Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love and Loss


Rachel Clarke - 2020
    Every day she tries to bring care and comfort to those reaching the end of their lives and to help make dying more bearable. Rachel's training was put to the test in 2017 when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing - even the best palliative care - can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you love. And yet, she argues, in a hospice there is more of what matters in life - more love, more strength, more kindness, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion - than you could ever imagine. For if there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, while we live as though we have all the time in the world. Dear Life is a book about the vital importance of human connection, by the doctor we would all want by our sides at a time of crisis. It is a love letter - to a father, to a profession, to life itself.

The End of Diabetes: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Diabetes


Joel Fuhrman - 2012
    In fact, most diabetics can get off medication and become 100 percent healthy in just a few simple steps. In The End of Diabetes, Dr. Joel Fuhrman shows how you can prevent and reverse diabetes and its related symptoms and lose weight in the process.The End of Diabetes is a radical idea wrapped in a simple plan: Eat Better, End Diabetes. While the established medical protocol aims to control diabetes by limiting your carbohydrate intake, monitoring glucose levels, and prescribing bottomless doses of medicine, Dr. Fuhrman believes this long-standing approach to fighting diabetes is wrong—and possibly fatal.Designed for anyone ready to enjoy a healthier and longer life, Dr. Fuhrman's plan is based on a single formula: Your Health Future (H) = Nutrients (N) / Calories (C). Foods with a high nutrient density, according to Dr. Fuhrman, turn our bodies into the miraculous, self-healing machines they can be, which results in significant weight loss, improved health, and, ultimately, the end of diabetes and other diseases.In engaging, direct, and easy-to-follow language, The End of Diabetes supplies the science and clinical evidence to prove that diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure are not inevitable consequences of aging. They are reversible and preventable. This simple and effective plan offers great food, starts working right away, and puts you on a direct path to a longer, better, fuller, disease-free life.

The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest


Dan Buettner - 2008
    What's the prescription for success? National Geographic Explorer Dan Buettner has traveled the globe to uncover the best strategies for longevity found in the Blue Zones: places in the world where higher percentages of people enjoy remarkably long, full lives. And in this dynamic book he discloses the recipe, blending this unique lifestyle formula with the latest scientific findings to inspire easy, lasting change that may add years to your life.Buettner's colossal research effort, funded in part by the National Institute on Aging, has taken him from Costa Rica to Italy to Japan and beyond. In the societies he visits, it's no coincidence that the way people interact with each other, shed stress, nourish their bodies, and view their world yields more good years of life. You'll meet a 94-year-old farmer and self-confessed "ladies man" in Costa Rica, an 102-year-old grandmother in Okinawa, a 102-year-old Sardinian who hikes at least six miles a day, and others. By observing their lifestyles, Buettner's teams have identified critical everyday choices that correspond with the cutting edge of longevity research-and distilled them into a few simple but powerful habits that anyone can embrace.

Mastering Diabetes: The Revolutionary Method to Reverse Insulin Resistance Permanently in Type 1, Type 1.5, Type 2, Prediabetes, and Gestational Diabetes


Cyrus Khambatta - 2020
     Current medical wisdom advises that anyone suffering from diabetes or prediabetes should eat a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. But in this revolutionary book, Cyrus Khambatta, PhD, and Robby Barbaro, MPH, rely on a century of research to show that advice is misguided. While it may improve short-term blood glucose control, such a diet also increases the long-term risk for chronic diseases like cancer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, chronic kidney disease, and fatty liver disease.The revolutionary solution is to eat a low-fat plant-based whole-food diet, the most powerful way to reverse insulin resistance in all types of diabetes: type 1, type 1.5, type 2, prediabetes, and gestational diabetes.As the creators of the extraordinary and effective Mastering Diabetes Method, Khambatta and Barbaro lay out a step-by-step plan proven to reverse insulin resistance-the root cause of blood glucose variability- while improving overall health and maximizing life expectancy. Armed with more than 800 scientific references and drawing on more than 36 years of personal experience living with type 1 diabetes themselves, the authors show how to eat large quantities of carbohydrate-rich whole foods like bananas, potatoes, and quinoa while decreasing blood glucose, oral medication, and insulin requirements. They also provide life-changing advice on intermittent fasting and daily exercise and offer tips on eating in tricky situations, such as restaurant meals and family dinners. Perhaps best of all: On the Mastering Diabetes Method, you will never go hungry.With more than 30 delicious, filling, and nutrient-dense recipes and backed by cutting-edge nutritional science, Mastering Diabetes will help you maximize your insulin sensitivity, attain your ideal body weight, improve your digestive health, gain energy, live an active life, and feel the best you've felt in years.

