One major example of the synergy of bioactive foods and extracts is their role as an antioxidant and the related remediation of cardiovascular disease. There is compelling evidence tosuggest that oxidative stress is implicated in the physiology of several major cardiovascular diseases including heart failure and increased free radical formation and reduced antioxidant defences. Studies indicate bioactive foods reduce the incidence of these conditions, suggestive of a potential cardioprotective role of antioxidant nutrients.

BioactiveFood as Dietary Interventions for Cardiovascular Diseaseinvestigates the role of foods, herbs and novel extracts in moderating the pathology leading to cardiovascular disease. It reviews existing literature, and presents new hypotheses and conclusions on the effects of different bioactive components of the diet.
Addresses the most positive results from dietary interventions using bioactive foods to impact cardiovascular diseaseDocuments foods that can affect metabolic syndrome and other related conditionsConvenient, efficient and effective source that allows readers to identify potential uses of compounds or indicate those compounds whose use may be of little or no health benefitAssociated information can be used to understand other diseases that share common etiological pathways"

This book presents the health reform experiences over the past three decades of twelve small and medium-sized nations that are not often included in international comparative studies in this field. The major conclusion of the study is that despite many similarities in policy goals, policy challenges and in the menu of policy options for countries that seek to offer universal coverage to their population, the health reforms of the nations in this book did not converge into one direction or model. However, we found several widespread policy experiences that are relevant for others, too.For example, user fees are unpopular everywhere. Governments often try to soften the consequences by exempting large groups of users, thus largely defeating the very purpose of those fees.As a second example, the introduction of new payment modes for medical care — like the shift from fee for service to case-based payment — took much longer than originally expected everywhere, and also failed to deliver their promises of improved transparency or efficiency gains A third example is that proposals are for universal coverage often ignore the challenges of implementing new financing models that elsewhere took decades if not centuries to develop.The conclusions contain both empirical findings and theoretical conclusions of interest to policy-makers and scholars of international comparison. It is accessible for academics, healthcare managers and students as well as a wider audience of readers interested in the changes in healthcare across the world.

This book shows how psychological aspects of individuals and of couple relationships can work as both protective or risk factors to the health of diabetes patients and their partners. Departing from a social psychologic perspective, it analyzes how individual attributes and personal relationships influence health, focusing on the impacts that diabetes as a chronic-degenerative disease has on the psychological state of the patient and on their most immediate social context. The volume is divided in three parts: the first focuses on the patient, the second on the partner and the third on the couple relationship. The first part examines how attachment styles, optimism, resilience, self-efficacy in emotional regulation, loneliness and rumination impact the stress experienced by the diabetic patient. The second part analyzes how the partner's altruism, affectivity, jealousy, criticism or indifference affects the physical health of the diabetic patient. Finally, the third part explores the relationship between negative emotions and the couple's motives of conflict, as well as the effects of the communication styles used, emotional warmth and empathy in the satisfaction with the relationship in couples where one of the members is a diabetes patient. Diabetes and Couple Relationship: Protective and Risk Factors will be a valuable resource for researchers, students and professionals in the fields of health and clinical psychology, social psychology and public health interested in better understanding how personal characteristics and relationships can affect the physical and psychological health of chronic disease patients, as well as their well-being and quality of life.

For many women around the globe, health has become the central intersection of the personal and the political; women's bodies are the arena for policy debates about population, poverty, reproduction, and morality. Women's Global Health: Norms and State Policies is a comprehensive assessment of health for women around the globe that will inform debates underway in a wide range of disciplines. These fields include public health, most obviously, but also sociology, anthropology and other disciplines. This book will advance the interdisciplinary fields of ethics, women's studies, and international studies. It answers several questions with implications for knowledge in the preceding fields, along with relevance to policy. Some of these complex questions include: How do the laws and policies of a nation-state affect women's health? Is the state invested in these issues because women are seen to be bearers and nurturers of future citizens? Or are there other concerns such as economic development, human welfare, or religious ideology that shape this engagement? This book also examines the current and historical responsibilities of the state in addressing women's health issues, and how these responsibilities can they be measured and improved upon. Finally, the book looks at how to best approach the underlying ethical issues in practical and useful ways for women around the globe.

