Customer Reviews:
Medisin is GREAT!.......2007-01-18
I received this book as a birthday present in September of last year. I read the book in a couple of days but I keep it with me b/c I use it as a reference tool. This is my bible. I purchased two copies during the holiday season to give away as gifts. This is an excellent tool for healthy living especially if you are willing to do the work. It takes a whole lot more than just reading the book but this is a great start.
Eat To Live - Don't Live To Eat.......2006-06-12
Dick Gregory is absolutely correct when he stated that this book should be next too everyone's Bible. The information conveyed, if adhered to, can possibly save, or, provide the quality of life that we all wish for. Read this book! Study this book! Tell your family members to read this book! All the monetary success in the world means absolutely nothing if you are in bad health!
Medisin.......2006-05-24
Poor health is a lucrative revenue source that has been exploited by the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. This book is the truth. Incontrovertible. It contains proven information the pharmaceutical industry and the medical community have long surpressed. This knowledge will allow each of us to become proactive instead of reactive about our health. Indeed, our health is our only true wealth.
--Lisa
Baltimore, MD
Very Helpful.......2006-05-18
The research that has gone into this book is astounding. The poisons and toxins that we are putting into our bodies are killing us. Hats off to Dr. Whitaker for bringing this type of information to our attention so that we can become healthier human beings.
Knowing the truth will truly make you free!!.......2006-05-14
Brilliant, Brilliant. This is one of the most important books I have ever read in my life. It is thoroughly researched, and contains undisputable evidence that the current food / medical industry is part of a large Matrix designed to keep us as constant consumers of their poisonous products. There is no need to argue over what we BELIEVE, we must study to show ourselves approved, so that we may KNOW. Thank you DR.Whitaker; you most certainly have showed yourself approved and the Most High and the Ancestors are smiling upon you.
-PEACE
Book Description
Making Sense of Illness is a fascinating investigation into the social and clinical factors that determine what constitutes a "legitimate" illness in the twentieth century. By examining six case studies of diseases that have emerged within the past fifty years--from what we now consider to be "straightforward" diseases such as coronary heart disease, to the currently widely-debated Chronic Fatigue Syndrome--Aronowitz examines the historical and cultural factors that influence how doctors think about illness; how illnesses are recognized, named, classified, and finally, what they "mean" in an individual and social context. The choices that are available to the investigators, clinicians, patients and the processes by which change occurs are factors that all play a great role in "legitimizing" an illness, and these are the roles that are seldom examined. By juxtaposing the histories of each disease, Aronowitz shows how cultural and historical precedents have determined research programs, public health activities, clinical decisions, and even the patient's experience of illness. This is a must-read for anyone interested in public health and the history of medicine in the United States.
Customer Reviews:
Making sense makes sense.......2001-09-08
This is a clearly thought out and clearly written discourse on how the forces that define and sanction "disease" are strong and operative within social, economic, and historical contexts. Taking such diseases as polio and lyme disease Aronowitz nicely traces these forces at work. His section on caridiology and the evolution of risk factors and Type A personality as similar social constructions and their impact is truly exquisite. Sensibility and perspective without hype or shallow ridicule.
Average customer rating:
- Some good chapters on fascinating new field
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Evolutionary Medicine
Wenda R., Ed. Trevathan
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
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Similar Items:
-
Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine
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Evolving Health: The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World is Making Us Sick
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Evolution In Health And Disease
-
Evolution Of Infectious Disease
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Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
ASIN: 0195103564 |
Book Description
Evolution is the single most important idea in modern biology, shedding light on virtually every biological question, from the shape of orchid blossoms to the distribution of species across the planet. Until recently, however, the theory has had little impact on medical research or practice. Evolutionary Medicine shows how this is beginning to change. Collecting work from leaders in the field, this volume describes an array of new and innovative approaches to human health that are based on an appreciation of our long evolutionary history. For example, it shows how evolution helps to explain the complex relationship between our immune systems and the virulence and transmission of human viruses. It also shows how comparisons between how we live today and how our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived thousands of years ago illuminate a variety of contemporary ills, including obesity, lower-back pain, and insomnia. Evolutionary Medicine covers issues at every stage of life, from infancy (colic, jaundice, SIDS, parent-infant sleep struggles, ear infections, breast-feeding, asthma) to adulthood (sexually transmitted diseases, depression, overeating, addictions, child abuse, cardiovascular disease, breast and ovarian cancer) to old age (osteoporosis, geriatric sleep problems). Written for a wide range of students and researchers in medicine, anthropology, and psychology, it is an invaluable guide to this rapidly developing field.
