Autobiography of a Disease documents, in experimental form, the experience of extended life-threatening illness in contemporary US hospitals and clinics. The narrative is based primarily on the author's sudden and catastrophic collapse into a coma and long hospitalization thirteen years ago; but it has also been crafted from twelve years of research on the history of microbiology, literary representations of illness and medical treatment, cultural analysis of MRSA in the popular press, and extended autoethnographic work on medicalization. An experiment in form, the book blends the genres of storytelling, historiography, ethnography, and memoir. Unlike most medical memoirs, told from the perspective of the human patient, Autobiography of a Disease is told from the perspective of a bacterial cluster. This orientation is intended to represent the distribution of perspectives on illness, disability, and pain across subjective centers-from patient to monitoring machine, from body to cell, from caregiver to cared-for-and thus makes sense of illness only in a social context.

Now that 5G ultra-wideband technology is here to stay, the harmful effects of electronic pollution are greater than ever. So what can we do to protect ourselves? The hazards of electronic pollution may once have been the stuff of science fiction, but now we know they're all too real. Dr Joseph Mercola, one of the world's foremost authorities on alternative health, has mined the scientific literature to offer a radical new understanding of how electromagnetic fields impact your body and mind. In this first-of-its-kind guide, he reveals: * What EMFs (electromagnetic fields) actually are, where you find them in your daily life and how they affect you * The toll that EMFs have been proven to take on conditions such as cancer, heart disease and neuropsychiatric illnesses * Why you've been largely kept in the dark about this threat to your health * How you can actually repair the damage done by EMFs at a cellular level * Practical strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones from EMFs at home, at work and out in the world The 5G technology is pervasive and powerful. It is also one of the largest public health experiments in history - with no way of opting out. That's why you need to read this book. Now.

Fainting, the sudden and often unpredictable loss of consciousness, can be a frightening experience. While often benign, fainting can sometimes be the sign of serious illness. Recurrent fainting can significantly disrupt a person's life, and make them prone to injury and, on occasion, death.

"The Fainting Phenomenon, "Second Edition is a valuable information resource for anyone whose life is affected by fainting.

Written for the layperson, this book will help you:
Understand the different reasons why people faint and their significance
Seek proper medical attention and treatment
Deal with related conditions such as Postural Tachycardia Syndrome and Orthostatic Hypertension

This is an indispensable and reassuring guide for parents, families and care givers.

This brand new edition of "ABC of Palliative Care" pulls together the most up-to-date information on this complex, multidisciplinary area in a practical, user-friendly manner. Fully updated, it deals with the important social and psychological aspects for palliative care of people with incurable diseases including quality of life, communication and bereavement issues.

This authoritative, practical title will be invaluable to the increasing numbers of doctors, senior and specialist nurses, and all those health professionals who deal with cancer patients in the hospital, at home or in a hospice.

Chronic diseases have become predominant in Western societies and in many developing countries. They affect quality of life and daily activities and require regular medical care. This unique monograph will bring readers up to date with chronic disease research, with a focus on health-related quality of life and patient perception of the impact of the diseases and health intervention, as well as psychological adaptation to the disease. It considers the application of concepts and measures in medical and psychological clinical practice and in public health policies. Informed by theory, philosophy, history and empirical research, chapters will indicate how readers might advance their own thinking, learning, practice and research. The book is intended to be provocative and challenging to enhance discussion about theory as a key component of research and practice. Perceived Health and Adaptation in Chronic Disease will be of interest to researchers and academics alike. It boasts a wide range of contributions from leading international specialists from Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA. This has also allowed the book to provide readers with a multidisciplinary approach.

Keeping pace with the changing face of genetics in ophthalmology, this Second Edition contains new chapters on molecular genetics, thrombophilia, and genetically triggered retinal vascular diseases, as well as offers many new subchapters highlighting current research by recognized leaders in the field.

Thousands of people from more than eighty countries have traveled to China since 2001 to undergo fetal cell transplantation. Galvanized by the potential of stem and fetal cells to regenerate damaged neurons and restore lost bodily functions, people grappling with paralysis and neurodegenerative disorders have ignored the warnings of doctors and scientists back home in order to stake their futures on a Chinese experiment. Biomedical Odysseys looks at why and how these individuals have entrusted their lives to Chinese neurosurgeons operating on the forefront of experimental medicine, in a world where technologies and risks move faster than laws can keep pace. Priscilla Song shows how cutting-edge medicine is not just about the latest advances in biomedical science but also encompasses transformations in online patient activism, surgical intervention, and borderline experiments in health care bureaucracy. Bringing together a decade of ethnographic research in hospital wards, laboratories, and online patient discussion forums, Song opens up important theoretical and methodological horizons in the anthropology of science, technology, and medicine. She illuminates how poignant journeys in search of fetal cell cures become tangled in complex webs of digital mediation, the entrepreneurial logics of postsocialist medicine, and fraught debates about the ethics of clinical experimentation. Using innovative methods to track the border-crossing quests of Chinese clinicians and their patients from around the world, Biomedical Odysseys is the first book to map the transnational life of fetal cell therapies.

