A thought-provoking reinterpretation of how vitamins affect wellness.
A psychiatric physician makes a case for focusing on the key role of two specific molecules on one’s health.
In this debut health book, Zablow lays out his argument that the beneficial effects of two crucial forms of vitamin B are often overlooked and that if everyone consumed sufficient B12 and folate (B9) in forms most easily used by the body—the “vitamers” of the title—it would result in substantial improvements in individual and public health. The book opens with an explanation of how vitamins work, with a particular focus on B12 and folate, and a detailed account of how nutrition affects the expression of genes. It also presents a rundown of the biochemistry of metabolism and the different forms that B12 and folate can take. The body, Zablow says, responds to stress with inflammation, and if people are able to find ways to reshape their body’s response to stress, they can minimize inflammation, which, in turn, can improve their overall physical well-being. He addresses the dietary and lifestyle changes that he says are necessary to incorporate vitamers at appropriate levels and provides suggestions for reframing the medical field’s understanding and treatment of vitamin deficiencies. The book takes a fanciful turn when it uses questions about astronaut nutrition and an eventual mission to Mars to demonstrate the practical implications of particular B-complex deficiencies and suggest mitigation strategies, but Zablow effectively pulls the focus back to how his concepts might be applied to everyday circumstances on Earth. Ultimately, his book makes an intriguing argument for his health-management system.
Zablow does a good job of making a complex topic comprehensible for those who might lack a background in nutrition or biochemistry while also providing more detailed information for those who are able to approach the topic from a more technical perspective: “Without ample supplies of B12 and folate to generate energy, regulate genetic expression, and keep the cells clear of metabolic waste, all other efforts to improve health will be of reduced benefit.” The author ably breaks down the various elements of what it takes to use vitamers properly—processing them into forms the body can use, consuming the compounds in sufficient quantities, and being aware of symptoms of deficiencies, which may also be present due to other conditions. The book is realistic about practical aspects of treating such deficiencies; for instance, it notes that folate supplements are readily available in stores, but it also warns that they’re often in forms that are harder for the body to process, making them less effective than their packaging might suggest. Zablow’s challenges to medical orthodoxies, such as that the body retains a usable store of vitamin B in the liver, will likely raise eyebrows, but his persuasive arguments, supported by research, make his ideas worth looking into further. Overall, the book provides readers with a new framework for understanding functions of the body—one that can serve as a basis for productive conversations with medical providers.
A thought-provoking reinterpretation of how vitamins affect wellness.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-948181-86-0
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Hybrid Global Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Yes: it's high time for a de-romanticized, de-mythified, close-up retelling of the U.S. Space Program's launching—the inside story of those first seven astronauts.
But no: jazzy, jivey, exclamation-pointed, italicized Tom Wolfe "Mr. Overkill" hasn't really got the fight stuff for the job. Admittedly, he covers all the ground. He begins with the competitive, macho world of test pilots from which the astronauts came (thus being grossly overqualified to just sit in a controlled capsule); he follows the choosing of the Seven, the preparations for space flight, the flights themselves, the feelings of the wives; and he presents the breathless press coverage, the sudden celebrity, the glorification. He even throws in some of the technology. But instead of replacing the heroic standard version with the ring of truth, Wolfe merely offers an alternative myth: a surreal, satiric, often cartoony Wolfe-arama that, especially since there isn't a bit of documentation along the way, has one constantly wondering if anything really happened the way Wolfe tells it. His astronauts (referred to as "the brethren" or "The True Brothers") are obsessed with having the "right stuff" that certain blend of guts and smarts that spells pilot success. The Press is a ravenous fool, always referred to as "the eternal Victorian Gent": when Walter Cronkite's voice breaks while reporting a possible astronaut death, "There was the Press the Genteel Gent, coming up with the appropriate emotion. . . live. . . with no prompting whatsoever!" And, most off-puttingly, Wolfe presumes to enter the minds of one and all: he's with near-drowing Gus Grissom ("Cox. . . That face up there!—it's Cox. . . Cox knew how to get people out of here! . . . Cox! . . ."); he's with Betty Grissom angry about not staying at Holiday Inn ("Now. . . they truly owed her"); and, in a crude hatchet-job, he's with John Glenn furious at Al Shepard's being chosen for the first flight, pontificating to the others about their licentious behavior, or holding onto his self-image during his flight ("Oh, yes! I've been here before! And I am immune! I don't get into corners I can't get out of! . . . The Presbyterian Pilot was not about to foul up. His pipeline to dear Lord could not be clearer"). Certainly there's much here that Wolfe is quite right about, much that people will be interested in hearing: the P-R whitewash of Grissom's foul-up, the Life magazine excesses, the inter-astronaut tensions. And, for those who want to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt throughout, there are emotional reconstructions that are juicily shrill.
But most readers outside the slick urban Wolfe orbit will find credibility fatally undermined by the self-indulgent digressions, the stylistic excesses, and the broadly satiric, anti-All-American stance; and, though The Right Stuff has enough energy, sass, and dirt to attract an audience, it mostly suggests that until Wolfe can put his subject first and his preening writing-persona second, he probably won't be a convincing chronicler of anything much weightier than radical chic.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1979
ISBN: 0312427565
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1979
BOOK TO SCREEN
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