Customer Reviews:
Some good chapters on fascinating new field.......2001-05-05
This book applies Darwin's theory of evolution to medicine and that's very exciting. It's exciting because the theory of evolution turns out to be a framework with impressive explanatory power in the area of health and disease. Why do babies in modern Western societies show more excessive crying than infants of !Kung San hunter-gatherers? What makes many women that give birth in modern high-tech hospitals still unsatisfied with the process? Why do so many modern women get breast cancer? Evolutionary medicine proposes answers, sometimes controversial, but definitely almost always worth considering. Why only four stars then? Perhaps it's because the field is still maturing but I thought only six of the eighteen chapters of the book showed clear arguments, high-quality writing, and didn't require a Ph.D. in biochemistry to follow the details. (I liked the chapters about evolutionary perspectives on infant crying, sudden infant death syndrome, obstetrics, nutrition, psychiatry, and breast cancer). And finally, readers should keep in mind that "Evolutionary Medicine" is a university textbook. For a more accessible introduction into this exciting new field they should read Nesse and Williams' "Why We Get Sick".
Book Description
Human illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptations that we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-life molecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnesses entails avoiding what causes the damage-- which too frequently are the everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chart below shows:
|
Level of Evolution |
Cause of adaptive failure |
resulting disease or problem |
|
Pre-life |
Environmental poisons |
Certain birth defects |
|
Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like) |
Viral infection |
Colds/flu/HIV |
|
Morula (sponge-like) |
Cellular stress |
Cancer |
|
Chordate |
Physical stress |
Back pain |
|
Fish |
Excess dietary salt |
Hypertension/heart disease |
|
Amphibian |
Tobacco smoke |
Lung cancer/emphysema |
|
Lower primate |
Excess dietary sugar |
Diabetes mellitus |
|
Higher primate |
Vitamin C deficiency |
Scurvy |
|
Ape |
Excess dietary protein |
Gout |
|
Homo sapiens |
Reduced dietary variety |
Nutritionaldiseases/food allergies |
Customer Reviews:
This book should be required reading in all the schools.......2007-09-30
This is one of the four or five best books I have ever read. It explains our most important health problems in their evolutionary context, and it explains why diet and lifestyle changes are far superior to pills and surgery. Everyone should read this book in their youth, so that they can prevent the health problems that come with a lifetime of bad choices and bad medical care. Buy this book, and buy more copies for all your relatives and friends --- and buy one for your doctor so that she can do a better job for you.
Evolution in Health and Disease.......2005-09-18
This is a fascinating book, written in clear, lucid, and descriptive prose, and written for the non-specialist and specialist alike, exploring the impact of evolution on health and disease. The book introduces "evolutionary medicine" to help the reader make informed choices about his or her own health. No one who wants to live a long, healthy life can afford to ignore the important insights gleaned from evolution in this book. What worked when we were hunter-gatherers on the African savannas no longer works in modern society, and the changes in our modern environments have caused Homo sapiens to adapt poorly.
One of the key evolutionary concepts is an entity's adaptation to its environment: When all the body's organs and systems are operating optimally under the ideal evolutionary environments, both internally and externally, our bodies are concordant. When our bodies are out of sync with either environment, they begin to fail, and our bodies become discordant. The former is homeostasis and health, the latter is disease and dysfunction.
