Tag Archives: health

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal – Mary Roach

“America’s funniest science writer” (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour.

The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars.

Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis?

In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal.

With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists—who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.
Like all of Roach’s books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity – John Mackey, Alona Pulde, Matthew Lederman

The Whole Foods Diet simplifies the huge body of science, research, and advice that is available today and reveals the undeniable consensus: a whole foods, plant-based diet is the optimum diet for health and longevity.

Standing on the shoulders of the Whole Foods Market brand and featuring an accessible 28-day program, delicious recipes, inspirational success stories, and a guilt-free approach to plant-based eating, The Whole Foods Diet is a life-affirming invitation to become a Whole Foodie: someone who loves to eat, loves to live, and loves to nourish themselves with nature’s bounty.

If Whole Foods Market is “shorthand for a food revolution” (The New Yorker), then The Whole Foods Diet will give that revolution its bible – the unequivocal truth about what to eat for a long, healthy, disease-free life.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Ageless Brain: Think Faster, Remember More, and Stay Sharper by Lowering Your Brain Age – Julia VanTine

Break through research has revealed that through living a brain-healthy lifestyle, we can reduce our “brain age” to improve memory, hone sharpness, and reduce health risks as we age.

It’s normal for the brain to short-circuit every now and again—you put your keys in the fridge, or can’t find the pair of glasses on top of your head. But what if there was away to eat, exercise, and live that could eliminate these “senior moments?” Ageless Brain offers a plan to sharpen your memories and minds so that at 40, you have the quick, agile brain you had at 30. Based Off of groundbreaking scientific research, this plan is filled with brain-healthy foods, exercises, and little ways that you can positively impact your most vital organ every day by de-stressing, adjusting your attitude, and constantly interacting with the world through play.

Scientists have discovered that the human brain continually generates new neurons—forging new pathways and connections in our minds—well into old age as long as we pursue brain-healthy lifestyles from what we eat and how much we sleep, to how we exercise and how we handle stress. Exercising and nourishing our brains just like we do any other ailing organ encourages this growth—improving not only our mental fitness, but also our physical fitness as a side effect.

With Ageless Brain , you will discover the 10 Commandments of an ageless brain, reduce key risk-factors for Alzheimer’s, identify and avoid brain poisons lurking in their food, medicines, and home, learn to play and engage your brain more in everyday life, drop unsafe levels of blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar—as well as belly fat, and keep your brain nourished with 45 recipes.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts – Mary Claire Haver

Filling a gaping hole in menopause care, everything a woman needs to know to thrive during her hormonal transition and beyond, as well as the tools to help her take charge of her health at this pivotal life stage–by the bestselling author of The Galveston Diet.

Menopause is inevitable, but suffering through it is not! This is the empowering approach to self-advocacy that pioneering women’s health advocate Dr. Mary Claire Haver takes for women in the midst of hormonal change in The New Menopause. A comprehensive, authoritative book of science-backed information and lived experience, it covers every woman’s needs:

The very latest research on the benefits and side effects of hormone replacement therapy.
Arming women with the power to secure vibrant health and well-being for the rest of their lives, The New Menopause is sure to become the bible of midlife wellness for present and future generations.

From changes in your appearance and sleep patterns to neurological, musculoskeletal, psychological, and sexual issues, a comprehensive A to Z toolkit of science-backed options for coping with symptoms.

What to do to mediate the risks associated with your body’s natural drop in estrogen production, including for diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and weight gain.

How to advocate and prepare for annual midlife wellness visits, including questions for your doctor and how to insist on whole life care.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs – Johann Hari

The bestselling author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus offers a revelatory look at the drugs upending weight loss as we knew it—from his personal experience on Ozempic to what these drugs mean for our society’s deeply dysfunctional relationship with food, weight, and our bodies.

In January 2023, bestselling author Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic, the diabetes drug that produces significant weight loss. He wasn’t alone—credible predictions suggest that in two years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking this class of drug.

Proponents say that this is a biological solution to a biological problem. While 95 percent of diets fail, the average person taking one of the new drugs will lose a quarter of their body weight in six months, and keep it off for as long as they take it. Here is a moment of liberation from an illness that massively increases your chances of diabetes, dementia, and cancer, and causes 10 percent of all deaths.

Still, Hari was wildly conflicted. The massive rise in obesity rates around the world in the last half century didn’t happen because something went wrong with human biology. We began to eat food designed to be maximally addictive. We built cities that are impossible to walk or bike around. We became much more stressed, making us seek out more comfort snacks.

From this perspective, the new weight loss drugs arrive at a moment of madness. We built a food system that poisons us, then decided en masse to inject ourselves with a different potential poison that puts us off all food.

A personal journey through weight loss combined with scientific evidence from experts, Magic Pill explores, as only Hari can, questions How did we get to this point? What does it reveal about our society that we couldn’t solve this problem socially, and instead turned to potentially risky pharmaceutical solutions? And will this free us from social pressure to conform to an ideal body type—or make that pressure even more dangerously intense?