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Recent Health Related Materials
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Books
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Click on the call no. to locate in V-Cat |
| Title/Author |
Summary |
APL Call No. |
Age of Autism: mercury, medicine, and a manmade epidemic
by Dan Olmsted |
Journalist Olmstead and independent researcher Blaxill enter the fray of the autism controversy, arguing that, just as mercury's toxic effects in treating syphilis and teething pain were long ignored, the same type of denial is happening now with respect to autism and other illnesses the authors say are linked to mercury exposure in the environment and in childhood vaccines. But other than providing information on mercury exposure in seven of the 11 individuals first diagnosed with autism, they offer little new material. Second, they uncritically present the opinions of those who assert the autism-vaccine link while virtually ignoring contrary scientific views (e.g., the World Health Organization has repudiated any such link). Third, they stake out new ground by accusing scientists and government agencies of creating a conspiracy to defend vaccines as safe. They state, without supporting evidence: "Much of what the medical industry and public health community has produced on the question of autism and vaccines has been propaganda masquerading as science." Readers looking for an unbiased examination of whether there is a link between vaccines and autism will not find enlightenment here. |
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Ah--Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold
by Jennifer Ackerman |
God bless you!-and this thoroughly delightful compendium of facts, fiction, and down-to-earth advice about the pesky viruses (200 and counting) that knock you down and drag you out two to four times a year. Ackerman (Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body) parses the variety and durability of the cold, its well-known miseries, paradoxes (a highly active immune system may actually make you sicker with a cold), and myriad mysteries (why do poorer people get more colds? what roles do stress and sleep play? is our clean obsession making us more susceptible to sickness?) with the thoroughness of a scientist, the doggedness of a journalist, and the verve of a thriller writer. Look for debunking of modern snake oils like echinacea and vitamin C and some rock-solid advice: wash your hands regularly, and keep them out of your eyes and mouth. And at the very least, Ackerman argues, enjoy the forced break a cold mandates. There's a nifty collection of comforting recipes as well, including a nonalcoholic hot toddy (and a delicious sounding boozy one, too), banana pudding, and yes, chicken soup. Gesundheit! |
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Brave Girl Eating: a family's struggle with anorexia
by Harriet Brown |
Deeply honest, captivating, and ultimately inspirational, the moving true story of one family's experience with anorexia that traces a young woman's struggle from the disease's earliest stages toward recovery. |
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Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the discovery of insulin, and the making of a medical miracle
by Thea Cooper and Arthur Ainsberg |
It was one of the 20th century's medical miracles, and with this retelling of the discovery of insulin (10 months after Caroline Cox's The Fight to Survive: A Young Girl, Diabetes, and the Discovery of Insulin) it's a gripping narrative as well. In 1918, the youngest daughter of former New York governor and future Supreme Court chief justice Charles Evans Hughes was diagnosed with diabetes. At the time, a near-deadly starvation diet was the best hope for sufferers, but four years later, a "pancreatic extract" was showing promise in treating symptoms in animals. Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Hughes was among the first wave of patients to benefit from the marriage of dogged research and commercial enterprise on the part of Lilly & Co. to manufacture the drug. Author and playwright Cooper and finance-veteran-turned-author Ainsberg bolster the account with impressive sourcing. They also pay particular attention to the complexities of the human drama-the indomitable Elizabeth; her visionary parents; the quarrelsome, "crazy," and eventual Nobel Prize-winning researchers; and the bold commercial pioneers. And it's those details that make this extraordinary chapter of medical history so memorable. |
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Buzz: a year of paying attention
by Katherine Ellison |
Ellison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder at the same time her eldest son, Buzz (name changed for the book), was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. To beat back the chaos enveloping her household, she embarked on a year of investigations into therapies ranging from traditional to highly alternative brain-mapping and neurofeedback. Typical costs (often outside the range of most families) are documented. Not a relaxing read by a long shot, though humorous, with allusions to an ADD state of mind. Reading this was like downing venti triple espressos. |
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The Complete Idiot's Guide to Digestive Health
by Dustin James |