How We Age: A Doctor's Journey Into the Heart of Growing Old


Marc Agronin - 2011
    His beat is a nursing home in Miami that some would dismiss as “God’s waiting room.” Nothing in the young doctor’s medical training had quite prepared him for what he was to discover there. As Agronin first learned from ninety-eight-year-old Esther and, later, from countless others, the true scales of aging aren’t one-sided—you can’t list the problems without also tallying the hopes and promises. Drawing on moving personal experiences and in-depth interviews with pioneers in the field, Agronin conjures a spellbinding look at what aging means today—how our bodies and brains age, and the very way we understand aging.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End


Atul Gawande - 2014
    But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Living


Beverly Lynn Bennett - 2005
    It?s about making a lifestyle change. In The Complete Idiot?s Guide to Vegan Living, authors Beverly Lynn Bennett (known as the Vegan Chef) and Ray Sammartano provide a complete guide to living vegan- style, focusing on compassion for all, good health, and great eating. Inside, readers will find 50 sensational recipes, tips for everyday vegan living, the lowdown on vegan myths, and much more. -One of the few titles that combines information on the vegan lifestyle with recipes -Being a vegan isn?t only about what you eat; this book also discusses clothing, cosmetics, etc. -Author is a renowned vegan chef

Eating Well for Optimum Health


Andrew Weil - 2000
    It clarifies the mishmash of conflicting news, research, hype, and hearsay regarding diet, nutrition, and supplementation, and further establishes the judicious Dr. Weil, the director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, as a savior of public well-being. If you've ever wondered what "partially hydrogenated soybean oil" really is, been perplexed by contrary news reports about recommended dosages for supplements, or questioned the safety of using aluminum pots for cooking, Dr. Weil will make it all clear. Weil (pronounced "while") bravely criticizes many of the major diet books on the market, and backs up his admonitions with science. He warns readers to not fall under "the spell" of the anticarbohydrate Atkins Diet, but also criticizes the eating plan advocated by Dr. Dean Ornish--which has been granted Medicare coverage for cardiac patients--as being too low fat for the majority of people. (The omega-3 fatty acids missing from Ornish's diet are essential for hormone production and the control of inflammation, he says.) It's also fascinating to learn that autism, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease may be caused by omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies, while an excess of omega-6 fatty acids--very common in the typical American diet--can exacerbate arthritis symptoms. Weil's explanation of the chemistry of fats will prove difficult for most readers, but few will want to eat fast-food French fries ever again after reading his appalling reasons for avoiding them, which go way beyond their well-documented heart-clogging capabilities. After a thorough rundown of nutritional basics and a primer of micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals, Weil unveils what he feels is "the best diet in the world," with 85 recipes, such as Salmon Cakes and Oven-Fried Potatoes, that are healthy, tasty, quick to prepare, and complete with nutritional breakdowns. He includes a stirring chapter on safe weight loss (he sympathizes with the overweight and comically recalls his one-week trial of a safflower oil-diet while an undergraduate). Other, equally enlightening sections include tips for eating out and shopping for food (with warnings on various additives and a guide to organics), and a wondrous appendix with dietary recommendations for dozens of health concerns, including allergies, asthma, cancer prevention, mood disorders, and pregnancy. Eating Well is an indispensable consumer reference and one not afraid to lambaste the diet industry and empower the public with information about which the majority of doctors--to the detriment of the public health--are ignorant. --Erica Jorgensen

The Starch Solution: Eat the Foods You Love, Regain Your Health, and Lose the Weight for Good!


John A. McDougall - 2012
    McDougall, MD, and his kitchen-savvy wife, Mary, turn the notion that starch is bad for you on its head. The Starch Solution is based on a simple swap: fueling your body primarily with carbohydrates rather than proteins and fats. This will help you lose weight and prevent a variety of ills.Fad diets come and go, but Dr. McDougall has been a proponent of the plant-based diet for decades, and his medical credibility is unassailable. He is one of the mainstay experts cited in the bestselling and now seminal China Study—called the “Grand Prix of epidemiology” by the New York Times. But what The China Study lacks is a plan.Dr. McDougall grounds The Starch Solution in rigorous scientific fact and research, giving readers easy tools to implement these changes into their lifestyle with a 7-Day Quick Start Plan and 100 delicious recipes. This book includes testimonials from among the hundreds Dr. McDougall has received, including people who have lost more than 125 pounds in mere months as well as patients who have conquered lifethreatening illnesses such as diabetes and cardiac ailments.

