While this book delivers a positive message about improving overall health through mindful breathing techniques, the...
A collective of medical and holistic professionals advocates a drug-free treatment for asthma sufferers.
The collaborative effort of journalist and holistic practitioner Yakovleva (Breathing Exercise Buteyko Logbook, 2015, etc.) and Russian physicians and debut authors Buteyko and Novozhilov seeks to substantiate and promote Buteyko’s “Breathing Normalization Method.” The authors believe this technique can vastly diminish and possibly eradicate asthmatic symptoms. These claims directly counter current medicinal treatments that incorporate steroid inhalation therapies in the form of both long-term control and “rescue inhalers,” which provide immediate relief for severe allergic bronchial inflammation. While these treatments are beneficial from a pharmacological perspective, the book presents alternative, drug-free methods of coping with asthma using breathing self-regulation techniques. The authors deliver the bad news first: asthma has historically been labeled an “incurable disease” only because modern medicine has not uncovered a process for eliminating allergic inflammation, just drugs to control and reduce its symptoms. The narrative focuses on physiologist Buteyko’s mind-body approach and claims that a deficiency in carbon dioxide in the lungs is caused by “excessive breathing.” By controlling what the authors believe is the problem of “chronic hyperventilation” during an asthmatic episode (and throughout daily life), these levels become normalized, and lung bronchospasms retreat and even subside permanently. This may be difficult for readers to comprehend since Western medical practices historically counsel patients to take a deep breath when stressed. The book’s primary objective is to demonstrate the benefits of slowed breathing, though Buteyko’s four-page list of “diseases reversible by breathing reduction” begs for debate and medical substantiation. Subsequent chapters detail how readers can achieve the maximum benefits from this process by using “Breathing Snake” visualization, improving posture, practicing the “Control Pause,” and other easily applicable breathing exercises. A supporting cast of physicians and patients at Yakovleva’s Breathing Center facility claims to have victoriously “tamed asthma” and provides enthusiastic endorsements. Using interviews, graphs, documents, and illustrations, the book reinforces its seemingly sound evidentiary support and provides clinical advice through a sensible methodology. But the volume’s suggestions should definitely be addressed with a physician first. Though pages of testimonials and a helpful, expanded question-and-answer section bolster the work’s claims and clear up many misconceptions about asthma, further research and personal trials remain in readers’ (and their physicians’) hands.
While this book delivers a positive message about improving overall health through mindful breathing techniques, the specific medical claims require individual investigation.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5371-2660-9
Page Count: 274
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Some surprising answers to questions about why our bodies are designed the way they are and why we get the diseases we do. Nesse, a physician (Psychiatry/Univ. of Michigan) and Williams (Ecology and Evolution/SUNY, Stony Brook) first teamed up to write an article on Darwinian medicine, which applies the concept of adaptation by natural selection to medical questions. That article, published in 1991 in The Quarterly Review of Biology, has been expanded into the present book, in which the authors look at the design characteristics of the human body that make it susceptible to disease. Their conclusions? First, sometimes it's our genes that make us vulnerable to disease. Some genetic defects arise through mutations, but more often, genes with deleterious effects are maintained through natural selection because their benefits outweigh their costs. Second, there's a mismatch between our present environment and the one that over thousands of years shaped our hunter-gatherer ancestors. There simply hasn't been time for our bodies to adapt, and we suffer the consequences. Third, disease results from design compromises. For example, the structural changes that allowed us to develop from horizontal four-footed creatures to upright two-footed ones left us vulnerable to back problems. Fourth, our evolutionary history has left us some troublesome legacies, such as the unfortunate intersection in our throats of the passages for food and air. Some of the areas Nesse and Williams apply their Darwinian approach to are infectious diseases, allergies, cancer, aging, reproduction, and mental disorders. Happily, they write with impeccable clarity, and when they are speculating (which they do freely), they are careful to say so. They also offer numerous suggestions for research studies, thoughtful proposals for reshaping medical textbooks and medical education, and a scenario dramatizing Darwinian medicine's possible clinical application. Fascinating reading for doctors and patients alike.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-2224-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A Wall Street Journal science reporter's colorful, people-centered account of the fierce competition among scientists to find the genetic causes of cancer. Waldholz (coauthor, with Jerry Bishop, of Genome, 1990) focuses on Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University, who developed the tumor-suppressor theory of cancer that has become the foundation of cancer research today; Mary-Claire King, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, who proved the existence of a breast cancer gene on chromosome 17 in 1990, although she couldn't pinpoint its precise location; Francis Collins, a researcher at the University of Michigan, who joined forces with King in the hunt for the elusive gene; and Mark Skolnick, a Utah geneticist who found BRCA1, the breast cancer gene, in 1994. Through interviews with these and other scientists who worked with them or competed against them, Waldholz shows the pressure of the race to be first. He reveals these denizens of the labs to be fierce competitors, often skilled at manipulating people, keeping secrets, and working the press. His secondary story, one fraught with quite different emotions, concerns the women in ``Family 15,'' the raw material used by a group of scientists tracking down the breast cancer gene. Through them Waldholz explores the ethical problems created when scientists are able to tell a woman that she has the gene but physicians are unable to either prevent or cure the cancer. Despite his optimistic title, Waldholz makes clear that curing cancer remains ``a lengthy and risky enterprise.'' He also touches on the problems and possible conflict-of-interest issues posed by the burgeoning number of biotechnology companies that are exploiting university research. Vivid portrayals of the principal players combined with clear descriptions of the science involved.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-81125-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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