Book picks similar to
Biohack Your Brain: How to Boost Cognitive Health, Performance Power by Kristen Willeumier
health
non-fiction
nonfiction
science
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
Robert M. Sapolsky - 1993
Sapolsky's acclaimed and successful Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers features new chapters on how stress affects sleep and addiction, as well as new insights into anxiety and personality disorder and the impact of spirituality on managing stress.As Sapolsky explains, most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about whether we have leprosy or malaria. Instead, the diseases we fear--and the ones that plague us now--are illnesses brought on by the slow accumulation of damage, such as heart disease and cancer. When we worry or experience stress, our body turns on the same physiological responses that an animal's does, but we do not resolve conflict in the same way--through fighting or fleeing. Over time, this activation of a stress response makes us sick.
The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression
Edward Bullmore - 2018
But treatment for it has not changed much in the last three decades. In the world of psychiatry, time has apparently stood still... until now. In this game-changing book, University of Cambridge Professor Edward Bullmore reveals the breakthrough new science on the link between depression and inflammation of the body and brain. He explains how and why we now know that mental disorders can have their root cause in the immune system, and outlines a future revolution in which treatments could be specifically targeted to break the vicious cycle of stress, inflammation and depression. The Inflamed Mind goes far beyond the clinic and the lab, representing a whole new way of looking at how mind, brain and body all work together in a sometimes misguided effort to help us survive in a hostile world. It offers insights into the story of Western medicine, how we have got it wrong as well as right in the past, and how we could start getting to grips with depression and other mental disorders much more effectively in the future.
Smarter Tomorrow: How 15 Minutes of Neurohacking a Day Can Help You Work Better, Think Faster, and Get More Done
Elizabeth R. Ricker - 2021
You'll encounter Olympic athletes, a game show contestant, a memory marvel, a famous CEO, and scientists galore. From Ricker’s decade-long quest, you will learn:● The brain-based reason so many self-improvement projects fail . . . But how a little-known secret of Nobel Prize winning scientists could finally unlock success● Which four abilities—both cognitive and emotional—can predict success in work and relationships . . . and a new system for improving all four● Which seven research-tested tools can supercharge mental performance. They range from low-tech (a surprising new mindset) to downright futuristic (an electrical device for at-home brain stimulation) Best of all, you will learn to upgrade your brain with Ricker’s 20 customizable self-experiments and a sample, 12-week schedule. Ricker distills insights from dozens of interviews and hundreds of research studies from around the world. She tests almost everything on herself, whether it’s nicotine, video games, meditation, or a little-known beverage from the Pacific islands. Some experiments fail hilariously—but others transform her cognition. She is able to sharpen her memory, increase her attention span, boost her mood, and clear her brain fog. By following Ricker’s system, you’ll uncover your own boosts to mental performance, too. Join a growing, global movement of neurohackers revolutionizing their careers and relationships. Let this book change 15 minutes of your day, and it may just change the rest of your life!
Move Your DNA Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement
Katy Bowman - 2014
It examines the differences between the movements in a typical hunter - gatherer's life and the movements in our own. It shows the many problems with using exercise like movement vitamins instead of addressing the deeper issue of a poor movement diet. Bet of all, Move Your DNA contains the corrective exercises, habit modifications, and simple lifestyle changes we need to make in order to free ourselves from disease and discover our naturally healthy, reflex driven selves. From couch potatoes to professional athletes, new parents to seniors, readers will love Katy's humorous, passionate, and above all science based guide to restoring your body and reclaiming your life.
Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight
Linda Bacon - 2014
That much is true—but the epidemic is NOT obesity. The real crisis lies in the toxic stigma placed on certain bodies and the impact of living with inequality—not the numbers on a scale. In a mad dash to shrink our bodies, many of us get so caught up in searching for the perfect diet, exercise program, or surgical technique that we lose sight of our original goal: improved health and well-being. Popular methods for weight loss don’t get us there and lead many people to feel like failures when they can’t match unattainable body standards. It’s time for a cease-fire in the war against obesity.Dr. Linda Bacon and Dr. Lucy Aphramor’s Body Respect debunks common myths about weight, including the misconceptions that BMI can accurately measure health, that fatness necessarily leads to disease, and that dieting will improve health. They also help make sense of how poverty and oppression—such as racism, homophobia, and classism—affect life opportunity, self-worth, and even influence metabolism.Body insecurity is rampant, and it doesn’t have to be. It’s time to overcome our culture’s shame and distress about weight, to get real about inequalities and health, and to show every body respect.