The Other Side of Normal: How Biology Is Providing the Clues to Unlock the Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior


Jordan Smoller - 2012
    Other bestselling works of neurobiology and the mind have focused on mental illness and abnormal behaviors—like the Oliver Sacks classic, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat—but The Other Side of Normal is an eye-opening, thought-provoking, utterly fascinating and totally accessible exploration of the universals of human experience. It will change forever our understanding of who we are and what makes us that way.

The Better Brain Book: The Best Tools for Improving Memory and Sharpness and Preventing Aging of the Brain


David Perlmutter - 2004
     Loss of memory is not a natural part of aging--and this book explains why.Celebrated neurologist David Perlmutter reveals how everyday memory-loss--misplacing car keys, forgetting a name, losing concentration in meetings--is actually a warning sign of a distressed brain. Here he and Carol Colman offer a simple plan for repairing those problems, clarifying misconstrued connections between memory loss and aging, and regaining and maintaining mental clarity by offering the tools for:Building a better brain through nutrition, lifestyle changes, and brain workoutsCoping with specific brain disorders such as stroke, vascular dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and Lou Gehrig's diseaseUnderstanding risk factors and individually tailoring a diet and supplementary programFeatures a Life Style Audit, quizzes, a brain fitness program with the most effective ways to exercise your brain, and a nutritional program that details the best brain food and supplements.

Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds


A.K. Benjamin - 2019
    One of them is talking, the other is listening. Both of them need help.Written from a uniquely affecting and involved perspective, this is a story that begins somewhere familiar – the consulting room – but ends somewhere utterly unexpected.Through a series of intense encounters with minds on the brink, it shows how fine the line is between strange behaviour and catastrophic illness, between truth and fantasy. Then it shows what it’s like to cross that line, leaving a trail of destruction in one’s wake.It is a book about confronting the truth of who we are and what we have done. But it’s also about confronting the darkness in us all, driving millions of us to distraction and collapse.In pursuit of its author’s secrets, you will be led through a hall of mirrors; a labyrinth of stories that pin you with their energy and emotion.Along the way, you will discover that all too often madness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness


Christopher David Carter - 2012
    Focusing on three key phenomena--reincarnation, apparitions, and communications from the dead--Carter reveals 125 years of documented scientific studies by independent researchers and the British and American Societies for Psychical Research that rule out hoaxes, fraud, and hallucinations and prove these afterlife phenomena are real.The author examines historic and modern accounts of detailed past-life memories, visits from the deceased, and communications with the dead via medium and automatic writing as well as the scientific methods used to confirm these experiences. He explains how these findings on the afterlife have been ignored and denied because they are incompatible with the prevailing doctrine of materialism. Sharing messages from the dead themselves describing the afterlife, Carter reveals how consciousness exists outside the parameters of biological evolution and emerges through the medium of the brain to use the physical world as a springboard for growth. After death, souls can advance to higher planes of consciousness or manifest once again on Earth. Carter’s rigorous argument proves--beyond any reasonable doubt--not only that consciousness survives death and continues in the afterlife, but that it precedes birth as well.

The 80/10/10 Diet: Balancing Your Health, Your Weight, and Your Life, One Luscious Bite at a Time


Douglas N. Graham - 2006
    The 80/10/10 Diet makes eating a joy while helping you achieve optimum health and easy weight control. Say goodbye to fast food and hello to instantaneous food. Gain awesome energy eating Dr. Graham's Simply Delicious recipes.

A Short Guide to a Long Life


David B. Agus - 2014
    David B. Agus shared what he has learned from his work as a pioneering cancer doctor, revealing the innovative steps he takes to prolong the lives of not only cancer patients, but all those who want to enjoy a vigorous, lengthy life. Now Dr. Agus has turned his research into a practical and concise illustrated handbook for everyday living. A Short Guide to a Long Life is divided into three sections (What to Do, What to Avoid, and Doctor's Orders) that provide the definitive answers to many common and not-so-common questions: Who should take a baby aspirin daily? Are flu shots safe? What constitutes "healthy" foods? Are airport scanners hazardous? Dr. Agus believes optimal health begins with our daily routines. His book will help you develop new patterns of personal health care, using inexpensive and widely available tools that are based on the latest and most reliable science.