Recommendations based on "Better"

Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society.” —Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times Science bestseller Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY • The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease."Reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness." —Oprah WinfreyDon and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • #1 GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER • USA TODAY BESTSELLER You are not broken. Being a woman is not a diagnosis. Take your body back with the groundbreaking new science for women in Hormone Intelligence. Hormonal. We all know what it means when we hear it – and feel it. While hormonal shifts are natural throughout women’s lives, too many experience distressing period symptoms, struggle daily with PCOS, endometriosis, a fertility challenge, pain, low sex drive, sleep problems, acne, bloating, hot flashes, and more – all due to hormone-related problems. And too many are unable to get the answers they’re really seeking from their doctors. There is a solution. In Hormone Intelligence, Yale trained and internationally renowned women’s health expert, Dr. Aviva Romm, helps you identify the root causes of your symptoms and guides you through a 6-week proven program to achieve lifelong hormonal and gynecologic health. Using a holistic, dietary and lifestyle changing approach, Hormone Intelligence goes beyond treating symptoms to the deeper factors impacting women’s health, so you can reclaim your body, hormones, and self. Inside Hormone Intelligence, you’ll find: ·       Hormone Health 101: Understand the key components of the hormone epidemic and associated dietary and lifestyle triggers. ·       Symptoms and Root Causes Demystified: Discover what your symptoms are saying about your hormones with quizzes, checklists, trackers, and more. ·       A 6-Week Action Plan: Learn what foods you should indulge and avoid, how to repair your microbiome to support hormone health, how to identify environmental hormone disruptors, engage your body’s natural detoxification systems and reduce hidden inflammation, and the lifestyle changes that lead to happy, healthy hormones. ·       Delicious, done-for-you meal plans to take you through the entire program, including vegan options. Hormone Intelligence is an invitation to a whole new relationship with your body and hormones, the exhale you’ve been waiting for, and the first step on the road to realizing that a diagnosis does not have to be your destiny. Extended references, a complete index, and additional resources for Hormone Intelligence can be found at the author's website. 

The story of one man's evolution from naïve and ambitious young intern to world-class neurosurgeon.With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick’s patients and unsparing yet fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain―the culmination of decades spent struggling to learn an unforgiving craft―illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.

Editor of the award-winning site Feministing.com, Maya Dusenbery brings together scientific and sociological research, interviews with doctors and researchers, and personal stories from women across the country to provide the first comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today.In Doing Harm, Dusenbery explores the deep, systemic problems that underlie women’s experiences of feeling dismissed by the medical system. Women have been discharged from the emergency room mid-heart attack with a prescription for anti-anxiety meds, while others with autoimmune diseases have been labeled “chronic complainers” for years before being properly diagnosed. Women with endometriosis have been told they are just overreacting to “normal” menstrual cramps, while still others have “contested” illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia that, dogged by psychosomatic suspicions, have yet to be fully accepted as “real” diseases by the whole of the profession.An eye-opening read for patients and health care providers alike, Doing Harm shows how women suffer because the medical community knows relatively less about their diseases and bodies and too often doesn’t trust their reports of their symptoms. The research community has neglected conditions that disproportionately affect women and paid little attention to biological differences between the sexes in everything from drug metabolism to the disease factors—even the symptoms of a heart attack. Meanwhile, a long history of viewing women as especially prone to “hysteria” reverberates to the present day, leaving women battling against a stereotype that they’re hypochondriacs whose ailments are likely to be “all in their heads.”Offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its sometimes catastrophic consequences, Doing Harm is a rallying wake-up call that will change the way we look at health care for women.

Introduction: "He is still out there"--What came before zero? -- The cluster study -- "Humanizing this disease" -- Giving a face to the epidemic -- Ghosts and blood -- Locating Gaétan Dugas's views -- Epilogue: zero hour-making histories of the North American AIDS epidemic

'The best deep dive into the diseases that plague us all today, and what to do to heal.' Jessie Inchauspe, The Glucose Goddess 'Good Energy is a powerful vision for a brighter future – for both people and the planet.' Jay Shetty 'A tour de force' Dr Mark Hyman

