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Books > Medicine > General issues
This book is about pleasure. It's also about pain. Most important, it's about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential.
We're living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting... The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we've all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain...and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.
This ambitious volume, worldwide in scope and ranging from
antiquity to the present, examines the human encounter with
Unreason in all its manifestations, the challenges it poses to
society and our responses to it. In twelve chapters organized
chronologically from the Bible to Freud, from exorcism to
mesmerism, from Bedlam to Victorian asylums, from the theory of
humours to modern pharmacology, Andrew Scull writes compellingly
about madness, its meanings, its consequences and our attempts to
understand and treat it.
Tourette syndrome (TS) is finally recognized as a common
neurodevelopmental disorder, and has gained increasingly high
social awareness and scientific interest worldwide. Knowledge of
its clinical presentation, mechanisms of disease, and available
treatment approaches has increased remarkably over the last decade.
Likewise, the way clinicians, teachers, social care workers and
families face the problems manifested by patients with TS is
rapidly evolving. Tourette Syndrome, edited by Davide Martino and
James F. Leckman, offers a unique opportunity to capture this
interesting momentum through a comprehensive and up-to-date
overview. Tourette Syndrome covers all of the main aspects related
to TS, analyzing the complexity of its clinical presentation, the
novel viewpoints of causes and mechanisms, the best way to assess
TS patients, and the multifaceted and multidisciplinary treatment
options. The multidisciplinary and up-to-date content is the main
asset of this volume, which represents a useful source of
consultation for a wide audience of professionals, all of whom will
have access to what is known so far on TS within their particular
area of expertise, at the same time being able to expand and update
their knowledge in other areas. Medical and PhD students, as well
as post-doctoral scientists, will be able to use the volume as a
valuable learning source. Also, questions for future research are
clearly presented in the volume, providing a summary of the
viewpoint of the contributing authors upon where research on TS
should be heading. Finally, clinicians and other health
professionals will have access at a glance to the main patients'
associations and organizations dedicated to TS worldwide, which can
facilitate the direct contact with patients.
This book offers an antidote to the "medicalization" of health care
and observes the special needs of socioeconomically disadvantaged
persons with respect to health. It is useful for practitioners in
the fields of mental health, family and child welfare, gerontology,
and industrial practice.
From the physician behind the wildly popular Nutrition Facts website, How Not to Die reveals the groundbreaking scientific evidence behind the only diet that can help prevent and reverse many of the causes of disease-related death.
In How Not to Die, Dr. Michael Greger, the internationally-renowned nutrition expert, physician, and founder of NutritionFacts.org, examines the fifteen top causes of premature death in America--heart disease, various cancers, diabetes, Parkinson's, high blood pressure, and more--and explains how nutritional and lifestyle interventions can sometimes trump prescription pills and other pharmaceutical and surgical approaches to help prevent and reverse these diseases, freeing us to live healthier lives.
The simple truth is that most doctors are good at treating acute illnesses but bad at preventing chronic disease. The fifteen leading causes of death claim the lives of 1.6 million Americans annually. This doesn't have to be the case. By following Dr. Greger's advice, all of it backed up by strong scientific evidence, you will learn which foods to eat and which lifestyle changes to make to live longer.
History of prostate cancer in your family? Put down that glass of milk and add flaxseed to your diet whenever you can. Have high blood pressure? Hibiscus tea can work better than a leading hypertensive drug-and without the side effects. Fighting off liver disease? Drinking coffee can reduce liver inflammation. Battling breast cancer? Consuming soy is associated with prolonged survival. Worried about heart disease (the number 1 killer in the United States)? Switch to a whole-food, plant-based diet, which has been repeatedly shown not just to prevent the disease but often stop it in its tracks.
In addition to showing what to eat to help treat the top fifteen causes of death, How Not to Die includes Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen -a checklist of the twelve foods we should consume every day.Full of practical, actionable advice and surprising, cutting edge nutritional science, these doctor's orders are just what we need to live longer, healthier lives.
This book presents a logical system of critical appraisal, to allow
readers to evaluate studies and to carry out their own studies more
effectively. This system emphasizes the central importance of cause
and effect relationships. Its great strength is that it is
applicable to a wide range of issues, and both to intervention
trials and observational studies. This system unifies the often
different approaches used in epidemiology, health services
research, clinical trials, and evidence-based medicine, starting
from a logical consideration of cause and effect. The author's
approach to the issues of study design, selection of subjects,
bias, confounding, and the place of statistical methods has been
praised for its clarity and interest. Systematic reviews,
meta-analysis, and the applications of this logic to evidence-based
medicine, knowledge-based health care, and health practice and
policy are discussed. Current and often controversial examples are
used, including screening for prostate cancer, publication bias in
psychiatry, public health issues in developing countries, and
conflicts between observational studies and randomized trials.
Statistical issues are explained clearly without complex
mathematics, and the most useful methods are summarized in the
appendix. The final chapters give six applications of the critical
appraisal of major studies: randomized trials of medical treatment
and prevention, a prospective and a retrospective cohort study, a
small matched case-control study, and a large case-control study.
In these chapters, sections of the original papers are reproduced
and the original studies placed in context by a summary of current
developments.
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Salim S. Abdool Karim was catapulted into a prominent position in the media and on television as the face of South African science in the country's response to the pandemic. Up to that point, his groundbreaking research on AIDS had garnered many awards, leading to his recognition as one of the world’s leading epidemiologists, making him ideally positioned to take the scientific lead in the Covid-19 response.
Standing Up for Science is Abdool Karim’s personal, behind-the-scenes account of the first three years of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is inspiring and informative, shedding light on the difficulties in providing scientific advice, on the international co-operation that was integral to responding to the pandemic, as well as giving insight to some of the controversies in the science-to-policy process, and drawing lessons from Covid-19 to prepare for future pandemics.
Beyond the recent events in which the story is grounded, the book is an ode to the value of science and its power to help us tackle some of the world's biggest problems.
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