Start to digest easily with some food for though... Providing relief for a growing problem in America, The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Digestive Healthcovers the digestive issues affecting over 95 million people. It is a powerful combination of medical, dietary, and natural therapy to help sufferers and prevent their disorders from recurring. Provides an overview of symptoms and tests to help diagnose conditions. Covers a variety of disorders including ulcers, IBS, reflux, celiac disease, gastritis, Crohn's disease, colitis, and chronic diarrhea. A full range of medical treatments. Dietary and natural protocols to help relieve conditions. |
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The Doctor's 5-Minute Health Fixes: the prescription for a lifetime of great health
by Mariska van Aalst |
Paging Dr. Jim, Dr. Travis, Dr. Lisa, and Dr. Drew! America needs your help and your 5-minute health hints If you are like many, you probably think you just don't have time to be healthy: It's too much work, and there's just too much conflicting information out there. Both leave you feeling powerless. But the best doctors know that an informed patient is a healthy patient. So before you lift your hands in defeat, know that great health is just a page away and much easier to achieve than you think. After combing the very latest medical literature, the Doctors have isolated the seven factors that have been linked to the most vibrant, happiest, longest lives. The secret? Each body system (heart, brain, gut, skin) can be vastly improved with very small shifts in your lifestyle most of which take less than five minutes to do. And whether it's adding cinnamon to your coffee to balance blood sugar, sipping cold water through a straw to nix nicotine cravings, or brushing and flossing your teeth before you eat each morning to prevent heart disease, all are easy fixes that anyone can make. Use these helpers as building blocks, and before you know it you're easily on your way to 24-hour health... while preventing disease, reversing aging, getting the most out of your annual checkup, and looking fantastic. |
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The Emperor of All Maladies: a biography of cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee |
Mukherjee's debut book is a sweeping epic of obsession, brilliant researchers, dramatic new treatments, euphoric success and tragic failure, and the relentless battle by scientists and patients alike against an equally relentless, wily, and elusive enemy. From the first chemotherapy developed from textile dyes to the possibilities emerging from our understanding of cancer cells, Mukherjee shapes a massive amount of history into a coherent story with a roller-coaster trajectory: the discovery of a new treatment-surgery, radiation, chemotherapy-followed by the notion that if a little is good, more must be better, ending in disfiguring radical mastectomy and multidrug chemo so toxic the treatment ended up being almost worse than the disease. The first part of the book is driven by the obsession of Sidney Farber and philanthropist Mary Lasker to find a unitary cure for all cancers. (Farber developed the first successful chemotherapy for childhood leukemia.) The last and most exciting part is driven by the race of brilliant, maverick scientists to understand how cells become cancerous. Each new discovery was small, but as Mukherjee, a Columbia professor of medicine, writes, "Incremental advances can add up to transformative changes." Mukherjee's formidable intelligence and compassion produce a stunning account of the effort to disrobe the "emperor of maladies." |
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Fit for Life
by Harvey Diamond |
Nutritional specialists Harvey and Marilyn Diamond explain how to eat more kinds of food than ever before without counting calories--and still lose weight--by observing the natural cycles of the body cycles. A four-week meal plan, menus, shopping tips, and recipes are included. |
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Getting What We Deserve: Health and Medical Care in America
by Alfred Sommer, M.D. |
Both an ophthalmologist and a public health expert at Johns Hopkins, Sommer can honestly claim to have affected millions of lives with his pioneering work in vitamin A deficiency and blindness prevention. In this small gem he gamely takes on America's health care crisis. "We have lost sight of the essentials" that underlie good health, he declares. Making ample use of graphs, tables and maps to illustrate his clear history, Sommer offers a commonsense approach to our dilemma. Want to understand the West's dramatic improvements in life expectancy? Consider simple, inexpensive improvements in standards of living and public health, such as sanitation and nutrition, that predated the explosion of drugs and medical interventions, he asserts. Will the "public option" impair our national health? Look no further than Canada and England, where it works-and where residents are just as long-lived and healthy. Sommer concludes that Americans' health will improve as they "adopt healthier lifestyles and as better, more cost-effective interventions are developed and made available to all." His cry may get lost in the noisy national debate, but its clarity deserves to be heard. 31 line drawings. |
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Healthy Eating for Diabetes
by Antony Thompson |
Contains diabetes diet therapy |
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot |
