Solid, easily assimilated evidence showing how microbes are an integral part of a child’s healthy life.
Why dirt and microbes are good for your child.
With the development of antibiotics, vaccines, and sterilization techniques, the world has seen a sharp decline in the spread of infectious diseases. However, Finlay (Microbiology/Univ. of British Columbia) and Arrieta provide ample evidence showing that our world of prescription antibiotics, antibacterial soaps, and hand sanitizers—all used to combat disease and encourage hypercleanliness—are also contributing to a steady increase in “diabetes, allergies, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), autoimmune diseases, autism, certain types of cancer, and even obesity.” Beginning with pregnancy, the authors discuss the pros and cons of antibiotic use by mothers and how they change their microbial environment and can cause asthma, eczema, and hay fever in infants. Vaginal births deliver a multitude of beneficial microbes to the infant, and the authors suggest those who need caesarean sections consider a technique called “seeding,” wherein the mother’s vagina is swabbed to collect secretions that are wiped on the baby, the mother’s chest, and nipples. This provides the infant with important beneficial microbes necessary for development after the near-sterile environment of the womb. Breast milk comes with its own set of microbes beneficial to the infant, helping the intestines mature sufficiently to handle the next stage of development: the introduction of solid foods. The authors discuss the advantages of having pets and the need for exposure to the wild outdoors. They give special attention to the links between antibiotics and the increase in obesity, diabetes, and inflammatory bowel diseases—in children and in adults. Short do's and don’ts lists help solidify the information. Overall, claim the authors, parents must be less hypervigilant about fighting bacteria, as many types of them are actually necessary for our children to be vigorous and strong.
Solid, easily assimilated evidence showing how microbes are an integral part of a child’s healthy life.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61620-649-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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