A convincing defense of an innovative method for relieving back pain.
Lutz, a physician, makes the case for a new treatment for back pain in this nonfiction work.
The author introduces readers to a process he developed that offers an alternative to surgery for treating back pain. The book explains, with the help of anonymized MRI images from Lutz’s patients, the physiology of back pain (“It’s nothing more than an unhealed wound inside a disc with a great deal of inflammatory proteins and nerve fibers that complicate the healing process”), and why standard treatments are inconsistently successful. The most effective treatment, Lutz argues, is platelet-rich plasma injections, in which a patient’s blood is drawn, concentrated in a centrifuge, and injected into the damaged spinal disc. Lutz writes about how he developed the treatment, which had previously been used for other types of injuries, placing it in the context of his own medical career and trends in medical education. He describes the iterative process of testing, refining, and sharing the treatment, and both peer-reviewed research and patients’ anecdotes are presented to demonstrate the technique’s viability. The author is a skilled writer who both tells an engaging story and makes a solid argument. As few doctors currently offer platelet-rich plasma as a treatment for back pain, the book’s advocacy for it naturally serves in part as an advertisement for Lutz’s services, but the science-driven narrative is persuasive; the text reads like a recommendation rather than propaganda. The book is informational, with plenty of easy-to-follow scientific detail, and is also thoughtful and personal, including passages about the evolution of the practice of medicine and Lutz’s own career. Readers with an interest in the development of science will enjoy this inside look at how a treatment innovation arose, was improved, and was debated by the medical community. Those who suffer from back pain will appreciate the clear explanations of what causes their discomfort, why they may have found little relief from standard care, and a potential new approach to healing.
A convincing defense of an innovative method for relieving back pain.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781544537221
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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