In the Flo: Unlock Your Hormonal Advantage and Revolutionize Your Life
Alisa Vitti - 2020
It is essential to be aware of and take care of this rhythm, but it has been widely ignored by medical, nutrition and fitness research. So as women, we diet, we deprive, and we cram as much as possible into our day, striving to accomplish impossible to-do lists, and scheduling our lives based on a 24-hour time cycle, ignoring the intuitive time our bodies naturally keep: a monthly cycle with four hormonal phases that offer incredible advantages. In the FLO presents a revolutionary 4-week solution to manage your energy and time according to your female biochemistry. By working with each phase, you'll support your hormones, unlock peak creativity and performance, and avoid burnout. You'll know exactly when to eat certain foods, clear your social calendar, or ask for a raise—and you'll have the tools to do so, including:• Meal plans and recipes for each phase• Charts for phase-specific exercises, work tasks, and relationship activities• A daily planner that helps you align with your strengths in each phase• A biohacking toolkit for navigating period problems and hormonal birth controlAlisa Vitti, functional nutrition and women's hormone expert, bestselling author of WomanCode, and founder of modern hormone healthcare company FLOliving.com, has been teaching women how to reclaim their rhythm for nearly twenty years and has witnessed the incredible rewards it offers—including losing stubborn weight, regaining energy, clearing skin, and minimizing PMS.By getting In the FLO, you'll get more done with less effort, you'll feel better consistently throughout the month, and you'll enjoy the freedom that comes with living on your own time.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
John E. Sarno - 1991
Sarno saved me from a life of pain.” — Howard Stern The New York Times bestseller that has helped thousands leverage the mind-body connection to heal lower back pain and live pain free—without drugs, surgery, or physical therapy. Offering a surprising, noninvasive solution to an epidemic of pain, Dr. John E. Sarno’s research on TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) reveals that stress, anxiety and other psychological factors, not structural abnormalities, are the root cause of chronic pain. TMS develops as a result of repressed emotions which trigger tension in the body and deprive muscles and nerves of oxygen. The solution? Recognize the emotional roots of your TMS and sever the connection between mental and physical pain. With Dr. Sarno’s expert guidance you will learn:How the mind-body connection can permanently heal shoulder, neck, and lower back painHow accepting negative emotions like anger, anxiety, fear, or grief can reverse physical symptomsHow we condition ourselves to think back pain is inevitableWhy you should resume physical activity as soon as possibleSharing case histories and the results of his extensive, groundbreaking research, Dr. Sarno’s life-changing insights show readers how to banish back pain and reclaim their lives for good.
Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy
Francine Shapiro - 2012
When we are stuck, talk therapy often fails to produce the needed connections between the old emotional memory and a more grounded view of reality, and medications can have dire side effects and limited effectiveness.
In Getting Past Your Past, Francine Shapiro, who created EMDR (the “eye movement” therapy), opens the door to a scientifically proven mode of treatment used by thousands of clinicians worldwide. The book offers practical procedures that demystify the process and empower readers looking to break free from emotional roadblocks. Shapiro explains the brain science in layman’s terms and provides simple exercises that readers can do at home to achieve real change.
“I always came out of my EMDR therapist’s office reeling (in a good way); and the things I learnedhave stayed with me and enriched my conscious mind. It’s a powerful process. I recommend it.”—from The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon
The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains
Robert H. Lustig - 2017
Serotonin is the "contentment" neurotransmitter that tells our brains we don't need any more; yet its deficiency leads to depression. Ideally, both are in optimal supply. Yet dopamine evolved to overwhelm serotonin--because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they were constantly motivated--with the result that constant desire can chemically destroy our ability to feel happiness, while sending us down the slippery slope to addiction. In the last forty years, government legislation and subsidies have promoted ever-available temptation (sugar, drugs, social media, porn) combined with constant stress (work, home, money, Internet), with the end result of an unprecedented epidemic of addiction, anxiety, depression, and chronic disease. And with the advent of neuromarketing, corporate America has successfully imprisoned us in an endless loop of desire and consumption from which there is no obvious escape.With his customary wit and incisiveness, Lustig not only reveals the science that drives these states of mind, he points his finger directly at the corporations that helped create this mess, and the government actors who facilitated it, and he offers solutions we can all use in the pursuit of happiness, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Always fearless and provocative, Lustig marshals a call to action, with seminal implications for our health, our well-being, and our culture.
