Best Public Health

And scientists are only just discovering quite how much it has to offer; new research shows that gut bacteria can play a role in everything from obesity and allergies to Alzheimer’s. Beginning with the personal experience of illness that inspired her research, and going on to explain everything from the basics of nutrient absorption to the latest science linking bowel bacteria with depression, Enders has written an entertaining, informative health handbook. ‘Enders’ gut manifesto calls on its readers to celebrate their lower bodies’ achievements, rather than apologise for them’ The Guardian. "Enders’s wonder at the strange ways of the gut is matched only by her incredulity at the limited public knowledge on the subject." — The New York Times "With a great sense of humor and ample enthusiasm, Enders explains everything readers did and didn’t want to know about their innards ... this book defies boring. "This primer is everything you ever wanted to know about the gut (and then some), chattily and accessibly written in a uniquely Millennial and matter of fact way. " Gut's probe into the human digestive system might be seen as an earnest younger sibling to Gulp , Mary Roach’s 2013 investigation into the same subject. The comparison isn’t meant as a slight; Enders swaps out Roach’s knowing wryness with a kind of puplike enthusiasm for the complex mechanisms that convert food into a body’s energy and waste without our even thinking about it."

The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. And in 1989 Philippine monkeys in a Reston, Va., research lab, found to be infected with Ebola, were the target of a U.S. Army-led biohazard task force that decontaminated the lab, exterminating hundreds of monkeys to prevent the possible airborne spread of the disease to humans. In a horrifying and riveting report, portions of which appeared in the New Yorker , Preston ( American Steel ) exposes a real-life nightmare potentially as lethal as the fictive runaway germs in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain.

Dean Ornish, M.D., author of The Spectrum Why rely on drugs and surgery to cure you of life-threatening disease when the right decisions can prevent you from falling ill to begin with? How Not To Die gives effective, scientifically-proven nutritional advice to prevent our biggest killers - heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes - revealing the astounding health benefits that simple dietary choices can provide. Based on the very latest scientific research, How Not To Die examines each of the most common diseases, chapter by chapter, to reveal what, how and why different foods affect us and how increasing our consumption of certain foods and avoiding others can dramatically reduce our risk of falling sick and even reverse the effects of disease. Dr. Michael Greger presents the groundbreaking science onhow simple plant-based food choices help us live healthier and happier lives.Dr. Greger describes which foods to eat to prevent the leading causes ofdisease-related death and shows how a diet based on fruits, vegetables, tubers,whole grains, and legumes might even save your life." Not onlydoes Dr. Michael Greger drop a metric f*ckton of evidence that a plant-baseddiet will save your damn life, he lays out the blueprint to make it happen. "Finally a physician has pulled together the latest scientific studies onhow to fight disease and prolong life. Gerger also offers upfriendly tips, like his favorite smoothie recipe and a turmeric tutorial.Follow his advice and you may not live forever, but you'll almost certainlylive a healthier life." Dr Gregertends to rely on the gold standard of medical research randomised controlledtrials rather than the latest fads. Michael Greger, MD , is a physician, author, and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety and public health issues. He runs the popular website NutritionFacts.org, a nonprofit, science-based public service providing free daily videos and articles on the latest in nutrition research. Dr. Greger also proudly serves as the Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States.

Painstakingly honest, this chilling memoir reveals how a teenager became immersed in the bizarre life of legendary porn star John Holmes. The 2003 movie Wonderland vivified Schiller's teenage experience under the thrall of a drug-addled porn star in L.A. in the late 1970s, while this long docudrama expands on that raw era to include her peripatetic, dysfunctional upbringing and aftermath as a survivor. The daughter of a Vietnam vet and a German woman he met and married overseas, Schiller spent her early years moving around to accommodate her father's military career, especially between New Jersey and the suburbs of Miami. Instead, Schiller, who met Holmes in 1976 when she was just 15, details their five-year love affair, the stability he provided in the wake of her troubled childhood, and the deterioration of their relationship after Homes became addicted to cocaine and was ultimately arrested.

