Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H. M.


Suzanne Corkin - 2012
    The outcome was unexpected—when Henry awoke, he could no longer form new memories, and for the rest of his life would be trapped in the moment. But Henry’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity. As renowned neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin explains in Permanent Present Tense, she and her colleagues brought to light the sharp contrast between Henry’s crippling memory impairment and his preserved intellect. This new insight that the capacity for remembering is housed in a specific brain area revolutionized the science of memory. The case of Henry—known only by his initials H. M. until his death in 2008—stands as one of the most consequential and widely referenced in the spiraling field of neuroscience. Corkin and her collaborators worked closely with Henry for nearly fifty years, and in Permanent Present Tense she tells the incredible story of the life and legacy of this intelligent, quiet, and remarkably good-humored man. Henry never remembered Corkin from one meeting to the next and had only a dim conception of the importance of the work they were doing together, yet he was consistently happy to see her and always willing to participate in her research. His case afforded untold advances in the study of memory, including the discovery that even profound amnesia spares some kinds of learning, and that different memory processes are localized to separate circuits in the human brain. Henry taught us that learning can occur without conscious awareness, that short-term and long-term memory are distinct capacities, and that the effects of aging-related disease are detectable in an already damaged brain.Undergirded by rich details about the functions of the human brain, Permanent Present Tense pulls back the curtain on the man whose misfortune propelled a half-century of exciting research. With great clarity, sensitivity, and grace, Corkin brings readers to the cutting edge of neuroscience in this deeply felt elegy for her patient and friend.

How Doctors Think


Jerome Groopman - 2007
    In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong -- with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can -- with our help -- avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track.Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country’s best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems.How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.

Curing the Incurable: Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins


Thomas E. Levy - 2002
    Book by Levy, Thomas E.

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness


Meghan O'Rourke - 2022
    Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier. Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. And as America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color. Blending lyricism and erudition, candor and empathy, O’Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.

The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine


Ted Kaptchuk - 1983
    Kaptchuk’s book is an invaluable resource in the field and an authoritative guide that helps readers understand both Western and Eastern healing practices. Here in the revised edition is further research into ancient Chinese practices as well as active involvement in cutting-edge scientific research.

Blood Sugar 101: What They Don't Tell You about Diabetes


Jenny Ruhl - 2008
    Based on the award winning Bloodsugar101.com web site, this book explains what peer-reviewed research published in top medical journals has to say about: What is a normal blood sugar? How does diabetes develop? What really causes diabetes? What blood sugar levels cause complications? Must you deteriorate? What diet is right for you? How can you make that diet work? What medications are safe? What supplements lower blood sugar? Written in clear and understandable language, this book provides all the tools needed to understand how blood sugar works and achieve blood sugar health.

Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat


Paul Jaminet - 2010
    They embarked on five years of rigorous research. What they found changed their lives— and the lives of thousands of their readers. In Perfect Health Diet, the Jaminets explain in layman's terms how anyone can regain health and lose weight by optimizing nutrition, detoxifying the diet, and supporting healthy immune function. They show how toxic, nutrient-poor diets sabotage health, and how on a healthy diet, diseases often spontaneously resolve. Perfect Health Diet tells you exactly how to optimize health and make weight loss effortless with a clear, balanced, and scientifically proven plan to change the way you eat—and feel—forever!

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.

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness


Jon Kabat-Zinn - 1990
    (The somewhat confusing title is from a line in Zorba the Greek in which the title character refers to the ups and downs of family life as "the full catastrophe.") But this book is also a terrific introduction for anyone who has considered meditating but was afraid it would be too difficult or would include religious practices they found foreign. Kabat-Zinn focuses on "mindfulness," a concept that involves living in the moment, paying attention, and simply "being" rather than "doing." While you can practice anything "mindfully," from taking a walk to cleaning your house, Kabat-Zinn presents several meditation techniques that focus the attention most clearly, whether it's on a simple phrase, your breathing, or various parts of your body. The book goes into detail about how hospital patients have either improved their health or simply come to feel better despite their illness by using these techniques, but these meditations can help anyone deal with stress and gain a calmer outlook on life. "When we use the word healing to describe the experiences of people in the stress clinic, what we mean above all is that they are undergoing a profound transformation of view," Kabat-Zinn writes. "Out of this shift in perspective comes an ability to act with greater balance and inner security in the world." --Ben Kallenreissue 2005

Life Without Bread: How a Low-Carbohydrate Diet Can Save Your Life


Christian B. Allan - 2000
    Based on more than 40 years of clinical research, this illuminating book unravels the mysteries of nutrition and shows how a low-carbohydrate/high protein diet can help prevent cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, as well as increase strength, endurance, and muscle mass.

The Gut Balance Revolution: Boost Your Metabolism, Restore Your Inner Ecology, and Lose the Weight for Good!


Gerard E. Mullin - 2014
    Because gut microflora plays a central role in weight management, losing weight is much more than cutting calories, fat, or carbs. When the trillions of live bacteria in our digestive tract-the gut microbiome-are balanced, excess pounds melt away and we feel revitalized.A leading authority on digestive health and the gut microbiome, Dr. Gerard E. Mullin shares the first proven, science-based program to restore and retain weight loss by achieving a balanced gut flora in The Gut Balance Revolution. He reveals how to stifle the fat-forming, disease-promoting gut bacteria, reseed your gut with good fat-burning ones, and fertilize those friendly flora with just the right foods to reboot, rebalance, and renew your health-and lose weight for good. It's all grounded in hard science and his over 20 years of clinical experience with patients in his medical practice. Dr. Gerry Mullin's trailblazing program provides:-Research The latest, up-to-date frontline science behind how balancing your gut flora can burn fat and restore health-Reboot, Rebalance, Renew Step-by-step meals plans, food charts, plus 50 delicious, easy recipes-Rev Up An exercise routine for each phase of the process-Real Life Bona fide success stories of people who seamlessly lost up to 40 pounds-and kept it off!

