A scrupulously researched, sometimes-impressive work that offers an impassioned call for self-care and patient empowerment.
A debut health care guide that asserts that physical pain is an epidemic that the medical community doesn’t always appropriately treat.
When Cady, a physician, suffered chronic back pain, she found that other doctors’ recommendations and treatments were less than satisfactory. Eventually, she says, she found relatively simple options that could cure her pain without drugs, injections, or surgery. This transformative experience led her to write this book, aimed at a dual audience of patients and physicians. She begins by addressing “the pain problem”: 100 million Americans “suffer from some type of chronic pain.” She then exposes what she sees as the shortcomings of an insurance-driven medical system that encourages treatment rather than prevention: “The reality is our society is continuing to deflect the patient’s responsibility for optimizing health from within while physicians have no money incentive to emphasize the importance of self-care.” Cady takes particular aim at opioids, frequently prescribed pain relievers that she says have potential side effects that may have a long-term, detrimental impact on one’s health. Given recent news stories about widespread addiction to prescription pain medicines, this portion of the book is especially relevant and timely. The author also addresses the potentially negative consequences of surgery. Certainly the most intriguing section, though, is “The Rational Solution: The antiPAIN Lifestyle.” In it, Cady lobbies for people to wrest control of their health away from doctors, because “your personal lifestyle or collection of healthy habits, not outside forces or physicians, will dictate the best health for you in the majority of cases.” That said, her own plan isn’t revolutionary, nor does it guarantee freedom from pain; instead, it includes such obvious guidance as “Quit Smoking,” “Drink Water,” and “Optimize Your Nutrition.” Some technical portions of the book, despite the inclusion of a glossary, may be challenging for the average reader, so it’s appropriate that the author suggests that patients give copies to their physicians to read. However, some of these same medical professionals may bristle at the author’s subjective perspective and counsel, despite copious notes.
A scrupulously researched, sometimes-impressive work that offers an impassioned call for self-care and patient empowerment.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63047-654-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A psychiatric reformer takes aim and blasts away with both barrels. Breggin (author of the novels The Crazy from the Sane, 1971, and After the Good War, 1972) launches a full-scale attack on the popular view that neuroses and psychoses are diseases with biochemical and genetic causes best treated by drugs—even by electroshock and incarceration. He advocates not pills but psychotherapy, which ideally provides a ``caring, understanding relationship—made safe by professional ethics and restraint.'' Treating mental disorders as chemical imbalances to be corrected primarily by chemical intervention is, he claims, an outrageous hazard to health, damaging the brains of a high percentage of those subjected to it. Breggin notes that the medical training of today's biopsychiatrists ill-equips them for any other approach: They are taught to make diagnoses and prescribe medical treatments; their communication skills are undeveloped, and they know little about the art of listening to patients' problems. Their penchant for prescribing drugs, according to Breggin, is encouraged by a too-cozy relationship between the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry, which generously funds research into the biochemical and genetic basis of mental disorders, and whose claims for its products are insufficiently scrutinized by either the FDA or the medical profession. Breggin also has harsh words for health insurers that reimburse for drugs and psychiatric hospitalization but not for psychotherapy and social rehabilitation; coming under fire as well are schoolteachers who seek chemical solutions to classroom discipline problems, and parents who are unwilling to accept any blame for the psychological problems of their children. Although Breggin's preference for nonmedical intervention is clear, he remains skeptical about much of what's available today, warning that ``the buyer of psychotherapy must be extremely cautious.'' A one-sided but forceful caveat emptor for anyone seeking mental-health services.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-05975-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hotz, science writer and editor for The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, fascinatingly explores human reproduction and the new technology. The author gives his story high emotional impact by focusing on an infertility clinic where would-be parents ride the roller coaster of hope and despair and where embryologists manipulate the very stuff of life. But there's much more here than human drama. Hotz looks at what's been happening in human embryology since the birth of the first test-tube baby about a dozen years ago. It's a field unregulated and unfunded by the federal government, a legal void in which ethicists, biologists, judges, and legislators struggle with questions of right and wrong, responsibility and risk, privacy and public policy. Issues undreamed of a few years ago (Are embryos human beings or property? Whose claim to parenthood is greater, the genetic mother's or the birth mother's?) have made their way into dozens of courtrooms across the country, and ever-more complex questions are likely to arise. The abortion debate, with its differing views on the question of when human life begins, complicates the picture, hampering the research that could make technology- assisted conception safer and easier. Hotz wends his way deftly through this tangle, offering no solutions but pointing out problems society must recognize and deal with. A highly skilled writer, Hotz has done his research well and made the technology and its practitioners come alive: a noteworthy addition to the literature on reproductive choice.
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-69325-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
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