A prescient warning of a future we now inhabit, where fake news stories and Internet conspiracy theories play to a disaffected American populace. “ A glorious book . Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions. Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms. He labels as hoaxes the crop circles, complex pictograms that appear in southern England's wheat and barley fields, and he dismisses as a natural formation the Sphinx-like humanoid face incised on a mesa on Mars, first photographed by a Viking orbiter spacecraft in 1976 and considered by some scientists to be the engineered artifact of an alien civilization.

The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. And in 1989 Philippine monkeys in a Reston, Va., research lab, found to be infected with Ebola, were the target of a U.S. Army-led biohazard task force that decontaminated the lab, exterminating hundreds of monkeys to prevent the possible airborne spread of the disease to humans. In a horrifying and riveting report, portions of which appeared in the New Yorker , Preston ( American Steel ) exposes a real-life nightmare potentially as lethal as the fictive runaway germs in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain.

The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. And in 1989 Philippine monkeys in a Reston, Va., research lab, found to be infected with Ebola, were the target of a U.S. Army-led biohazard task force that decontaminated the lab, exterminating hundreds of monkeys to prevent the possible airborne spread of the disease to humans. In a horrifying and riveting report, portions of which appeared in the New Yorker , Preston ( American Steel ) exposes a real-life nightmare potentially as lethal as the fictive runaway germs in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain.

Based on fifteen years of experience as an ER physician, he reveals the profound moments that often occur in emergency rooms for patients, their families, and the staff that work there. Philip Allen Green, MD, is a board-certified emergency medicine physician.

And scientists are only just discovering quite how much it has to offer; new research shows that gut bacteria can play a role in everything from obesity and allergies to Alzheimer’s. Beginning with the personal experience of illness that inspired her research, and going on to explain everything from the basics of nutrient absorption to the latest science linking bowel bacteria with depression, Enders has written an entertaining, informative health handbook. ‘Enders’ gut manifesto calls on its readers to celebrate their lower bodies’ achievements, rather than apologise for them’ The Guardian. "Enders’s wonder at the strange ways of the gut is matched only by her incredulity at the limited public knowledge on the subject." — The New York Times "With a great sense of humor and ample enthusiasm, Enders explains everything readers did and didn’t want to know about their innards ... this book defies boring. "This primer is everything you ever wanted to know about the gut (and then some), chattily and accessibly written in a uniquely Millennial and matter of fact way. " Gut's probe into the human digestive system might be seen as an earnest younger sibling to Gulp , Mary Roach’s 2013 investigation into the same subject. The comparison isn’t meant as a slight; Enders swaps out Roach’s knowing wryness with a kind of puplike enthusiasm for the complex mechanisms that convert food into a body’s energy and waste without our even thinking about it."

