The secret to good health, for readers searching for such a secret.
A physician shows us the remarkable world of the human microbiome.
Gundry, the director of the International Heart and Lung Institute in California, has written multiple bestsellers, including The Plant Paradox, Unlocking the Keto Code, and The Longevity Paradox. “All disease begins in the gut,” wrote Hippocrates more than 2,000 years ago, and Gundry agrees. With his Gut Check program, “all diseases can be cured in the gut, too.” The author claims that “about 90 percent of the people who followed the program saw their health restored.” Gundry demonstrates the importance of the trillions of microorganisms in your colon (“gut buddies”) that, when healthy, keep your bowel tightly sealed but secrete chemicals that suppress disease and fend off aging. Our gut buddies eat what we eat, and few readers will be surprised to learn that the modern diet is toxic, leading to an unhealthy microbiome, a leaky gut, and disease. Gundry holds a low opinion of many “conventional” conceptions of a healthy diet. The author concludes with an extremely detailed diet that will keep your bowel in top shape. No alternative practitioner, Gundry is a former cardiac surgeon, and he backs his statements with nearly 70 pages of journal references. Many describe diseases cured in laboratory animals, and readers will find few cures for their own disease (and a legal disclaimer at the beginning of the book). Readers will have better luck consulting Gundry or physicians “trained by me” at his clinics or his “subscription-based telemedicine service” and app. Though the idea that all disease results from a faulty microbiome is not universally accepted in the medical community, Gundry’s fierce conviction, enthusiasm, and entrepreneurial skill have won him a loyal following that this book is unlikely to diminish.
The secret to good health, for readers searching for such a secret.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780062911773
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper Wave
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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