Health Illness

Thanks to technology and marriage equality, more and more people are looking to become parents. Third-party reproduction has become easier, more accessible, and more successful, yet it is a complex process. Regardless of their gender or marital status, people come to the process with questions like, "How are sperm, eggs, embryos, or surrogates screened?", "What are the legal issues surrounding surrogacy?", "How do I find an egg donor?", and "How do I tell my family's story?" Your Future Family is the definitive handbook to answer these important questions.

When we receive diagnoses from medical professionals, we are often so overwhelmed that we give up authority over our own health and well-being. But the truth is, we have more control over our health and life that we have been led to believe, and that belief is at the core of our body’s capacity to heal itself. Based on the groundbreaking documentary of the same name, Heal follows two people on their healing journeys, to offer hope and alternative treatments for the many people suffering from a variety of chronic illnesses.

It has been said that everyone knows a cancer survivor, but no one has met an Alzheimer's survivor - until now. In his first two books, Dr. Dale Bredesen outlined the revolutionary treatments that are changing what had previously seemed like the inevitable outcome of cognitive decline and dementia. And in these moving narratives, you can hear directly from the first survivors of Alzheimer’s themselves - their own amazing stories of hope told in their own words.

Childhood adversity that is severe enough to be harmful throughout life is one of the biggest public health issues of our time, yet health care systems struggle to even acknowledge the problem. In Damaged, Dr. Robert Maunder and Dr. Jonathan Hunter call for a radical change, arguing that the medical system needs to be not only more compassionate but more effective at recognizing that trauma impacts everybody's health, from patient to practitioner.

The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pandemic. We hear news reports of Ebola, SARS, AIDS, and something called Hendra killing horses and people in Australia - but those reports miss the big truth that such phenomena are part of a single pattern. The bugs that transmit these diseases share one thing: they originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. David Quammen tracks this subject around the world.

In his early 20s, Mindy Greiling's son, Jim, was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder after experiencing delusions that demanded he kill his mother. At the time, and for more than a decade after, Greiling was a Minnesota state legislator who struggled, along with her husband, to navigate and improve the state's inadequate mental health system. Fix What You Can is an illuminating and frank account of caring for a person with a mental illness, told by a parent and advocate.

More than 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, according to an Institute of Medicine report released in 2011. For many, chronic pain is part of an autoimmune disease, but all too often doctors turn to the same solution: painkilling drugs. But all of this medication simply isn't helping. As Dr. Peter Osborne, the leading authority on gluten sensitivity and food allergies, has found, the real solution often lies in what you eat.

In The Sleep Revolution, Arianna explores all the latest science on what exactly is going on while we sleep and dream. She takes on the sleeping pill industry, and all the ways our addiction to technology disrupts our sleep. She also offers a range of recommendations and tips from leading scientists on how we can get better and more restorative sleep, and harness its incredible power.

In 2001, Toni Bernhard got sick and, to her and her partner’s bewilderment, stayed that way. As they faced the confusion, frustration, and despair of a life with sudden limitations - a life that was vastly different from the one they’d thought they’d have together - Toni had to learn how to be sick. In spite of her many physical and energetic restrictions (and sometimes, because of them), Toni learned how to live a life of equanimity, compassion, and joy.

While the birth control pill is widely prescribed as a quick-fix solution to a variety of women’s health conditions, taking it can also result in other more serious and dangerous health consequences. Jolene Brighten, ND, shares her proven 30-day program designed to reverse the myriad of symptoms women experience every day - whether you choose to stay on the pill or not. The first audiobook of its kind to target the birth control pill and the scientifically proven symptoms associated with taking it, Beyond the Pill is an actionable plan for taking control.

Almost daily, headlines announce newly discovered links between cancers and their genetic causes. Science journalist Jessica Wapner vividly relates the backstory behind those headlines, reconstructing the crucial breakthroughs, explaining the science behind them, and giving due to the dozens of researchers, doctors, and patients whose curiosity and determination restored the promise of a future to the more than 50,000 people diagnosed each year with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML).

Baby Sleep Training will show you everything you need to know about your baby’s sleep and empower you to foster healthy sleep habits for your baby. This book is designed for busy parents and gets straight to the point. The quick start guide will help you start tackling your baby’s sleep issues right away where you can see real results in just a matter of three days or less. Just follow the simple plan which has been a wonderful source of guidance for countless parents who are struggling with their child’s sleep.

Since its first publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has become the standard reference book on the disease that has helped thousands of patients, their families, and mental health professionals alike. In clear language, this much-praised and important book describes the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment, and course of schizophrenia, and explores living with it from both the patient’s and the family’s point of view.

Being diagnosed with diabetes, no longer means giving up an active life. New technology, such as insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors, can help people with diabetes stay active and maintain healthy lifestyles. Dr. Francine Kaufman explains the advances in glucose management, and thoroughly discusses the technology, as well as the physical and psychological aspects of diabetes care. It provides a comprehensive medical approach toward diabetes management and pump therapy with an appreciation of the real-life challenges and frustrations faced every day by people with diabetes.

The menstrual cycle is a vital and vitalizing system in the female body, and yet our understanding of and respect for this process is both limited and distorted. Few women really know about the physiology of their cycle, and many do not see it as an integral part of their health and well-being, let alone as a potential guide to emotional and spiritual literacy.

If you are one of the nearly 100 million Americans struggling with high cholesterol, then Dr. Janet Brill offers you a revolutionary new plan for taking control of your health - without the risks of statin drugs. With Dr. Brill's breakthrough Cholesterol Down Plan, you simply add nine "miracle foods" to your regular diet and 30 minutes of walking to your daily routine. That's all. This straightforward and easy-to-follow program can lower your LDL ("bad") cholesterol by as much as 47 percent in just four weeks.

Lyme disease infects a minimum of 300,000 people per year in the United States and millions more throughout the rest of the world. Symptoms run from mild lethargy to severe arthritis to heart disease to incapacitating mental dysfunction. Although tests have improved over the past decade, they are still not completely reliable, and antibiotics are only partially effective. Up to 35 percent of those infected will not respond to antibiotic treatment or will relapse.

The Fertility Diet reveals startling new research from the landmark Nurses' Health Study, which shows that the food you eat can boost your fertility. The Nurses' Health Study exhaustively examined the effects of diet and other lifestyle changes on fertility among nearly 20,000 female nurses. Two of the study's lead researchers translate its groundbreaking findings into changes you can put into practice today. This book prescribes 10 simple changes in diet and activity that can increase your chances of getting pregnant.

A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: These are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.

Nearly one in every five Americans deals with mental illness in a given year, and the rates are climbing. Among physicians, the rate is even higher as the time spent in medical training significantly increases the risk of poor mental health. None of us is fully immune from the ravages of mental health problems. This book is about the fallibility of us all, including the doctors who are supposed to care for us. It is about the fine line of illness and normal emotion and about how to change the norms of medical practice in light of human weakness.