A straightforward and concise informational handbook on vascular health.
Journalist Driscoll draws on medical journal articles to explain artery health, related diseases, and preventative treatments in a guidebook aimed at general readers.
This brief informational overview provides information on how clogged arteries cause heart disease and stroke, and how to treat the condition; it also explains how to get screenings to determine potential problems before they become life-threatening. The author’s goal is to help people discover if they’re at risk before a serious event occurs and to take precautions. Artery health can decline without symptoms, Driscoll writes, and current risk prediction models are flawed. The author notes that heart disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide, is caused by arteries clogged with plaque, which can rupture, causing dangerous blood clots. Problems can be detected early with a carotid artery ultrasound screening test, which Driscoll promotes with enthusiasm, although he insightfully notes that “there is no clear guidance on the age at which to begin screening for artery clogging. A case can be made to begin screening in your 40s, in your 50s, or at least by your 60s,” and goes on to discuss this in detail, citing data from such peer-reviewed publications as the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. (Online sources for articles are provided in endnotes.) For those at risk, he offers useful, data-driven suggestions on how to stabilize existing plaque through diet and medication. One chapter describes how statin drugs can help, although there’s no explanation of what statins are, or how they work. The author is not a medical doctor, and a disclaimer notes that the book is “not intended as medical advice”; it also lacks information on his methodology, other than the book’s foundation on “research published in 40 groundbreaking medical journal articles.” However, the author does frequently advise readers to consult their primary care physicians, and the final resource is a directory of preventative cardiologists in the United States. Additional short explanations (of plaque, cholesterol, and LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol) would have been beneficial, but most terms are clearly defined.
A straightforward and concise informational handbook on vascular health.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9798987773819
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Hawkeye Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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