In Being Mortal , bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. If you said “true,” you’d be right, of course, but that’s a statement that demands an asterisk, a “but.” “We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine,” writes Atul Gawande, a surgeon (at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston) and a writer (at the New Yorker). And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive.” Through interviews with doctors, stories from and about health care providers (such as the woman who pioneered the notion of “assisted living” for the elderly)—and eventually, by way of the story of his own father’s dying, Gawande examines the cracks in the system of health care to the aged (i.e. 97 percent of medical students take no course in geriatrics) and to the seriously ill who might have different needs and expectations than the ones family members predict. (One striking example: the terminally ill former professor who told his daughter that “quality of life” for him meant the ongoing ability to enjoy chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You want Robert E. Lee... someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t.” In his compassionate, learned way, Gawande shows all of us—doctors included—how mortality must be faced, with both heart and mind. “ Being Mortal , Atul Gawande's masterful exploration of aging, death, and the medical profession's mishandling of both, is his best and most personal book yet.” ― Boston Globe. For more than a decade, Atul Gawande has explored the fault lines of medicine . combining his years of experience as a surgeon with his gift for fluid, seemingly effortless storytelling . has provided us with a moving and clear-eyed look at aging and death in our society, and at the harms we do in turning it into a medical problem, rather than a human one.” ― The New York Review of Books. “A deeply affecting, urgently important book--one not just about dying and the limits of medicine but about living to the last with autonomy, dignity, and joy.” ―Katherine Boo. Gawande's book is not of the kind that some doctors write, reminding us how grim the fact of death can be. Rather, he shows how patients in the terminal phase of their illness can maintain important qualities of life.” ― Wall Street Journal (Best Books of 2014). “ Being Mortal left me tearful, angry, and unable to stop talking about it for a week. A surgeon himself, Gawande is eloquent about the inadequacy of medical school in preparing doctors to confront the subject of death with their patients. “We have come to medicalize aging, frailty, and death, treating them as if they were just one more clinical problem to overcome. Being Mortal is not only wise and deeply moving, it is an essential and insightful book for our times, as one would expect from Atul Gawande, one of our finest physician writers.” ―Oliver Sacks. “A great read that leaves you better equipped to face the future, and without making you feel like you just took your medicine.” ― Mother Jones (Best Books of 2014). One hopes it is the spark that ignites some revolutionary changes in a field of medicine that ultimately touches each of us.” ― Shelf Awareness (Best Books of 2014). “A needed call to action, a cautionary tale of what can go wrong, and often does, when a society fails to engage in a sustained discussion about aging and dying.” ― San Francisco Chronicle.

In Being Mortal , bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. If you said “true,” you’d be right, of course, but that’s a statement that demands an asterisk, a “but.” “We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine,” writes Atul Gawande, a surgeon (at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston) and a writer (at the New Yorker). And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive.” Through interviews with doctors, stories from and about health care providers (such as the woman who pioneered the notion of “assisted living” for the elderly)—and eventually, by way of the story of his own father’s dying, Gawande examines the cracks in the system of health care to the aged (i.e. 97 percent of medical students take no course in geriatrics) and to the seriously ill who might have different needs and expectations than the ones family members predict. (One striking example: the terminally ill former professor who told his daughter that “quality of life” for him meant the ongoing ability to enjoy chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You want Robert E. Lee... someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t.” In his compassionate, learned way, Gawande shows all of us—doctors included—how mortality must be faced, with both heart and mind. “ Being Mortal , Atul Gawande's masterful exploration of aging, death, and the medical profession's mishandling of both, is his best and most personal book yet.” ― Boston Globe. For more than a decade, Atul Gawande has explored the fault lines of medicine . combining his years of experience as a surgeon with his gift for fluid, seemingly effortless storytelling . has provided us with a moving and clear-eyed look at aging and death in our society, and at the harms we do in turning it into a medical problem, rather than a human one.” ― The New York Review of Books. “A deeply affecting, urgently important book--one not just about dying and the limits of medicine but about living to the last with autonomy, dignity, and joy.” ―Katherine Boo. Gawande's book is not of the kind that some doctors write, reminding us how grim the fact of death can be. Rather, he shows how patients in the terminal phase of their illness can maintain important qualities of life.” ― Wall Street Journal (Best Books of 2014). “ Being Mortal left me tearful, angry, and unable to stop talking about it for a week. A surgeon himself, Gawande is eloquent about the inadequacy of medical school in preparing doctors to confront the subject of death with their patients. “We have come to medicalize aging, frailty, and death, treating them as if they were just one more clinical problem to overcome. Being Mortal is not only wise and deeply moving, it is an essential and insightful book for our times, as one would expect from Atul Gawande, one of our finest physician writers.” ―Oliver Sacks. “A great read that leaves you better equipped to face the future, and without making you feel like you just took your medicine.” ― Mother Jones (Best Books of 2014). One hopes it is the spark that ignites some revolutionary changes in a field of medicine that ultimately touches each of us.” ― Shelf Awareness (Best Books of 2014). “A needed call to action, a cautionary tale of what can go wrong, and often does, when a society fails to engage in a sustained discussion about aging and dying.” ― San Francisco Chronicle.