When "Rats, Lice and History" appeared in 1935, Hans Zinsser was a highly regarded Harvard biologist who had never written about historical events. Although he had published under a pseudonym, virtually all of his previous writings had dealt with infections and immunity and had appeared either in medical and scientific journals or in book format. Today he is best remembered as the author of "Rats, Lice, and History," which gone through multiple editions and remains a masterpiece of science writing for a general readership.

To Zinsser, scientific research was high adventure and the investigation of infectious disease, a field of battle. Yet at the same time he maintained a love of literature and philosophy. His goal in "Rats, Lice and History" was to bring science, philosophy, and literature together to establish the importance of disease, and especially epidemic infectious disease, as a major force in human affairs. Zinsser cast his work as the "biography" of a disease. In his view, infectious disease simply represented an attempt of a living organism to survive. From a human perspective, an invading pathogen was abnormal; from the perspective of the pathogen it was perfectly normal.

This book is devoted to a discussion of the biology of typhus and history of typhus fever in human affairs. Zinsser begins by pointing out that the louse was the constant companion of human beings. Under certain conditions-to wash or to change clothing-lice proliferated. The typhus pathogen was transmitted by rat fleas to human beings, who then transmitted it to other humans and in some strains from human to human.

"Rats, Lice and History" is a tour de force. It combines Zinsser's expertise in biology with his broad knowledge of the humanities

In "Chronic Physical Disorders," the most prominent figures in the field of behavioral medicine argue why a biopsychosocial perspective is crucial to reducing the tremendous personal and societal burden of chronic disease. In Part I of this state of the art text, a broad set of theoretical and applied issues are discussed with respect to the role that research can play in the management of chronic physical disorders. Part II focuses on specific chronic disorders, including chapters on coronary heart disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic pain, HIV and AIDS, end-stage renal disease, asthma, and arthritis. Included in each of these chapters is a basic review of biomedical aspects of each disorder followed by a review of the primary behavioral, psychological, and socioenvironmental issues that are most relevant to a given disorder.

Despite what you may have read in the popular press and in social media, Precision Medicine is not devoted to finding unique treatments for individuals, based on analyzing their DNA. To the contrary, the goal of Precision Medicine is to find general treatments that are highly effective for large numbers of individuals who fall into precisely diagnosed groups. We now know that every disease develops over time, through a sequence of defined biological steps, and that these steps may differ among individuals, based on genetic and environmental conditions. We are currently developing rational therapies and preventive measures, based on our precise understanding of the steps leading to the clinical expression of diseases. Precision Medicine and the Reinvention of Human Disease explains the scientific breakthroughs that have changed the way that we understand diseases, and reveals how medical scientists are using this new knowledge to launch a medical revolution.

Nicotine and Other Tobacco Compounds in Neurodegenerative and Psychiatric Diseases: Epidemiological Data on Smoking and Preclinical and Clinical Data on Nicotine provides a comprehensive summary of the epidemiological data on smoking and several neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Tourette's syndrome, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression and ADHD, as well as preclinical and clinical data on the effects of nicotine. Despite the obvious and undisputed harmful nature of smoking, evidence suggests that some tobacco and tobacco smoke-derived constituents may offer neuroprotective effects, possibly in combinations, rather than individually. This unprecedented book describes the complex relationships between smoking and neurological disease and the bioactive compounds found in tobacco. It provides a comprehensive review of nicotine and other compounds found in tobacco plant, with scientific evidence of neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects that may act in conjunction with nicotine to exert neuroprotective effects observed in smokers. By presenting findings beyond harmful cigarette smoke effects, attention can be drawn to individual compounds of tobacco that may serve as inspiration for further therapy development.

Big data, genomics, and quantitative approaches to network-based analysis are combining to advance the frontiers of medicine as never before. Network Medicine introduces this rapidly evolving field of medical research, which promises to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. With contributions from leading experts that highlight the necessity of a team-based approach in network medicine, this definitive volume provides readers with a state-of-the-art synthesis of the progress being made and the challenges that remain. Medical researchers have long sought to identify single molecular defects that cause diseases, with the goal of developing silver-bullet therapies to treat them. But this paradigm overlooks the inherent complexity of human diseases and has often led to treatments that are inadequate or fraught with adverse side effects. Rather than trying to force disease pathogenesis into a reductionist model, network medicine embraces the complexity of multiple influences on disease and relies on many different types of networks: from the cellular-molecular level of protein-protein interactions to correlational studies of gene expression in biological samples. The authors offer a systematic approach to understanding complex diseases while explaining network medicine's unique features, including the application of modern genomics technologies, biostatistics and bioinformatics, and dynamic systems analysis of complex molecular networks in an integrative context. By developing techniques and technologies that comprehensively assess genetic variation, cellular metabolism, and protein function, network medicine is opening up new vistas for uncovering causes and identifying cures of disease.

