Showing titles in Public Health

Mainstream health science has let you down. Weight loss is not the key to health, diet and exercise are not effective weight-loss strategies, and fatness is not a death sentence. Body Respect debunks common myths about weight, including the misconceptions that BMI can accurately measure health, that fatness necessarily leads to disease, and that dieting will improve health. The authors also help make sense of how poverty and oppression - such as racism, homophobia, and classism - affect life opportunity, self-worth, and even influence metabolism.

Addiction is a preventable, treatable disease, not a moral failing. As with other illnesses, the approaches most likely to work are based on science - not on faith, tradition, contrition, or wishful thinking. These facts are the foundation of Clean, a myth-shattering look at drug abuse by the author of Beautiful Boy. Based on the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, Clean is a leap beyond the traditional approaches to prevention and treatment of addiction.

Physician, researcher, and ethics professor Matt McCarthy is on the front lines of a groundbreaking clinical trial testing a new antibiotic to fight lethal superbugs, bacteria that have built up resistance to the life-saving drugs in our rapidly dwindling arsenal. This trial serves as the backdrop for the compulsively listenable Superbugs, and the results will impact nothing less than the future of humanity.

Sigmund Freud revolutionized the way in which we think about ourselves. From its beginnings as a theory of neurosis Freud developed psychoanalysis into a general psychology, which became widely accepted as the predominant mode of discussing personality and interpersonal relationships. Anthony Storr goes one step further and investigates the status of Freud's legacy today and the disputes that surround it.

Mama Might Be Better Off Dead immerses listeners in the lives of four generations of a poor, African-American family in the neighborhood, who are beset with the devastating illnesses that are all too common in America's inner-cities. Headed by Jackie Banes, who oversees the care of a diabetic grandmother, a husband on kidney dialysis, an ailing father, and three children, the Banes family contends with countless medical crises.

New York Times best-selling author Seth Siegel tells how contaminants got in our drinking water, what they’re doing to us, and what we must do to make our water safe.

In January 2020, Admiral Brett P. Giroir, MD, was among the first federal leaders tapped to handle the reintegration of US citizens from Wuhan, China, in the earliest days of what became the Covid-19 pandemic. As such, he was one of the few to see what everyone believed were the only Americans exposed to the novel virus at the time. Ultimately, Giroir would be called to serve on the White House Coronavirus Task Force under President Donald Trump.

When it comes to our health, too many of us feel trapped by a medical diagnosis, believing that it can only mean a static or worsening condition. Whether it is stiff knees, frayed nerves or failing eyesight, your mind can lead you to believe things will only get worse. But with practical steps and scientific research you can take control of your mindset, by using your thoughts and perspective to help improve your wellbeing. In The Mindful Body, Ellen J. Langer draws on her lifetime of expertise and trailblazing research by revealing the capacity that mindfulness has to transform our lives.

Still Not Safe is the story of the rise of the patient - safety movement - and how an "epidemic" of medical errors was derived from a reality that didn't support such a characterization. Physician Robert Wears and organizational theorist Kathleen Sutcliffe trace the origins of patient safety to the emergence of market trends that challenged the place of doctors in the larger medical ecosystem.

Boldly original, Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human body - our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. Unlike a traditional anatomy book, this groundbreaking work illuminates the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems.

This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today, and in a new preface addresses the global threat of COVID-19. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare.

This well-researched and highly critical examination of the state of our mental health system by the industry's most relentless critic presents a new and controversial explanation as to why - in spite of spending $147 billion annually - 140,000 seriously mentally ill are homeless, 390,000 are incarcerated, and even educated, tenacious, and caring people can't get treatment for their mentally ill loved ones.

Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries. The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things. Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America.

It's hard to talk about death in America. But even though the topic has been taboo, life's end is an eventual reality. So why not shape it to our values? Finish Strong is for those of us who want an end-of-life experience to match the life we've enjoyed. We know we should prepare, but are unsure how to think and talk about it, how to live true to our values and priorities, and how to make our wishes stick.

In Soda Politics, Dr. Marion Nestle details all of the ways that the soft drink industry works overtime to make drinking soda as common and accepted as drinking water for adults and children. Dr. Nestle, a renowned food and nutrition policy expert and public health advocate, shows how sodas are principally miracles of advertising.

The kidney is an extraordinary organ—in many ways the regulator, the metronome, the keeper of the human body’s delicate equilibrium. On a given day, minute by minute, it purifies the body of toxins it encounters from diet, climate, activity, and injury. It allows us to be and to move in the world. And yet most of us know so very little about these extraordinary vessels nestled in our bodies—and indeed millions of us only really learn about them when they stop working. Nearly a million Americans every year have end stage kidney disease, about 37 million have some form of chronic kidney disease.

In this "meticulously researched" account (New York Times Book Review), a Pulitzer Prize-winning author examines the dangers of a failing public health system unequipped to handle large-scale global risks like a coronavirus pandemic.

In Denying to the Grave, Sara Gorman and Jack Gorman explore the psychology of health science denial. Using several examples as case studies, they propose six key principles that may lead people to reject "accepted" health-related wisdom. This fully updated new edition reviews the most recent research on health science denial, offering a new chapter on how the contemporary "assault on science" waged by certain political administrations has eroded public trust in national health and science agencies.

In Phantom Plague, Vidya Krishnan, traces the history of tuberculosis from the slums of 19th-century New York to modern Mumbai. In a narrative spanning century, Krishnan shows how superstition and folk remedies made way for scientific understanding of TB, such that it was controlled and cured in the West.

Lurking in our homes, hiding in our offices, and polluting the air we breathe is something sinister. Something we’ve turned a blind eye to for far too long. Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a pediatrician, professor, and world-renowned researcher, tells the story of how our everyday surroundings are making us sicker, fatter, and poorer. Through a blend of narrative, scientific detective work, and concrete information about the connections between chemicals and disease, he reveals what we can do to protect ourselves and our families in the short-term, and how we can help bring the change we deserve.