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EATING WELL FOR OPTIMUM HEALTH

Name: EATING WELL FOR OPTIMUM HEALTH
Author: Andrew Weil
ISBN: 0-375-40754-5

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO FOOD, DIET, AND NUTRITION

by Andrew Weil ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2000

Entertaining, thoughtful, and educational.

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From a familiar, reputable—if sometimes offbeat—source, a worthwhile discussion of how to formulate a healthy approach to eating. Weil doesn’t look for easy answers, or absolute rules for readers. Instead, he begins by explaining the seven basic propositions of his own nutritional philosophy, beginning with the fact that we have to eat to live (“Or do we? Throughout history there have been unsubstantiated reports of persons who survive without eating”). Second, eating is a major source of pleasure in life, and any nutritional recommendations that don’t acknowledge that fact are doomed to fail. Weil’s take on it is that many so-called healthy eating proponents—nutritionists, dieticians, and diet-book writers—themselves derive no particular pleasure from eating. Weil’s third proposition is that foods which are healthy and those that are pleasurable are not mutually exclusive. His fourth and fifth points suggest that we recognize eating as a social interaction, and that what we eat reflects our personal and cultural identities. Finally, how we eat is also a determinant of health; and improving eating habits is one strategy for being healthy. Weil looks in depth at basic nutritional facts—again, happily, making clear that there is much we don’t know. He examines the world’s worst and best diets, offers help with buying food and eating out, and includes some of his own favorite recipes here.

Entertaining, thoughtful, and educational.

Pub Date: March 15, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-40754-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000

Categories:

HEALTH & FITNESS

- BOOK REVIEW
SPONTANEOUS HAPPINESS
by Andrew Weil

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NATURAL HEALTH, NATURAL MEDICINE
by Andrew Weil

- BOOK REVIEW
HEALTH AND HEALING
by Andrew Weil

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ALTERED FATES

THE GENETIC RE-ENGINEERING OF HUMAN LIFE

by Jeff Lyon & Peter Gorner ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1995

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Adapted from the authors' Pulitzer Prizewinning series for the Chicago Tribune, a detailed look at the cutting edge of medical research: attacking disease by repairing inherited flaws in the cells of the human body. Gene therapy is potentially as revolutionary as Pasteur's germ theory of disease, especially as science uncovers more and more diseases that can be traced to genetic defects. It is also fraught with controversy, as many researchers urge extreme caution in the introduction of foreign genetic material (often derived from viruses) into the human body. Others (notably William French Anderson, formerly director of the molecular hematology department of the National Institutes of Health) want to push forward with therapies that promise to eradicate genetically based diseases. It is easy to understand this attitude when reading about Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, in which patients have to be restrained to prevent them from attacking their own bodies (as well as those tending them) with their teeth, or adenosine deaminase deficiency, in which the body has no defenses against infection. The authors put often epic political battles in the context of the personal quests of the scientists (who foresee Nobel prizes for the successful pioneers) and of the poignant case histories of the first patients to come forward as guinea pigs for the new therapies (some of whom are now living comparatively normal lives). The second half of the book looks at prospects for future developments in gene therapy, from the prevention of heart disease to the tailoring of drugs to attack tumors in specific locations. Lyon and Gorner also glance at the disturbing potential of genetically enhanced intelligence, and other ``cures'' suggestive of a revived science of eugenics, with all its ethical complexities. Well written, exhaustively researched, and filled with the human stories of the scientists, the doctors, and the patients whose only hope is this new field of medicine.

Pub Date: March 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-393-03596-4

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994

Categories:

HEALTH & FITNESS

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KNOTTED TONGUES

STUTTERING IN HISTORY AND THE QUEST FOR A CURE

by Benson Bobrick ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1995

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A surprisingly entertaining essay on stuttering, chock full of hey-listen-to-this and did-you-ever-know-that anecdotes, plus, for sufferers, an account of a therapy that worked for the author. A stutterer from the age of seven, Bobrick (East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia, 1992) uses his considerable research skills to shed light on this mysterious ailment, which afflicts 55 million people worldwide. The story of how Greek orator Demosthenes worked to overcome stuttering by shouting over the roar of the waves with a mouthful of pebbles is well-known, but Bobrick has dozens of others about notable stutterers—Moses, Claudius, Robert Boyle, Cotton Mather, Lewis Carroll, Somerset Maugham, English kings Charles I and George VI, and Winston Churchill, among others—and how they coped. He describes some of many psychoanalytic theories that attempted to explain stuttering and some of the astonishing therapies that sought to cure it (nosedrops, purgatives, gargling with breast milk, wrapping the tongue in little towels soaked in lettuce juice), and a host of surgeries (most frequently on the tongue, but also on the skull, the adenoids, and even the coccyx). Effective therapy, however, awaited a more complete understanding of neurophysiology, and in his final chapter, Bobrick concentrates on the work of Ronald Webster, an experimental psychologist who concluded that stuttering is a motor-control disorder based on a defect in the auditory feedback loop and developed an effective program to treat it. Eight years ago Bobrick enrolled in a program based on Webster's work, and has ``seldom stuttered since.'' No knots in this author's tongue. If the book has a weakness, it's the final chapter on current understanding and treatment of stuttering: a touch lackluster compared with the lively and amusing history that precedes it.