A worthy, comprehensive exploration of supplements to improve brain function and energy.
A health science guide examines alternatives to caffeine.
At age 26, Beshara was diagnosed with a heart condition that required him to drastically cut down on his caffeine consumption. For the young business owner, the recommendation seemed impossible. “I took it for granted that coffee was the ambitious person’s best friend,” writes the debut author in his introduction, but after five years of experimentation, “I have learned about the different compounds from around the world that allow me to consume a fraction of the caffeine I used to, yet produce a multiple of the energy and productivity that coffee once delivered.” In this book, Beshara takes readers on a journey into the world of nootropics, adaptogens, mushrooms, anti-inflammatories, and other noncaffeinated methods of keeping the body energized throughout the day. Nootropics—a broad category of compounds intended to improve cognitive function that run the gamut from safe and healthy to dangerous and addictive—take up the bulk of the volume’s pages. They include alphabet soup compounds like Omega-3 EPA and Alpha-GPC as well as obscure plants like ashwagandha and bacopa monnieri. Adaptogens are destressing agents. Beshara structures the work like a series of product reviews, giving each compound or plant a sustainability score (how safe it is to consume regularly) as well as discussing how well it works and any negative side effects it might have. Panax ginseng, for example, receives a sustainability score of only three out of five (too low for the author to recommend). While this adaptogen has displayed signs of improving cognitive performance in Alzheimer’s patients, “Panax ginseng must be avoided in pregnancy. It has been shown to increase the risk of birth defects. Continuous use should also be limited to six months or less due to its hormone-like effects on the body.” Beshara’s book—written with Engle (The Concussion Repair Manual, 2017) and debut author Haynes—is short at just over 120 pages, but it features an extensive bibliography that includes the many studies on which the text is based. Those who are looking to consume less caffeine will be intrigued by this extensive list of alternatives, though nothing the work describes sounds quite as good as a regular cup of joe.
A worthy, comprehensive exploration of supplements to improve brain function and energy.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0545-9
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Monocle Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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