"All women need to read this book."—Dave Asprey, author of The Bulletproof Diet"Groundbreaking solutions for the common hormonal struggles women face both on and off birth control."—Amy Medling, founder of PCOS Diva and author of Healing PCOSA natural, effective program for restoring hormone balance, normalizing your period, and reversing the harmful side effects of ‘The Pill’—for the millions of women who take it for acne, PMS, menstrual cramps, PCOS, Endometriosis, and many more reasons other than contraception.Out of the 100 million women—almost 11 million in the United States alone—who are on the pill, roughly 60 percent take it for non-contraceptive reasons like painful periods, endometriosis, PCOS, and acne. While the birth control pill is widely prescribed as a quick-fix solution to a variety of women’s health conditions, taking it can also result in other more serious and dangerous health consequences. Did you know that women on the pill are more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant? That they are at significantly increased risk for autoimmune disease, heart attack, thyroid and adrenal disorders, and even breast and cervical cancer? That the pill can even cause vaginal dryness, unexplained hair loss, flagging libido, extreme fatigue, and chronic infection. As if women didn’t have enough to worry about, that little pill we’re taking to manage our symptoms is only making things worse.Jolene Brighten, ND, author of the groundbreaking new book Beyond the Pill, specializes in treating women’s hormone imbalances caused by the pill and shares her proven 30-day program designed to reverse the myriad of symptoms women experience every day—whether you choose to stay on the pill or not. The first book of its kind to target the birth control pill and the scientifically-proven symptoms associated with taking it, Beyond the Pill is an actionable plan for taking control, and will help readers: Locate the root cause of their hormonal issues, like estrogen dominance, low testosterone, and low progesterone Discover a pain-free, manageable period free of cramps, acne, stress, or PMS without the harmful side effects that come with the pill Detox the liver, support the adrenals and thyroid, heal the gut, reverse metabolic mayhem, boost fertility, and enhance mood Transition into a nutrition and supplement program, with more than 30 hormone-balancing recipesFeaturing simple diet and lifestyle interventions, Beyond the Pill is the first step to reversing the risky side effects of the pill, finally finding hormonal health, and getting your badass self back.

It lurks in the corner of our imagination, almost beyond our ability to see it: the possibility that a tear in the fabric of life could open up without warning, upending a house, a skyscraper, or a civilization.Today, nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? Will our upbringing, our gender, our personality–anything we’ve ever learned, thought, or dreamed of–ultimately matter?Amanda Ripley, an award-winning journalist for Time magazine who has covered some of the most devastating disasters of our age, set out to discover what lies beyond fear and speculation. In this magnificent work of investigative journalism, Ripley retraces the human response to some of history’s epic disasters, from the explosion of the Mont Blanc munitions ship in 1917–one of the biggest explosions before the invention of the atomic bomb–to a plane crash in England in 1985 that mystified investigators for years, to the journeys of the 15,000 people who found their way out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Then, to understand the science behind the stories, Ripley turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts, formal and informal, from a Holocaust survivor who studies heroism to a master gunfighter who learned to overcome the effects of extreme fear.Finally, Ripley steps into the dark corners of her own imagination, having her brain examined by military researchers and experiencing through realistic simulations what it might be like to survive a plane crash into the ocean or to escape a raging fire.Ripley comes back with precious wisdom about the surprising humanity of crowds, the elegance of the brain’s fear circuits, and the stunning inadequacy of many of our evolutionary responses. Most unexpectedly, she discovers the brain’s ability to do much, much better, with just a little help.The Unthinkable escorts us into the bleakest regions of our nightmares, flicks on a flashlight, and takes a steady look around. Then it leads us home, smarter and stronger than we were before.

Writing with all the passion of Love Story and power of The Class, Erich Segal sweeps us into the lives of the Harvard Medical School's class of 1962. His stunning novel reveals the making of doctors--what makes them tick, scheme, hurt . . . and love. From the crucible of med school's merciless training through the demanding hours of internship and residency to the triumphs--and sometimes tragedies--beyond, Doctors brings to vivid life the men and women who seek to heal but who must first walk through fire. At the novel's heart is the unforgettable relationship of Barney Livingston and Laura Castellano, childhood friends who separately find unsettling celebrity and unsatisfying love--until their friendship ripens into passion. Yet even their devotion to each other, even their medical gifts may not be enough to save the one life they treasure above all others. Doctors --heartbreaking, witty, inspiring, and utterly, grippingly real--is a vibrant portrait that culminates in a murder, a trial . . . and a miracle.From the Paperback edition.