Reading for Leisure: Health

The Overworked Person's Guide to Better Nutrition offers bite-sized tips for busy people who want to make time for good nutrition, but feel trapped by their hectic schedules. Responding to the number-one obstacle she hears from clients who have trouble staying healthy -- "I don't have time!” --dietitian, Certified Diabetes Educator, and healthy lifestyle coach, Jill Weisenberger built this busy-person’s guide to nutrition and health to show that everyone feels busy, but healthy habits can fit into any schedule. To keep things quick and accessible, the book is built around 50 fun and informative tips, covering everything from resistant starches to the glycemic index. Designed to be picked up and read from anywhere in the book, every page is packed with interesting tips that will improve nutrition and relieve stress and guilt. Whether you want to lose those extra pounds, tell stress to "take a hike,” or simply feel refreshed every day, this book, filled with weight loss strategies and tips for a healthier day (and night), can help anyone, on any schedule, eat and feel better.

In Farmacology, practicing family physician and renowned nutrition explorer Daphne Miller brings us beyond the simple concept of "food as medicine" and introduces us to the critical idea that it's the farm where that food is grown that offers us the real medicine. Bridging the traditional divide between agriculture and medicine, Miller shares lessons learned from inspiring farmers and biomedical researchers and artfully weaves their insights and discoveries, along with stories from her patients, into the narrative. The result is a compelling new vision for sustainable healing and a treasure trove of farm-to-body lessons that have immense value in our daily lives.

How does the science of "normal" emotion inform our understanding of emotional disorders? To what extent can we regulate our emotions? When can we trust our emotions and when might they lead us astray? How do emotions affect our memories, and vice versa? How can we best describe the relationship between emotion and cognition? Johnston and Olson lay out the most salient questions of contemporary affective neuroscience in this study, expertly situating them in their biological, psychological, and philosophical contexts. They offer a compelling vision of an increasingly exciting and ambitious field for mental health professionals and the interested lay audience, as well as for undergraduate and graduate students.

Who does not want to be healthier? Now in paperback: the book that Andrew Weil calls "offbeat, informative, and fun . . . a great read," and that has been praised as "a delightful dance through science" (New York Times bestselling author Mark Hyman, M.D.) and as a "remarkable and insightful book [that] offers you the chance to achieve the best health of your life" (Mark Liponis, M.D., Medical Director, Canyon Ranch). Written by bestselling author Gene Stone, The Secrets of People Who Never Get Sick arose from his desire to discover what might actually prevent him from getting sick himself. This book, the result of that exploration, tells the stories of twenty-five people who each possess a different secret of excellent health-a secret that makes sense and that Stone discovered has a true scientific underpinning. There are food secrets-why to take garlic and vitamin C, eat more probiotics, become a vegan, drink a tonic of brewer's yeast. Exercise secrets-the benefits of lifting weights, the power of stretching. Environmental secrets-living in a Blue Zone, understanding the value of germs. Emotional secrets-seek out and stay in touch with friends, cultivate your spirituality. Physical secrets-nap more, take cold showers in the morning. And the wisdom that goes back generations: Yes, chicken soup works.

Getting fit can be a daunting task, but it doesn't need to take over your life. 1,001 Ways to Get in Shape gives you loads of little tips that you can work into your normal lifestyle, so you won't have to find time to sweat it out at the gym every day. This book is not bossy or demanding or hard to maintain as many fitness regimes can be. The emphasis is on fun, and it contains an eclectic mix of ideas from everyday situations such as brushing teeth to avoiding the urge to snack or using a pedometer to track your activity level.

