Health Illness

Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.

New hope for those suffering from conditions like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, addictions, PTSD, ADHD, and more. Though incidence of these conditions is skyrocketing, for the past four decades standard treatment hasn’t much changed, and success rates in treating them have barely improved, either. Meanwhile, the stigma of the “mental illness” label - damaging and devastating on its own - can often prevent sufferers from getting the help they need. Brain specialist and best-selling author Dr. Daniel Amen aims to change all that.

The gargantuan American mental health industry was not healing millions who were desperately in need. He left his position atop the mental health research world to investigate all that was broken - and what a better path to mental health might look like.

Unlike canned nature sounds created in a studio, renowned acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton travels the world recording remarkable locations that capture the essence of the place itself. His lifelong mission is to preserve nature through sound, and his soundscapes are produced with such care and quality that you feel as if he has truly brought a slice of the world into your home...

Heart disease is the number-one killer. However, traditional heart disease protocols - with their emphasis on lowering cholesterol - have it all wrong. Emerging science is showing that cholesterol levels are a poor predictor of heart disease and that standard prescriptions for lowering it, such as ineffective low-fat/high-carb diets and serious, side-effect-causing statin drugs, obscure the real causes of heart disease. The Great Cholesterol Myth reveals the real culprits of heart disease.

Meditation makes you more productive because it lets you earn back time. For each minute you spend meditating, you'll earn around nine minutes back, as Chris Bailey - author of The Productivity Project and Hyperfocus - will show in this candid and counter-intuitive guide to the productivity benefits of meditation.

There is no bigger issue for healthy infants than sleeping through the night. In this simple, straightforward book, Suzy Giordano presents her amazingly effective "Limited-Crying Solution" that will get any baby to sleep for twelve hours at night-and three hours in the day-by the age of twelve weeks old. Giordano is the mother of five children and one of the most sought-after baby sleep specialists in the country. Her sleep plan has been tested - and it has never failed.

In 2015, Barbara Lipska - a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness - was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, the immunotherapy her doctors had prescribed worked quickly. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.

In this audio, the authors offer astonishing proof that the heart has an intelligence, one that profoundly affects our mental and physical health. They have proven that when the heart's intelligence is engaged, it can completely alter our heartbeat, blood pressure, and hormone levels.

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?

For nearly 20 years, sleep-deprived Americans have found natural, drug-free relief from insomnia with the help of Dr. Gregg D. Jacobs' Say Good Night to Insomnia. In this updated edition, Jacobs surveys the limitations and dangers of the new generation of sleeping pills, dispels misleading and confusing claims about sleep and health, and shares cutting-edge research on insomnia that proves his approach is more effective than sleeping pills.

Arthritis is the most common cause of disability in the world - greater than both back pain and heart disease. One example, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), is the most common autoimmune disease, affecting 1% of the US population, and almost 68 million people worldwide. Conventional medicine tends to treat arthritis with strong, gut-damaging, immune-suppressing pain medications, temporarily relieving the symptoms of the disease without addressing its root causes.

During the summer of 1793, Mattie Cook lives above the family coffee shop with her widowed mother and grandfather. Mattie spends her days avoiding chores and making plans to turn the family business into the finest Philadelphia has ever seen. But then the fever breaks out. Disease sweeps the streets, destroying everything in its path and turning Mattie's world upside down. At her feverish mother's insistence, Mattie flees the city with her grandfather. But she soon discovers that the sickness is everywhere, and Mattie must learn quickly how to survive in a city frantic with disease.

This is a 150-year detective story with a cast of unrecognized heroes who may, finally, become known for their work on the true causes of heart disease. Exploring the truth about cholesterol—the apparently tried, and convicted, cause of millions of deaths from heart disease—with billions spent each year on lowering cholesterol with diet and drugs.

Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.

Until sophomore year of high school, 15-year-old Allison Britz lived a comfortable life in an idyllic town. She was a dedicated student with tons of extracurricular activities, friends, and loving parents at home. But after awakening from a vivid nightmare in which she was diagnosed with brain cancer, she was convinced the dream had been a warning. Allison believed that she must do something to stop the cancer in her dream from becoming a reality.

Full of mother-wisdom, reassurance, and support, Sweet Sleep is the first book on nights and naps for breastfeeding families. It is a comprehensive how-to guide for making sane and safe decisions on how and where your family sleeps, backed by the latest research in pediatric care.

Psychiatry has made great advances in the past 50 years but needs a new direction. Today's emphasis on psychiatric drugs will not stand the test of time. Recent advances in epigenetics and the molecular biology of the brain have provided a roadmap for the development of effective, natural, drug-free therapies that do not produce serious side effects. Psychiatric medications have served society well over the last 50 years, but the need for drug therapies will fade away as science advances.

For years, Monsanto declared that their product Roundup, the world’s most widely used weed killer, was safe. But that all changed in 2015, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) analyzed data from scientific studies and concluded that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was probably carcinogenic. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) disagreed, other regulatory agencies got involved, and scientists clamored to understand the link between glyphosate and cancer.

Breaking the Patterns of Depression begins by translating the clinical literature on psychotherapy and antidepressant medication into language that can be used to enhance an understanding of depression, and to personalize individual cures. Yapko uses a conversational, anecdotal tone that encourages listeners to take an active approach to helping themselves. Special sections entitled "Learn by Doing" and "Shifting Perspectives" help develop the skills necessary to manage difficult experiences.