After a very short introduction to the essential Darwinian concepts, excellently and easily recapitulated, the author turns to the seventeen stages of human evolutionary development, beginning with prokaryotes as stage one and ending with Homo sapiens as stage seventeen millions of years later, and describing all the intermediary stages in between. Although not difficult, it's the only place where the reader might become pensive, if not impatient, thinking the author is off course. But the key to understanding the rest of the book depends on understanding the material presented in Chapter Two. Here are some of the insights in columnar outline:
LEVEL OF EVOLUTION, ADAPTIVE FAILURE, CONSEQUENCE
Pre-life, Environmental poisons, Birth defects
Single cell, Viral infection, Cold/Flu/HIV
Morula (sponge-like), Cellular stress, Cancer
Chordate, Physical stress, Back pain
Fish, Excess dietary salt, Heart disease
Amphibian, Tobacco smoke, Lung disease
Lower primate, Excess dietary sugar, Diabetes mellitus
Higher primate, Vitamin C deficiency, Scurvy
Ape, Excess dietary protein, Gout
Homo sapiens, Reduced dietary variety, Allergies
This is a partial list. Each of the seventeen stages co-exist in humans; this complexity is both to our advantage, and can be our downfall. Understanding how each stage of evolution works within us unlocks a wealth of information.
Obviously, the emphasis is on prevention, not treatment, although there are constructive, non-medical, non-surgical options discussed. Some of the ideas are extremely valuable and helpful, others are highly speculative and dubious. For example, one particularly difficult concept advocated by Boaz is a return to a Paleo Diet that is high in animal products (especially gamey meats), while avoiding indigestible beans, grains, and dairy. It might be the "ideal" diet, but it's an impossible one to follow, and even more difficult to find. Still, the insights can help guide one to nutrition from an evolutionary perspective. The chapter on our musculoskeletal system was by far my favorite; I suffer from many of the system's dysfunctions, and now realize why. I knew it was a failure to adapt, but exactly how was new to me.
Nearly every anatomical and physiological system is evaluated in evolutionary terms. I'd run out of space just outlining them. Suffice it to say, this is not the only book on evolutionary medicine. This new field is literally exploding. Certainly an excellent alternative is Randolph Nesse's and George Williams' "Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine." Both are equally competent and informative, the only difference is a matter of style and approach. Take a look at both books and find the one that suits your temperament best. I truly enjoyed both. Ignore either to your health's detriment.
Excellent introduction to the ideas of evolutionary medicine.......2003-03-10
This works as a general introduction to the nascent field of evolutionary medicine. Note well the word "health" in the title. One of the central ideas in evolutionary medicine is preserving health, and in general looking at medicine from the point of view of the healthy instead of from an overweening concentration on the sick. An ounce of prevention in evolutionary medicine is worth a whole ton of cure.
Another important idea is to look, in so far as possible, to our adaptations as evolutionary beings to see what we might be doing wrong today. For example, grasses with plump seeds of carbohydrates were in short supply before the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. There were wheats and ryes, wild oats and such, but their seeds were relatively small and required a lot of labor to harvest. Consequently, our ancestors on the savannahs and in the woodlands ate grain carbohydrates in small amounts. Now, of course, grains--especially rice, wheat and corn--are the staple foods everywhere in the world and we eat massive amounts of them.
Is this a problem? As Professor Boaz points out, evolutionary medicine suggests that it is. We are "carbohydrate intolerant" (Boaz uses the term "glucotoxicity," page 133) and cannot shut down our appetite for all the carbohydrates so tantalizingly available to us. They are especially enthralling when served up with salt and fats.
In the prehistory there were no supermarkets open 24-hours a day. Instead there were freezing winters and droughts that might last for months or more, sure to visit almost every human eventually. So when there was a bountifulness in the land we chowed down big time. And those of us who had the ability to put on fat could live out the times of famine better than any prehistoric runway model. And so our chubby guy- or chubby gal-genes were favored. Boaz calls this the "thrifty genotype."