This distinctive work skillfully puts a human face on the bioethical questions surrounding the HeLa cell line. Henrietta Lacks, an African American mother of five, was undergoing treatment for cancer at Johns Hopkins University in 1951 when tissue samples were removed without her knowledge or permission and used to create HeLa, the first "immortal" cell line. HeLa has been sold around the world and used in countless medical research applications, including the development of the polio vaccine. Science writer Skloot, who worked on this book for ten years, entwines Lacks's biography, the development of the HeLa cell line, and her own story of building a relationship with Lacks's children. Full of dialog and vivid detail, this reads like a novel, but the science behind the story is also deftly handled. Verdict While there are other titles on this controversy (e.g., Michael Gold's A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman's Immortal Legacy-and the Medical Scandal It Caused), this is the most compelling account for general readers, especially those interested in questions of medical research ethics. Highly recommended. |
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Keeper: living with Alzheimer's: a caregiver's memoir
by Andrea Gillies |
In her forthright, smartly researched, and warmly recounted chronicle of her troubled two years taking care of her mother-in-law in the throes of dementia, British journalist Gillies reveals the "dehumanizing" toll of the disease on the whole family. Gillies, her husband, and three children moved to a rambling Victorian house in the wilds of a Scottish peninsula and took in Chris's parents, Edinburgh residents who had been showing signs of needing increasing care: irascible Morris had "bad legs," while his strong-willed wife, Nancy, at 79, was spiraling deeper into Alzheimer's. As Nancy's memory deteriorated the entire family unit began to collapse under the strain of constant caretaking. Gillies writes with a novelist's eye for detail, and her unflinching rendering of Nancy's excruciating loss of self is skillfully and tenderly drawn. As well, Gillies has delved vigorously into the research, offering the received wisdom on Alzheimer's, which dictates that acceptance and distraction are the most helpful methods to deal with sufferers ("Make Alzheimer's fun, they exhort"). Moreover, her memoir is an invaluable resource on the stages of Alzheimer's, history, drugs, brain function, care-giving options, even literary works. |
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| The New American Heart Association Cookbook |
This perennial no-nonsense favorite, from an authoritative source, serves up a recipe on almost each of its many pages. From simple Beef Broth and Chicken Broth to Picante Shrimp with Broccoli and other complex, tasty dishes, the AHA has found a balance between health and palette that keeps readers coming back for each new edition. Each recipe comes with a breakdown of calories, protein content, carbohydrates, cholesterol, fats (broken down by saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated) and sodium content, along with a table of dietary exchange. Few readers would expect Stacked Sausage and Eggs or Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake to be among the offerings here, but they are, along with the more expected Sole with Parsley and Mint or Whole-Wheat Apricot Bread. The book?s simple layout and directions make the path from preparation to table seem straight and easy. Striking such balances at every turn, this book remains a basic in many heart-conscious kitchens. |
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100 Questions & Answers about Asthma
by Claudia Plotte |
In this update of the 2005 edition, Plottel (pulmonary medicine, New York U. School of Medicine) provides the latest information in answering questions about this lung disease that affects 22 million Americans. She treats asthma facts, theories, controversies, symptoms, diagnosis, types, treatment options, lifestyle issues, asthma in pregnancy and in children. The guide includes summary tables, patient perspectives, resources, the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program's treatment guidelines, and a glossary. |
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100 Simple Things You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer's and Age-Related Memory Loss
by Jean Carper |
If trying something new can delay or offset the effects of Alzheimer's, as former CNN medical correspondent and syndicated "EatSmart" columnist Carper (The Food Pharmacy) contends, then readers would do well to try many of the ideas she offers in this empowering compendium. Genetically disposed to Alzheimer's, Carper, now in her 70s, has compressed the latest research on this and other types of dementia into short sections, each with a bottom-line action plan. While some are basic to all-around good health (e.g., taking a multivitamin, not smoking, limiting alcohol), others might surprise: consuming apple juice and vinegar, meditating, and surfing the Internet. Although Carper admits she has not tried all of them, she recommends that readers experiment with those best suited to their situations. Even a few nutritional (a Mediterranean diet) and lifestyle (exercise, stress relief, sleep) changes, she states, can gain as much as a decade disease-free, and by supplementing with anti-Alzheimer's powerhouses like niacin, choline, folic acid, and alpha lipoic acid, readers can push mental decline even further into the future. Whether in their 20s or well into retirement, readers will likely feel motivated to do the impossible: beat the approaching epidemic of a disease commonly viewed as hopeless. |
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Pain Chronicles: cures, myths, mysteries, prayers, diaries, brain scans, healing and the science of suffering
by Melanie Thernstrom |
