the support they need to produce the essential brain chemicals that keep us energized, calm, focused, and inspired. In fact, if you look at the way that most of us live, it’s almost as though we had chosen a lifestyle deliberately intended to undermine our brain chemistry. Fortunately, there is a solution. The Brain Fog Fix is a three-week program designed to help you naturally restore three of your brain’s most crucial chemicals: serotonin, dopamine, and cortisol. Rebalancing these three brain chemicals will, in turn, enable the rest of your brain’s chemistry to reach optimal levels. You will find yourself thinking more clearly, remembering more accurately, learning more quickly, and unleashing the floodgates of your creativity. You will also find yourself feeling more optimistic, calm, energized, connected, and inspired. The good news is that this is easier than you think. Instead of trying to ambitiously overhaul one aspect of your life entirely with some difficult-to-maintain resolution, begin by making small and achievable changes in many different areas of your life. “If I’ve learned one thing from the thousands of people I’ve treated, it’s that you have to take the whole person into account if you want to think and feel better.” —Dr. Mike Dow
Follow Your Gut: How the Ecosystem in Your Gut Determines Your Health, Mood, and More
Rob Knight - 2014
Understand how to use groundbreaking science to improve your health, mood, and more.In just the last few years, scientists have shown how the microscopic ecosystem within our bodies—particularly within our intestines—has an astonishing impact on our lives. Pioneering scientist Rob Knight and award-winning science journalist Brendan Buhler explain—with humor and witty metaphors—why these new findings matters to everyone.You are mostly not you. The human gut is host to trillions of microbes, and evidence shows that small changes in these microbes present (altered by antibiotics, diet, geographic region, and so on) may affect weight, likelihood of disease, and even psychological factors like risk-taking behavior. The evidence for their influence is astonishing. Rob Knight is one of the key figures driving forward this new science. His work demonstrates the startling connection between the presence of certain harmless bacteria and the health benefits we all seek for ourselves and our children.In Follow Your Gut, Knight pairs with Brendan Buhler, an award-winning science writer, to explore the previously unseen world inside our bodies. With a practical eye toward deeper knowledge and better decisions, they lead a detailed tour of our microbiome as well as an exploration of the known effects of antibiotics, probiotics, diet choices, birth method, and access to livestock on our children's lifelong health. Ultimately, this pioneering book explains how to learn about your own micro biome and take steps toward understanding and improving your health, using the latest research as a guide.
When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress
Gabor Maté - 2003
With great compassion and erudition, Gabor Maté demystifies medical science and, as he did in Scattered Minds, invites us all to be our own health advocates.
Lights and Sirens
Kevin Grange - 2015
Blending months of classroom instruction with ER rotations and a grueling field internship with the Los Angeles Fire Department, UCLA’s paramedic program is like a mix of boot camp and med school. It would turn out to be the hardest thing Grange had ever done—but also the most transformational and inspiring.An in-depth look at the trials and tragedies that paramedic students experience daily, Lights and Sirens is ultimately about the best part of humanity—people working together to help save a human life.
The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Astonishing Dialogue Taking Place in Our Bodies Impacts Health, Weight, and Mood
Emeran Mayer - 2015
While the dialogue between the gut and the brain has been recognized by ancient healing traditions, including Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, Western medicine has failed to appreciate the complexity of how the brain, gut, and more recently, the microbiome—the microorganisms that live inside us—communicate with one another. In The Mind-Gut Connection, Dr. Emeran Mayer, executive director of the UCLA Center for Neurobiology of Stress, offers a revolutionary look at this developing science, teaching us how to harness the power of the mind-gut connection to take charge of our health.The Mind-Gut Connection shows how to keep the brain-gut communication clear and balanced to:• heal the gut by focusing on a plant-based diet• balance the microbiome by consuming fermented foods and probiotics, fasting, and cutting out sugar and processed foods• promote weight loss by detoxifying and creating healthy digestion and maximum nutrient absorption• boost immunity and prevent the onset of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s andAlzheimer’s• generate a happier mindset and reduce fatigue, moodiness, anxiety, and depression• prevent and heal GI disorders such as leaky gut syndrome, food sensitivities and allergies, and IBS, as well as digestive discomfort such as heartburn and bloating• and much more.