The general public harbors assumptions about medical care that encourage overuse, assumptions like it’s always better to fix the problem, sooner (or newer) is always better, or it never hurts to get more information. Drawing on his twenty-five years of medical practice and research, Dr. Welch notes that while economics and lawyers contribute to the excesses of American medicine, the problem is essentially created when the general public clings to these powerful assumptions about the value of tests and treatments—a number of which are just plain wrong. “Avoiding medical jargon, Welch speaks directly to the layperson and focuses on certain assumptions that have increased consumption in a market-driven society; some of which have become so ingrained by popular media that refuting them seems downright scandalous… Welch’s words, though wise beyond money, border on sacrilege in a country of generally healthy people who have developed an expensive health-care habit and who are expected to support a lucrative health-care industry. Welch’s conversational style makes his prescription for better health an easy pill to swallow.”. — Booklist , starred review. “A bright, lively discussion of the excesses of medical care to which patients often unwittingly go due to certain false assumptions… Welch demonstrates the flaws in these assumptions. “Gil Welch's latest book shows us exactly how too much medical care can be harmful and even deadly.

Get tips on navigating the Medicare maze Determine the best time to enroll—and how Save money by avoiding costly mistakes. For 18 years, as a senior editor of AARP's publications, she wrote hundreds of articles on Medicare and served as its online "Ask Ms. Medicare" columnist, answering thousands of questions sent by Medicare beneficiaries across the nation.

From Carol J. Buck, the bestselling Step-by-Step Medical Coding is a practical, easy-to-use resource that shows you exactly how to code using all current coding sets. Real-world coding reports (cleared of any confidential information) simulate the reports you will encounter as a coder and help you apply coding principles to actual cases. A workbook corresponds to the textbook and offers review and practice with more than 1,200 theory, practical, and report exercises (odd-numbered answers provided in appendix) to reinforce understanding of medical coding. Medical Coding Online uses animations, photographs, drawings, narrated slide shows, case-based exercises, pop-up definitions, and professional insights to reinforce coding concepts from the Step-by-Step text. Carol J. Buck, BS, MS, CPC, Program Director, Medical Secretarial Programs, Northwest Technical College, East Grand Forks, MN.

In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right. Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2009 : With a title like The Checklist Manifesto , it would be natural to expect that Atul Gawande is bent on revolutionizing that most loved-hated activity of workers the world over: the to-do list. This is a toppling revelation made all the more powerful by Gawande's skillful blend of anecdote and practical wisdom as he profiles his own experience as a surgeon and seeks out a wide range of other professions to show that a team is only as strong as its checklist--by his definition, a way of organizing that empowers people at all levels to put their best knowledge to use, communicate at crucial points, and get things done. Over the past decade, through his writing in The New Yorker magazine and his books Complications and Better , Atul Gawande has made a name for himself as a writer of exquisitely crafted meditations on the problems and challenges of modern medicine. Failure in the modern world, he writes, is really about the second of these errors, and he walks us through a series of examples from medicine showing how the routine tasks of surgeons have now become so incredibly complicated that mistakes of one kind or another are virtually inevitable: it's just too easy for an otherwise competent doctor to miss a step, or forget to ask a key question or, in the stress and pressure of the moment, to fail to plan properly for every eventuality. Harvard Medical School prof and New Yorker scribe Gawande ( Complications ) notes that the high-pressure complexities of modern professional occupations overwhelm even their best-trained practitioners; he argues that a disciplined adherence to essential procedures—by ticking them off a list—can prevent potentially fatal mistakes and corner cutting. He's at his best delivering his usual rich, insightful reportage on medical practice, where checklists have the subversive effect of puncturing the cult of physician infallibility and fostering communication and teamwork.

A Former Hospital CEO tells all on What’s Wrong with American Healthcare. What every American needs to know is a tell-all book revealing health-care industry secrets to explain concepts and advise how to survive in America’s ever-changing health-care delivery system. Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael is a spiritual visionary.