All-New Revised Edition
Attention deficit disorder (ADD) is a national health crisis that continues to grow--yet it remains one of the most misunderstood and incorrectly treated illnesses today. Neuropsychiatrist Daniel G. Amen, MD was one of the first to identify that there are multiple types beyond just purely hyperactive or inattentive ADD, each requiring a different treatment. Now, in this all-new, revised edition, Dr. Amen again employs the latest medical advances in the field, including the largest brain imaging study ever completed on patients with ADD, to identify, examine, and demystify the 7 distinct types of ADD and their specific treatments.
With updated recommendations for nutraceuticals and/or medications targeted to brain type, diet, exercise, lifestyle interventions, cognitive reprogramming, parenting and educational strategies, neurofeedback, and more, Dr. Amen's revolutionary approach provides a treatment program that can lead sufferers of ADD to a normal, peaceful, and fully functional life.
Sufferers from ADD often say, "The harder I try, the worse it gets." Dr. Amen tells them, for the first time, why, and more importantly how to heal ADD.
See Dr. Amen's Public Television Special on ADD

Critical Care Neurology, Part II: Neurology of Critical Illness focuses on the care specialists and general neurologists that consult in the ICU and their work with patients in acute, life-threatening situations who are dealing with neurologic or neurosurgical crises emanating from either a preexisting neurologic syndrome or from a new neurologic complication appearing as a result of another medical or surgical critical illness. These two separate clinical situations form the pillars of neurocritical care, hence these practices are addressed via two separate, but closely related, HCN volumes. Chapters in both focus on pathophysiology and management, and are tailored for both general neurologists and active neurocritical specialists, with a specific focus on management over diagnostics. Part I addresses the principles of neurocritical care and the management of various neurologic diseases. Part II addresses the interplay between neurologic complications and the surgical, medical, cardiac, and trauma of critical illnesses that most typically present in the ICU.

Autobiography of a Disease documents, in experimental form, the experience of extended life-threatening illness in contemporary US hospitals and clinics. The narrative is based primarily on the author's sudden and catastrophic collapse into a coma and long hospitalization thirteen years ago; but it has also been crafted from twelve years of research on the history of microbiology, literary representations of illness and medical treatment, cultural analysis of MRSA in the popular press, and extended autoethnographic work on medicalization. An experiment in form, the book blends the genres of storytelling, historiography, ethnography, and memoir. Unlike most medical memoirs, told from the perspective of the human patient, Autobiography of a Disease is told from the perspective of a bacterial cluster. This orientation is intended to represent the distribution of perspectives on illness, disability, and pain across subjective centers-from patient to monitoring machine, from body to cell, from caregiver to cared-for-and thus makes sense of illness only in a social context.

A long, healthy, happy life is possible after a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Around the world, thousands of people are living active and fulfilling lives on the Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis Program.The Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis Handbook explains what MS is, and outlines the scientifically credible and evidence-based 7 step self-management program originally devised by Professor George Jelinek. It covers all aspects of living on the program, from first diagnosis to later life, with chapters from medical specialists and other experts on choosing your healthcare team, improving resilience, work, pregnancy and progressive MS. The book taps into the wealth of knowledge and experience in the community of people following the Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis Program, with personal stories from across the world.If you have recently been diagnosed with MS, if you have been living with MS for years, or if you have a family member with MS, the Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis Handbook is your best companion. It is also an invaluable resource for doctors treating people with MS.'If you or someone that you love is impacted by MS this book is a must-read.' - Dr Aaron Boster, The Boster Center for Multiple Sclerosis, Columbus, Ohio'This highly recommended book highlights the importance of a holistic approach to MS management.' - Professor Richard Nicholas, Imperial College London'Overcoming MS is now the essential mainstay of MS management, before or alongside drug therapy, offering the best chance of a full and healthy life for people with MS.' - Dr Peter Silbert, Clinical Professor of Neurology, University of Western Australia Medical School