Imagine a "terror that surpasses all description," novelist Fanny Burney wrote in 1812 after removal of a breast abscess- without anesthesia. Then imagine such pain stalking you for years, as it does Thernstrom (Raj: The Making of British India) and 70 million other Americans. This is what Thernstrom describes in an exquisite, meticulous history of medicine's quest to alleviate pain-from the first use of ether for surgery in 1842 to the modern management of chronic pain: drugs like Neurontin and controversial opioids (though they can make patients even more sensitive to pain); MRIs; and neuroimaging, which trains patients to literally change their own brains. But the personal chronicles lift this accomplished medical history to an astonishing record of courage and endurance. Danielle Parker goes to 85 doctors before finding back pain relief from a chiropractor who urges her to move around instead of reaching for a pill. Thernstrom herself ultimately finds a regime of physical therapy, Botox, Celebrex, Tramadol, and then changes her wish for a pain-free life to one filled with love and family. In these stories, there is a wealth of knowledge, wisdom, and hope for the rest of us. |
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Sacrifice Zones: the front lines of toxic chemical exposure in the United States
by Steve Lerner |
"I just got mad. I couldn't breathe in my own house."--Ruth Reed, a resident of Ocala, Florida, who lives next door to a Royal Oak Charcoal factory. Across the United States, thousands of people, most of them in low-income or minority communities, live next to heavily polluting industrial sites. Many of them, like Ruth Reed, reach a point at which they say "Enough is enough." After living for years with poisoned air and water, contaminated soil, and pollution-related health problems, they start to take action;organizing, speaking up, documenting the effects of pollution on their neighborhoods. In Sacrifice Zones, Steve Lerner tells the stories of twelve communities, from Brooklyn to Pensacola, that rose up to fight the industries and military bases causing disproportionately high levels of chemical pollution. He calls these low-income neighborhoods "sacrifice zones";repurposing a Cold War term coined by U.S. government officials to designate areas contaminated with radioactive pollutants during the manufacture of nuclear weapons. And he argues that residents of a new generation of sacrifice zones, tainted with chemical pollutants, need additional regulatory protections. Studies show that poor and minority neighborhoods are more polluted than wealthier areas located farther away from heavy industry. Sacrifice Zonesgoes beyond these disheartening statistics and gives us the voices of the residents themselves. Sacrifice Zones offers compelling portraits of accidental activists who have become grassroots leaders in the struggle for environmental justice and details the successful tactics they have used on the fence line with heavy industry. |
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Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows: a couple's journey through Alzheimer's
by Olivia Hoblitzelle |
Both Hoblitzelle and her husband of nearly 40 years, Hob, practiced the Buddhist methods of acceptance and "letting go" to graceful effect in dealing with Hob's symptoms of Alzheimer's. In this thoughtful narrative, Hoblitzelle explains that at age 72, Hob, a former English professor, was diagnosed with the disease, having experienced odd moments of disconnect and forgetfulness; his condition gradually declined until his death six years later. The author, 14 years his junior, records her compassionate side-by-side journey with her husband, mindful of their remaining time together and resolved to face the disease and its challenges rather than deny it. As a man of words, Hob grew deeply distressed by his aphasia, and the author details the stages of Hob's debilitation-which he accepted with humor and lightness-mostly in terms of his painful lapse into the inarticulable. Much of the barrage of wisdom she sought from Tibetan elders sounds blithe and pat out of context, but Hoblitzelle frankly expresses the growing sense of disconnection between them and the burdens of caretaking, and at the end of each chapter offers helpful suggestions for those dealing with the disease. |
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You Must Remember This: easy tricks & proven tips to never forget anything, ever again
by Daren Dolby |
Dolby presents a comprehensive and clever compendium of the tools, tips, and exercises to help readers hone their memory as well as an explanation of how different techniques work--and why--and the science behind memory. |
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DVDs
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Click on the call no. to locate in V-Cat |
| Title |
Summary |
APL Call No. |
| Sick Around the World |
Four in five Americans say the U.S. health-care system needs "fundamental" change. Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health-care system, or are these nations so culturally different from us that their solutions would simply not be acceptable to Americans? FRONTLINE correspondent T.R. Reid examines first-hand the health-care systems of other advanced capitalist democracies -- UK, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and Taiwan -- to see what tried and tested ideas might help us reform our broken health-care system. |
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| 07-Nov-2010 |
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