A hodgepodge of science and personal observation, this all-encompassing book urges women to get in sync with their bodies...
Beyond the provocative title, psychiatrist Holland (Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER, 2009) does not cast aspersions but instead urges women to embrace their mood fluctuations as part of natural hormonal rhythms.
Medical history has not been kind to women’s health. “[M]alaise, headaches, irritability, nervousness, insomnia, fatigue, low libido, high libido, water retention” are just some of the complaints by women that 19th-century male physicians characterized as hysteria. Even today, women who get angry or cry in the workplace risk being labeled as “emotional and irrational.” Holland parses the science behind mood swings to explain the natural effects and functions of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and other hormones. Sexual drive, marriage, fidelity, childbearing and bonding are all tied to hormonal activity. While the author explores a fascinating array of subjects, much of the delivery of the information is disorganized, resulting in overload and frequent shuffling of pages to review what hormone or neurotransmitter is responsible for what. Holland devotes about half the book to a potpourri of advice on achieving good mental and physical health. There’s not much new information here, and the section could have used some pruning, but the tips are worth reviewing. A top stressor for women is trying to balance job and family, and stress causes inflammation, which makes you vulnerable to chronic diseases such as heart disease, asthma, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and arthritis. Understanding what’s going on in your body and mood swings reduces stress and promotes mental health, writes Holland. Limiting inflammation with a healthy diet—light on carbs and high on fresh vegetables—exercise, sleep, good sex and communing with nature promote physical health.
A hodgepodge of science and personal observation, this all-encompassing book urges women to get in sync with their bodies and embrace their moods.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59420-580-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving personal narrative about a family confronting Huntington's disease, interwoven with a journalistic account of the biomedical research that found the gene responsible and may one day find the cure. In 1968, Wexler's mother was diagnosed with Huntington's disease, a devastating neurological illness that often leads to madness and is always fatal. Historian Wexler (Occidental College; Emma Goldman, 1984) then learned that she and her sister, Nancy, each had a 50 percent chance of inheriting the disease from their mother. While Wexler's father organized the Hereditary Disease Foundation to support Huntington's research, and her sister became a researcher, Wexler felt shame over her failure to get as actively involved. She reports that her own diary, one ``obsessed with self-analysis,'' rarely mentioned Huntington's and then only in connection with her mother, never with herself. For years, the family watched Wexler's mother's progressive deterioration, and the daughters watched themselves for symptoms. A research breakthrough in 1983 led to a predictive test that could identify those who would develop the illness years before any symptoms appeared. In the most gripping part of the book, Wexler describes her feelings about living with uncertainty and her decision not to take the test. The research story, which makes up a large portion of the book, is less compelling than the personal one, but the account of fieldwork in a village in Venezuela where nearly every family has members with Huntington's is fascinating. Wexler is at her best when writing about human beings. At one point she speaks of her sister as having ``the insight of a woman at risk, who understands emotionally as well as intellectually the tremendous costs of this illness.'' The same may be said of Wexler. A revealing memoir that tells as much about living at risk as it does about Huntington's.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-1710-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
Sheila, the mute, abused six-year-old protagonist of Hayden's bestselling One Child (not reviewed), returns in a fast- paced, real-life narrative that rewards the reader with a happy ending. The author begins with a brief review of the five months Sheila spent in her special education class. Abandoned by her mother (who pushed her out of a car onto the highway), regularly mistreated by her father's friends and drug suppliers, the troubled child had set fire to a smaller boy. Hayden established a close relationship with Sheila, bringing her out of her silence and seeing her enrolled in a regular classroom, but then left town to attend graduate school. When she meets Sheila again, the girl is a punk fashion plate of 14, still living with her father. Sheila denies most memories of her early relationship with the teacher, but they pursue a shaky friendship, though Hayden is worried by an undercurrent of anger not really explained by Sheila's expression of hurt over her departure eight years earlier. The teen provokes a crisis in the summer school program where they both work when she disappears for several days with a young student, resurrecting fears of the earlier fire-setting incident. This leads to a startling revelation: Muddling her memories of abandonment, Sheila believes it was Hayden who pushed her out of the car. She launches a disastrous search for her mother and spends time in a high-security institution for problem children, but eventually graduates from high school and begins a successful career managing a fast-food restaurant. Her adventures occur against the background of Hayden's love affairs and work in a psychiatric clinic, revealing the author as neither the self- sacrificing saint Sheila accuses her of wanting to be, nor much of a sinner. An effective chronicle of a relationship full of potholes that nonetheless brings both student and teacher further along the road to maturity.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-02-549150-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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