The improvement of life expectancy and quality is a primary goal of modern societies in both developed and developing countries. However, according to the World Health Organization, the global burden of diseases were estimated to be more than 2.74 billion DALYs with about 56.00 million global total deaths in 2012. In 2030, the projected global burden of diseases and global total deaths are similar to or even higher than that in 2012. What are the causes of DALYs and deaths? What proportion do the causes contribute to global DALYs and deaths? Are global DALYs and deaths preventable? Are daily diets associated with global DALYs or deaths? What is the significance of diets contributing to global DALYs or deaths? Answers to these questions should be vital for the prevention and reduction of global DALYs and deaths. Over 90% of causes contributing to the global total DALYs or deaths are modifiable or causable by daily diets. Therefore, understanding the association of diets with diseases is very necessary for us to reduce the global total DALYs or deaths in the future. Because of vast information about diets and diseases in literature, it is very difficult to fully encompass this data in a single manuscript. This book opts to collect a selected overview of association of diets with some important diseases. This book includes ten chapters. In Chapter One, it is well-researched and subsequently concluded by the authors that diets should be critical factors that can modify or even cause diseases, which significantly contribute to the global burden of diseases or deaths. In Chapter Two, their research, production, applications, regulations and future developments are discussed in detail. In Chapter Three, the evidence from experimental and clinical studies to show the potential effect of polyphenols from tea, coffee and cacao on the prevention of cardiovascular diseases are reviewed. In Chapter Four, the dietary causes of kidney diseases and their prevention by proper diet management are described. In Chapter Five, the dietary risk factors and prevention by proper diets are fully summarised. In Chapter Six, the liver disease risk factors existing in human diets are analysed. In Chapter Seven, the authors discuss how diets can play significant roles in the management or development of liver diseases. In Chapter Eight, the theories related to bone problems with respect to the hypo and hyper conditions of nutrients in relation to bone related problems and proper diet management to prevent them are examined in detail. In Chapter Nine, the association of arthritis and their various forms, causes and symptoms with improper diets and its prevention by diet management are introduced. Finally, in Chapter Ten, the association of diet with overweight individuals, obesity and its prevention by proper diet management are extensively discussed.

This study examines the cultural, social, environmental and political factors that shape the spread of diarrhoea. The case of Vietnam's Mekong Delta shows why the spread of disease is not merely an epidemiological problem, but an institutional one. Social inequalities, the dominance of central-state led discourse and the lack of participatory health education all contribute to a persistently high incidence of disease. This research calls for a re-politicization and contextualization of public health problems, in order to better understand why they occur and therefore be able to prevent them. Panagiota Kotsila is a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain.

For two years the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the world. The physician and medical historian Jacalyn Duffin presents a global history of the virus, with a focus on Canada. Duffin describes the frightening appearance of the virus and its identification by scientists in China; subsequent outbreaks on cruise ships; the relentless spread to Europe, the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere; and the immediate attempts to confront it. COVID-19 next explores the scientific history of infections generally, and the discovery of coronaviruses in particular. Taking a broad approach, the book explains the advent of tests, treatments, and vaccines, as well as the practical politics behind interventions, including quarantines, barrier technologies, lockdowns, and social and financial supports. In concluding chapters Duffin analyzes the outcome of successive waves of COVID-19 infection around the world: the toll of human suffering, the successes and failures of control measures, vaccine rollouts, and grassroots opposition to governments' attempts to limit the spread and mitigate social and economic damages. Closing with the fraught search for the origins of COVID-19, Duffin considers the implications of an "infodemic" and provides an cautionary outlook for the future.

Myeloproliferative disorders are a group of clonal haematological neoplasms characterised by proliferation of one or more cells of myeloid lineage. They are the result of acquired mutations in the progenitor cell leading to hyper proliferation or neoplastic expansion of more mature forms of myeloid cells. Cells retain their functional ability with some degree of defects and also lead to suppression of normal stem cells. The most common type of Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN) can broadly be classified into BCR ABL positive (Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia) and BCR ABL negative Disorders (Polycythemia Vera PV, Essential Thrombocytosis ET and Primary Myelofibrosis PMF). There are other rare types which have relatively low incidence like chronic neutrophilic leukemia, chronic eosinophilic leukemia, systemic mastocytosis and myeloproliferative neoplasms unclassifiable. These are the indolent type of haematological malignancies associated with marrow hypercellularity and organomegaly, with gradual progression to myelofibrosis or transformation to acute leukemias. During the dormant course of the BCR ABL negative MPN, they are more prone to thrombo-hemorrhagic complications and the treatment strategy is directed mostly to prevent complications. The past decade; therapies for BCR ABL positive disease (CML) have been a milestone achievement in keeping the disease in remission for many years, preventing major complications and halting the progression of the disease. This book discusses the classification, diagnosis and treatment of myeloproliferative diseases and provides insight on the symptoms and risk factors involved in the diseases.

This new volume of Current Topics in Developmental Biology provides a comprehensive set of reviews on bHLH transcription factors. bHLH factors are vastly recognized for their diverse roles in developmental processes and their dysfunction underlies various human pathologies. Each chapter is authoritatively written by a leading expert in the field and discusses every possible aspect of this huge and diverse field.