Heart disease and strokes are the leading cause of death in the United States—but it isn’t inevitable. The cure for America’s most lethal killer doesn’t require expensive medications or rounds of invasive surgery. In fact 99 percent of heart disease–related deaths are entirely preventable with diet and nutrition. The cure for reversing heart disease is as simple as changing the food we eat. One of our country’s leading experts in both preventive medicine and the science of food, Dr. Fuhrman speaks directly to readers everywhere who want to take control of their health and avoid taking medication or undergoing complicated, expensive, unnecessary, and often ineffective procedures or surgery. He asserts that the public is rarely informed by their doctors of the most effective options for treating high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease. Dr. Fuhrman shows us how to eat for optimal heart health, with a range of options for differing needs and conditions. He provides detailed menu plans and delicious recipes for heart-healthy meals and snacks and includes helpful questions for doctors and patients.

Immigration and health care are hotly debated and contentious issues. Policies that relate to both issues--to the health of newcomers--often reflect misimpressions about immigrants, and their impact on health care systems. Despite the fact that immigrants are typically younger and healthier than natives, and that many immigrants play a vital role as care-givers in their new lands, native citizens are often reluctant to extend basic health care to immigrants, choosing instead to let them suffer, to let them die prematurely, or to expedite their return to their home lands. Likewise, many nations turn against immigrants when epidemics such as Ebola strike, under the false belief that native populations can be kept well only if immigrants are kept out.  In The Health of Newcomers, Patricia Illingworth and Wendy E. Parmet demonstrate how shortsighted and dangerous it is to craft health policy on the basis of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. Because health is a global public good and people benefit from the health of neighbor and stranger alike, it is in everyone's interest to ensure the health of all. Drawing on rigorous legal and ethical arguments and empirical studies, as well as deeply personal stories of immigrant struggles, Illingworth and Parmet make the compelling case that global phenomena such as poverty, the medical brain drain, organ tourism, and climate change ought to inform the health policy we craft for newcomers and natives alike. 

New York Times-bestselling author Ron Powers offers a searching, richly researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia. From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the anti-psychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted love ones, Powers limns our fears and myths about mental illness and the fractured public policies that have resulted. Braided with that history is the moving story of Powers's beloved son Kevin--spirited, endearing, and gifted--who triumphed even while suffering from schizophrenia until finally he did not, and the story of his courageous surviving son Dean, who is also schizophrenic. A blend of history, biography, memoir, and current affairs ending with a consideration of where we might go from here, this is a thought-provoking look at a dreaded illness that has long been misunderstood.

Burdened with perennially rising costs and responsible for providing health insurance to more than one sixth of all Americans, Medicare in its original form is fiscally and demographically unsustainable. In light of dramatic reforms under the Affordable Care Act, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of Medicare. Eleanor D. Kinney explains how the ACA addresses systemic problems of cost and volume inflation; quality assurance; and fraud. Recognizing the potential for more radical change in the future, Kinney also explores the potential of Medicare to become a single-payer system. Comparisons are made with national health systems in Canada and the United Kingdom, from which the United States can draw valuable lessons. An approachable yet comprehensive account of Medicare and the ACA, this book will be invaluable for health care professionals and informed citizens.

In The Autoimmune Solution, Dr. Amy Myers, a renowned leader in functional medicine, offers her medically proven approach to prevent and reverse a wide range of inflammatory-related symptoms and diseases, including allergies, obesity, asthma, cardiovascular disease, fibromyalgia, lupus, IBS, chronic headaches, and Hashimoto's thyroiditis. The Myers Way is built on four pillars: Eliminating toxic foods, such as sugar and caffeine, and inflammatory foods, like dairy, gluten, and grains, which disrupt our digestive system. Introducing restorative ingredients and sup-plements, such as quality proteins, healthy fats, and probiotics, to repair the gut. Identifying environmental toxins in everyday products like shampoo, soap, cosmetics, detergent, and other household products. Healing autoimmune-related infections while relieving the mental, emotional, and physical stress that exacerbate the immune system's response to external toxins. Through this program, Dr. Myers has suc-cessfully treated thousands of patients. Whether you're battling multiple sclerosis or Graves' disease, or you simply want to put an end to nagging minor symptoms, The Autoimmune Solution is a medical breakthrough, a prescriptive and easy-to-follow program designed to fight and defeat the full spectrum of autoimmune diseases.