The historical study of food, culture, and society has become established within the academy based on a generation of high-quality scholarship. Following the foundational work of the French Annales school, the International Committee for the Research into European Food History and the Institut Europeen d'Histoire et des Cultures de l'Alimentation have conducted wide-ranging research, particularly on the changes brought about by culinary modernization. In the United States, the ascendancy of cultural history in the 1990s encouraged young scholars to write dissertations on food-related topics. Despite the existence of at least four major scholarly journals focused on food, the field still lacks a solid foundation of historiographical writing. As a result, innovative early approaches to commodity chains, ethnic identities, and culinary transformation have become repetitive. Meanwhile, scholars are often unaware of relevant literature when it does not directly relate to their particular national and chronological focus. The Oxford Handbook of Food History places existing works in historiographical context, crossing disciplinary, chronological, and geographic boundaries, while also suggesting new routes for future research. The twenty-seven essays in this book are organized into five basic sections: historiography and disciplinary approaches as well as the production, circulation, and consumption of food. Chapters on historiography examine the French Annales school, political history, the cultural turn, labor, and public history. Disciplinary methods that have contributed significantly to the history of food including anthropology, sociology, geography, the emerging Critical Nutrition Studies. The final chapter in this section explores the uses of food in the classroom. The production section encompasses agriculture, pastoralism, and the environment; using cookbooks as historical documents; food and empire; industrial foods; and fast food. Circulation is examined through the lenses of human mobility, chronological frames, and food regimes, along with case studies of the medieval spice trade, the Columbian exchange, and modern culinary tourism. Finally, the consumption section focuses on communities that arise through the sharing of food, including religion, race and ethnicity, national cuisines, and social movements.

IN THE WAR AGAINST DISEASES, THEY ARE THE SPECIAL FORCES.

They always keep a bag packed. They seldom have more than twenty-four hours' notice before they are dispatched. The phone calls that tell them to head to the airport, sometimes in the middle of the night, may give them no more information than the country they are traveling to and the epidemic they will tackle when they get there.

The universal human instinct is to run from an outbreak of disease. These doctors run toward it.

They are the disease detective corps of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal agency that tracks and tries to prevent disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks around the world. They are formally called the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) -- a group founded more than fifty years ago out of fear that the Korean War might bring the use of biological weapons -- and, like intelligence operatives in the traditional sense, they perform their work largely in anonymity. They are not household names, but over the years they were first to confront the outbreaks that became known as hantavirus, Ebola virus, and AIDS. Now they hunt down the deadly threats that dominate our headlines: West Nile virus, anthrax, and SARS.

In this riveting narrative, Maryn McKenna -- the only journalist ever given full access to the EIS in its fifty-three-year history -- follows the first class of disease detectives to come to the CDC after September 11, the first to confront not just naturally occurring outbreaks but the man-made threat of bioterrorism. They are talented researchers -- many with young families -- who trade two years of low pay and extremely long hours for the chance to be part of the group that has helped eradicate smallpox, push back polio, and solve the first major outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease, toxic shock syndrome, and "E. coli" O157.

Urgent, exhilarating, and compelling, "Beating Back the Devil" goes with the EIS as they try to stop epidemics -- before the epidemics stop us.

The effective delivery of healthcare services is vital to the general welfare and well-being of a country's citizens. Financial infrastructure and policy reform can play a significant role in optimizing existing healthcare programs. Health Economics and Healthcare Reform: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice is a comprehensive source of academic material on the importance of economic structures and policy reform initiatives in modern healthcare systems. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics such as clinical costing, patient engagement, and e-health, this book is ideally designed for medical practitioners, researchers, professionals, and students interested in the optimization of healthcare delivery.

The book presents advanced AI based technologies in dealing with COVID-19 outbreak and provides an in-depth analysis of variety of COVID-19 datasets throughout globe. It discusses recent artificial intelligence based algorithms and models for data analysis of COVID-19 symptoms and its possible remedies. It provides a unique opportunity to present the work on state-of-the-art of modern artificial intelligence tools and technologies to track and forecast COVID-19 cases. It indicates insights and viewpoints from scholars regarding risk and resilience analytics for policy making and operations of large-scale systems on this epidemic. A snapshot of the latest architectures, frameworks in machine learning and data science are also highlighted to gather and aggregate data records related to COVID-19 and to diagnose the virus. It delivers significant research outcomes and inspiring new real-world applications with respect to feasible AI based solutions in COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, it discusses strong preventive measures to control such pandemic.