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
Lisa Feldman Barrett - 2016
Scientists have long supported this assumption by claiming that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology—ans this paradigm shift has far-reaching implications for us all.Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose theory of emotion is driving a deeper understanding of the mind and brain, and shedding new light on what it means to be human. Her research overturns the widely held belief that emotions are housed in different parts of the brain and are universally expressed and recognized. Instead, she has shown that emotion is constructed in the moment, by core systems that interact across the whole brain, aided by a lifetime of learning. This new theory means that you play a much greater role in your emotional life than you ever thought. Its repercussions are already shaking the foundations not only of psychology but also of medicine, the legal system, child-rearing, meditation, and even airport security.Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent? How Emotions Are Made answers these questions and many more, revealing the latest research and intriguing practical applications of the new science of emotion, mind, and brain.
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
Daniel Kahneman - 2021
Suppose that different food inspectors give different ratings to indistinguishable restaurants — or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to be handling the particular complaint. Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same inspector, or the same company official makes different decisions, depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical. In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Cass R. Sunstein, and Olivier Sibony show how noise contributes significantly to errors in all fields, including medicine, law, economic forecasting, police behavior, food safety, bail, security checks at airports, strategy, and personnel selection. And although noise can be found wherever people make judgments and decisions, individuals and organizations alike are commonly oblivious to the role of chance in their judgments and in their actions. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology and behavioral economics, and the same kind of diligent, insightful research that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise in judgment — and what we can do about it.
Nutrient Power: Heal Your Biochemistry and Heal Your Brain
William J. Walsh - 2012
Today's emphasis on psychiatric drugs will not stand the test of time. Recent advances in epigenetics and the molecular biology of the brain have provided a roadmap for the development of effective, natural, drug-free therapies that do not produce serious side effects. Psychiatric medications have served society well over the last fifty years, but the need for drug therapies will fade away as science advances. Nutrient Power presents a science-based nutrient therapy system that can help millions of people diagnosed with mental disorders. This approach recognizes that nutrient imbalances can alter brain levels of key neurotransmitters, disrupt gene expression of proteins and enzymes, and cripple the body's protection against environmental toxins. The author's database containing millions of chemical factors in blood, urine, and tissues has identified brain-changing nutrient imbalances in patients diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, behavior disorders, depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease. This book describes individualized nutrient therapy treatments that have produced thousands of reports of recovery. Walsh's approach is more scientific than the trial-and-error use of psychiatric drugs and is aimed at a true normalization of the brain. Depression, schizophrenia, and ADHD are umbrella terms that encompass disorders with widely differing brain chemistries and symptoms. Nutrient Power describes nutrient therapies tailored to specific types. Other book highlights include the Walsh Theory of Schizophrenia, a new way to look at autism, a promising new treatment for Alzheimer's, and recommendations for reducing crime and violence.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Bessel van der Kolk - 2014
Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Such experiences inevitably leave traces on minds, emotions, and even on biology. Sadly, trauma sufferers frequently pass on their stress to their partners and children. Renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring—specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neurofeedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score offers proven alternatives to drugs and talk therapy—and a way to reclaim lives.
Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting
Lisa Genova - 2021
You might even be worried that these lapses in memory could be an early sign of Alzheimer's or dementia. In reality, for the vast majority of us, these examples of forgetting are completely normal. Why? Because while memory is amazing, it is far from perfect. Our brains aren't designed to remember every name we hear, plan we make, or day we experience. Just because your memory sometimes fails doesn't mean it's broken or succumbing to disease. Forgetting is actually part of being human. In Remember, neuroscientist and acclaimed novelist Lisa Genova delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve them. You'll learn whether forgotten memories are temporarily inaccessible or erased forever and why some memories are built to exist for only a few seconds (like a passcode) while others can last a lifetime (your wedding day). You'll come to appreciate the clear distinction between normal forgetting (where you parked your car) and forgetting due to Alzheimer's (that you own a car). And you'll see how memory is profoundly impacted by meaning, emotion, sleep, stress, and context. Once you understand the language of memory and how it functions, its incredible strengths and maddening weaknesses, its natural vulnerabilities and potential superpowers, you can both vastly improve your ability to remember and feel less rattled when you inevitably forget. You can set educated expectations for your memory, and in doing so, create a better relationship with it. You don't have to fear it anymore. And that can be life-changing.
The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative
Florence Williams - 2017
Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.