Confessions of an RX Drug Pusher


Gwen Olsen - 2005
    Olsen's poignant autobiographical journey through the darkness of mental illness and the catastrophic consequences that lurk in medicine cabinets around the country offers an honest glimpse into alarming statistics and a health care system ranked last among nineteen industrialized nations worldwide. As a former sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry for several years, Olsen learned firsthand how an unprecedented number of lethal drugs are unleashed in the United States market, but her most heartrending education into the dangers of antidepressants would come as a victim and ultimately, as a survivor.Rigorously researched and documented, Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher is a moving human drama that shares one woman's unforgettable journey of faith, forgiveness, and healing.AUTHOR BIO Gwendolyn Leslie Olsen spent more than a decade as a sales rep in the pharmaceutical industry working for health care giants such as Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abbott Laboratories. She is a writer, speaker, and mental health activist who lives outside Austin, Texas.

Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?


Clinton Ober - 2010
    It is something right beneath our feet-the Earth itself!Throughout most of evolution humans walked barefoot and slept on the ground, largely oblivious that the surface of the Earth contains limitless healing energy. Science has discovered this energy as free-flowing electrons constantly replenished by solar radiation and lightning. Few people know it, but the ground provides a subtle electric signal that maintains health and governs the intricate mechanisms that make our bodies work-just like plugging a lamp into a power socket makes it light up. Modern lifestyle, including the widespread use of insulative rubber or plastic-soled shoes, has disconnected us from this energy and, of course, we no longer sleep on the ground as we did in times past.Earthing introduces the planet's powerful, amazing, and overlooked natural healing energy and how people anywhere can readily connect to it. This eye-opening book describes how the physical disconnect with the Earth creates abnormal physiology and contributes to inflammation, pain, fatigue, stress, and poor sleep. By reconnecting to the Earth, symptoms are rapidly relieved and even eliminated and recovery from surgery, injury, and athletic overexertion is accelerated.This never-before-told story-filled with fascinating research and real-life testimonials- chronicles a discovery with the potential to create a global health revolution.About the AuthorClinton Ober started as a cable TV salesman in Billings, Montana, and rose to become a leader in the industry. Following a near fatal disease in 1993, he embarked on a personal journey looking for a higher purpose in life. Since discovering Earthing he has been devoted to promoting the scientific exploration and practical applications for the concept.Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C., is a board-certified cardiologist, a certified bioenergetic psychotherapist, and a certified nutrition and anti-aging specialist. He is the author of the best-selling book The Sinatra Solution: Metabolic Cardiology.Martin Zucker has written extensively on natural healing, fitness, and alternative medicine for thirty years.

Younger Next Year for Women


Chris Crowley - 2004
    And because you’re already more attuned to your physical and emotional needs, and more inclined to commit to a healthier lifestyle, you're poised to live brilliantly for the thirty-plus years after menopause. All you need now is the program outlined in Younger Next Year for Women—which, for starters, will help you avoid literally 70 percent of the decay and eliminate 50 percent of the injuries and illnesses associated with getting older. How? Drawn from disciplines as varied as evolutionary biology, cell physiology, experimental psychology and anthropology, the science behind Younger Next Year is clear. Our bodies are programmed to do one of two things: either grow or decay. Sitting in front of a screen all day tells the body to decay. Taking a walk or doing yoga tells the body to grow. Loneliness and stress trigger decay; love and laughter trigger growth. Just as clear as the science is the goal: Become the active gatekeeper of your own body and gain the power to control those signals of growth and decay. Seven simple rules show the way, from #1 Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life, to #6 Care, to #7 Connect and commit. They’re called Harry’s Rules, named for the doctor and coauthor—Henry S. Lodge, M.D.—who formulated them, and who explains the precise science behind each one. But since it’s one thing to know something’s good for you and quite another to put it into practice, Dr. Lodge, the scientist, is joined by Chris Crowley—coauthor, exhorter and living example—whose brusque charm and infectious enthusiasm will actually have you living by the rules. So, congratulations. You’re now about to get younger.

When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon


Joshua D. Mezrich - 2019
    Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, transplanting organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he illuminates the extraordinary field of transplantation that enables this kind of miracle to happen every day.When Death Becomes Life is a thrilling look at how science advances on a grand scale to improve human lives. Mezrich examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the inspiring and heartbreaking stories of his transplant patients. Combining gentle sensitivity with scientific clarity, Mezrich reflects on his calling as a doctor and introduces the modern pioneers who made transplantation a reality—maverick surgeons whose feats of imagination, bold vision, and daring risk taking generated techniques and practices that save millions of lives around the world.Mezrich takes us inside the operating room and unlocks the wondrous process of transplant surgery, a delicate, intense ballet requiring precise timing, breathtaking skill, and at times, creative improvisation. In illuminating this work, Mezrich touches the essence of existence and what it means to be alive. Most physicians fight death, but in transplantation, doctors take from death. Mezrich shares his gratitude and awe for the privilege of being part of this transformative exchange as the dead give their last breath of life to the living. After all, the donors are his patients, too.When Death Becomes Life also engages in fascinating ethical and philosophical debates: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? What defines death, and what role did organ transplantation play in that definition? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich’s riveting book is a beautiful, poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.