In Stitches
Anthony Youn - 2011
Tony Youn grew up one of two Asian-American kids in a small town where diversity was uncommon. Too tall and too thin, he wore thick Coke-bottle glasses, braces, Hannibal Lecter headgear, and had a protruding jaw that one day began to grow, expanding to an unthinkable, monstrous size. After high school graduation, while other seniors partied at the beach or explored Europe, Youn lay strapped in an oral surgeon’s chair where he underwent a life-changing jaw reconstruction. Ironically, it was this brutal makeover that led him to his life’s calling, and he continued on to endure the four horrific, hilarious, sex-starved, and tension-filled years that eventually earned him an M.D. Offering a window into a side of medicine that most people never see, Youn shares his bumpy journey from a shy, skinny, awkward nerd into a renowned and successful plastic surgeon.Now, Youn is the media’s go-to plastic surgeon. He appears regularly on The Rachael Ray Show, and his blog, Celebrity Cosmetic Surgery, is widely read and the most popular blog by a plastic surgeon in the country. But it was a long road to success, and In Stitches recounts Dr. Youn’s misfit adolescence and his four tumultuous years in medical school with striking wit, heart, and humility.For anyone who has ever experienced the awkward teenage years, who has struggled to find his or her way in college, who has been worried that their “calling” would never come, who wants to believe that their doctor really cares, or is just ready for a read that will make you laugh and cry at the same time, this book is for you.
The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life
Katy Butler - 2019
Packed with extraordinarily helpful insights and inspiring true stories, award-winning journalist and prominent end-of-life speaker Katy Butler shows how to thrive in later life (even when coping with a chronic medical condition), how to get the best from our health system, and how to make your own “good death” more likely. This handbook of step by step preparations—practical, communal, physical, and sometimes spiritual—will help you make the most of your remaining time, be it decades, years, or months. Butler explains how to successfully age in place, why to pick a younger doctor and how to have an honest conversation with her, when not to call 911, and how to make your death a sacred rite of passage rather than a medical event. This down-to-earth manual for living, aging, and dying with meaning and even joy is based on Butler’s own experience caring for aging parents, as well as hundreds of interviews with people who have successfully navigated a fragmented health system and helped their loved ones have good deaths. It also draws on interviews with nationally recognized experts in family medicine, palliative care, geriatrics, oncology, hospice, and other medical specialties. Inspired by the medieval death manual Ars Moriendi, or the Art of Dying, The Art of Dying Well is the definitive update for our modern age, and illuminates the path to a better end of life.
Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients
Ben Goldacre - 2012
We like to imagine that it’s based on evidence and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature surrounding a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by industry. We like to imagine that regulators let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve hopeless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients.All these problems have been protected from public scrutiny because they’re too complex to capture in a sound bite. But Dr. Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct on a global scale affects us. In his own words, “the tricks and distortions documented in these pages are beautiful, intricate, and fascinating in their details.” With Goldacre’s characteristic flair and a forensic attention to detail, Bad Pharma reveals a shockingly broken system and calls for something to be done. This is the pharmaceutical industry as it has never been seen before.
Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life
Jessica Nutik Zitter - 2017
She elected to specialize in critical care--to become an ICU physician--and imagined herself swooping in to rescue patients from the brink of death. But then during her first code she found herself cracking the ribs of a patient so old and frail it was unimaginable he would ever come back to life. She began to question her choice. Extreme Measures charts Zitter's journey from wanting to be one kind of hero to becoming another--a doctor who prioritizes the patient's values and preferences in an environment where the default choice is the extreme use of technology. In our current medical culture, the old and the ill are put on what she terms the End-of-Life Conveyor belt. They are intubated, catheterized, and even shelved away in care facilities to suffer their final days alone, confused, and often in pain. In her work Zitter has learned what patients fear more than death itself: the prospect of dying badly. She builds bridges between patients and caregivers, formulates plans to allay patients' pain and anxiety, and enlists the support of loved ones so that life can end well, even beautifully.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Harriet A. Washington - 2007
Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions.The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.
Brain Wash: Detox Your Mind for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness
David Perlmutter - 2020
David Perlmutter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grain Brain, and Dr. Austin Perlmutter, his son, explore how modern culture threatens to rewire our brains and damage our health, offering a practical plan for healing. Contemporary life provides us with infinite opportunities, along with endless temptations. We can eat whatever we want, whenever we want. We can immerse ourselves in the vast, enticing world of digital media. We can buy goods and services for rapid delivery with our fingertips or voice commands. But living in this 24/7 hyper-reality poses serious risks to our physical and mental states, our connections to others, and even to the world at large. Brain Wash builds from a simple premise: Our brains are being gravely manipulated, resulting in behaviors that leave us more lonely, anxious, depressed, distrustful, illness-prone, and overweight than ever before. Based on the latest science, the book identifies the mental hijacking that undermines each and every one of us, and presents the tools necessary to think more clearly, make better decisions, strengthen bonds with others, and develop healthier habits. Featuring a 10-day bootcamp program, including a meal plan and 40 delicious original recipes, Brain Wash is the key to cultivating a more purposeful and fulfilling life.