However that virtue has become a fault. What to do? Boaz recommends exercise, for one thing. In the pre-history our ancestors managed to walk all the way around the world. They had no cars or easy chairs. That we can solve our fat problem by looking at the way our ancestors lived and emulate them, is the somewhat bitter pill of this book. And, by the way, this "medicine" (hard to take, as we all know) also works against heart attacks, gout and other modern diseases.
Boaz has gone to some considerable trouble to associate various "diseases" with 17 evolutionary levels of human structure and function. (There's a table on pages 19-25.) These levels are like the idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" in that some of the levels are similar to those stages in the embryo's development from single cell through bony fish and amphibian to mammal, all the way to us. What Boaz is adding here is the idea that certain diseases are associated with each level of development. For example, emphysema is associated with the amphibian level of adaptation while viral infections go all the way back to when our ancestors were just single cells.
This scheme is useful in helping us to understand disease. It is even helpful in treatment. But Boaz's formulation is no magic pill or cure-all. For the chronic diseases that plague those of us in the developed world there is no easy cure. Boaz recognizes a "discordance" between our evolutionary selves and the modern environment that is leading to these diseases. He uses a concept he calls "adaptive normality" that can guide us away from the discordance.
This is a very readable book requiring no prior expertise. It is obvious that Boaz wanted to reach the educated lay person with his ideas. For those of you new to the idea of evolutionary medicine, this will be an exciting book. Boaz does an excellent job of teaching us is how to think from an evolutionary perspective, which is something we all need to do.
Another interesting book on this subject is Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (1994) by Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams which I also recommend.
Average customer rating:
- A Remedy for Western Medicine
|
A New Model of Health and Disease
George Vithoulkas
Manufacturer: North Atlantic Books
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Homeopathy
| Alternative Medicine
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Similar Items:
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Science of Homeopathy
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The Essence of Materia Medica
ASIN: 1556430876
Release Date: 1995-11-07 |
Customer Reviews:
A Remedy for Western Medicine.......2001-01-19
Following the concepts he presents in The Science of Homeopathy, theorist George Vithoulkas presents a new paradigm ofhealth and illness that goes beyond Western medicine's limited view of the human organism and the true sources of disease. This book is required reading for anyone having an academic or clinical interest in homeopathy and for those interested in the science and theory of a truly holistic oriented approach to illness and health. Although this book might be somewhat difficult to comprehend and digest for the layperson, it's well worth the challenging read.
In this text, Vithoulkas relates many of our current diseases such as cancer, aids, asthma, epilepsy, schizophrenia and dementia (along with many others) to the weakening of the immunity system and discusses the role of the overprescription of drugs such as antibiotics in this process.
I agree with Vithoulkas. Only when Western medicine incorporates homeopathic principles into its system and integrates the role of the psyche, spirit and emotions into theories of illness and health can we begin to develop more holistic forms of treatment.
Book Description
To be really well, we need to understand how our beliefs can make us ill. We don't need to be victims - not of illness, not of injury, not of blind chance. Our minds and intentions, good and bad, directly affect our well-being.
When we understand the connection between our thinking and our bodies, we can have control over our health.
Customer Reviews:
For Those SERIOUS About Taking Control of their Health.......1999-01-24
I received a lot more than I ever expected from this book. As I'm here recovering from a bad fall from a ladder while cleaning the roof gutters, my wife, a registered nurse, handed me this book to read. Truthfully, I started reading it to be a good patient for her. After the first chapter, I was hooked!!! Each day, I set aside time to read a chapter and focus on my healing. I already believed a lot of what Dr. Bonnett writes, but he brought me to a much deeper level. Although Dr. Bonnett is obviously very trained and intelligent, his mission is truly to educate rather than impress. He excels with his clever examples and ingenious analogies to make his points. Be prepared for how you will deal with this short excerpt from the book, "No one dies or becomes ill who does not, at some deeper level of being, choose to do so." I will never be back to my "normal" self after this accident...instead I am at a new and improved higher level of personal energy and power. This book is definitely for those who are creative in their approach to taking control of their own health and healing. That's a big part of Why Healing Happens.
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The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read
