Time to Save Medicine


Book Description

"A doctor should be a clown at heart, a scientist at brain and a mother at conscience." Abhijit Naskar - this is not just a name - it's an idea - an idea of self-realization - an idea of a healthy humanity - an idea of one humanity. And that idea rises through this book once again to extend the flow of practical philosophy of life to all practitioners of medicine. This is a humanitarian guidebook of the true philosophy, ethics and purpose of medical practice for all doctors and would-be doctors to understand themselves and their patients better. Naskar, the humanitarian neuroscientist lends a hand to the bold and life-saving individuals known as doctors in their practice of medicine, so that they could, in the truest sense of the term "save lives" and not just treat sick bodies.




Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Save Lives


Book Description

The opioid crisis in the United States has come about because of excessive use of these drugs for both legal and illicit purposes and unprecedented levels of consequent opioid use disorder (OUD). More than 2 million people in the United States are estimated to have OUD, which is caused by prolonged use of prescription opioids, heroin, or other illicit opioids. OUD is a life-threatening condition associated with a 20-fold greater risk of early death due to overdose, infectious diseases, trauma, and suicide. Mortality related to OUD continues to escalate as this public health crisis gathers momentum across the country, with opioid overdoses killing more than 47,000 people in 2017 in the United States. Efforts to date have made no real headway in stemming this crisis, in large part because tools that already existâ€"like evidence-based medicationsâ€"are not being deployed to maximum impact. To support the dissemination of accurate patient-focused information about treatments for addiction, and to help provide scientific solutions to the current opioid crisis, this report studies the evidence base on medication assisted treatment (MAT) for OUD. It examines available evidence on the range of parameters and circumstances in which MAT can be effectively delivered and identifies additional research needed.




Saving Lives, Buying Time


Book Description

For more than 50 years, low-cost antimalarial drugs silently saved millions of lives and cured billions of debilitating infections. Today, however, these drugs no longer work against the deadliest form of malaria that exists throughout the world. Malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africaâ€"currently just over one million per yearâ€"are rising because of increased resistance to the old, inexpensive drugs. Although effective new drugs called "artemisinins" are available, they are unaffordable for the majority of the affected population, even at a cost of one dollar per course. Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance examines the history of malaria treatments, provides an overview of the current drug crisis, and offers recommendations on maximizing access to and effectiveness of antimalarial drugs. The book finds that most people in endemic countries will not have access to currently effective combination treatments, which should include an artemisinin, without financing from the global community. Without funding for effective treatment, malaria mortality could double over the next 10 to 20 years and transmission will intensify.




Medicine Moves to the Mall


Book Description

Links changes in the sites at which medical services are offered to changes in medical practice, in medical economics, and in patterns of American commerce and urbanism. [back cover].




Good Medicine, Hard Times


Book Description

The moving memoir of one of the most senior-ranking combat physicians to have served on the battlefields of the second Iraq war.




Slow Medicine


Book Description

"Wonderful... Physicans would do well to learn this most important lesson about caring for patients." —The New York Times Book Review Over the years that Victoria Sweet has been a physician, “healthcare” has replaced medicine, “providers” look at their laptops more than at their patients, and costs keep soaring, all in the ruthless pursuit of efficiency. Yet the remedy that economists and policy makers continue to miss is also miraculously simple. Good medicine takes more than amazing technology; it takes time—time to respond to bodies as well as data, time to arrive at the right diagnosis and the right treatment. Sweet knows this because she has learned and lived it over the course of her remarkable career. Here she relates unforgettable stories of the teachers, doctors, nurses, and patients through whom she discovered the practice of Slow Medicine, in which she has been both pioneer and inspiration. Medicine, she helps us to see, is a craft and an art as well as a science. It is relational, personal, even spiritual. To do it well requires a hard-won wisdom that no algorithm can replace—that brings together “fast” and “slow” in a truly effective, efficient, sustainable, and humane way of healing.




Honest Medicine


Book Description

HONEST MEDICINE introduces four lifesaving treatments that have been effectively treating--and in some cases curing--people for 25-90 years. However, for reasons of profitability (or lack thereof), these treatments have not been universally accepted. The treatments are: Low Dose Naltrexone for autoimmune diseases (e.g., multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, etc.)




The New York Times Book of Medicine


Book Description

Today we live longer, healthier lives than ever before in history—a transformation due almost entirely to tremendous advances in medicine. This change is so profound, with many major illnesses nearly wiped out, that its hard now to imagine what the world was like in 1851, when the New York Times began publishing. Treatments for depression, blood pressure, heart disease, ulcers, and diabetes came later; antibiotics were nonexistent, viruses unheard of, and no one realized yet that DNA carried blueprints for life or the importance of stem cells. Edited by award-winning writer Gina Kolata, this eye-opening collection of 150 articles from the New York Times archive charts the developing scientific insights and breakthroughs into diagnosing and treating conditions like typhoid, tuberculosis, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimers, and AIDS, and chronicles the struggles to treat mental illness and the enormous success of vaccines. It also reveals medical mistakes, lapses in ethics, and wrong paths taken in hopes of curing disease. Every illness, every landmark has a tale, and the newspapers top reporters tell each one with perceptiveness and skill.




Food Over Medicine


Book Description

Includes recipes from Chef Del Sroufe, author of the bestselling Forks Over Knives—The Cookbook and Better Than Vegan Nearly half of Americans take at least one prescription medicine, with almost a quarter taking three or more, as diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and dementia grow more prevalent than ever. The problem with medicating common ailments, such as high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol, is that drugs treat symptoms—and may even improve test results—without addressing the cause: diet. Overmedicated, overfed, and malnourished, most Americans fail to realize the answer to lower disease rates doesn't lie in more pills but in the foods we eat.With so much misleading nutritional information regarded as common knowledge, from “everything in moderation" to “avoid carbs," the average American is ill-equipped to recognize the deadly force of abundant, cheap, unhealthy food options that not only offer no nutritional benefits but actually bring on disease. In Food Over Medicine, Pamela A. Popper, PhD, ND, and Glen Merzer invite the reader into a conversation about the dire state of American health—the result of poor nutrition choices stemming from food politics and medical misinformation. But, more important, they share the key to getting and staying healthy for life. Backed by numerous scientific studies, Food Over Medicine details how dietary choices either build health or destroy it. Food Over Medicine reveals the power and practice of optimal nutrition in an accessible way.




Occupy Medicine


Book Description

Author and Stanford doctor Walter Bortz is recognized as perhaps our foremost authority on healthy aging as well as one of our most fervent and credible advocates of radical change in American health care. His new book is "Occupy Medicine: A Call For A Revolution To Save American Healthcare" and it is worth your reading time. Occupy Medicine is a layman's guide through the labyrinth of our present medical catastrophe. Dr. Walter Bortz, in this compact and powerful treatise, shows how American medicine has morphed into a bureaucratic industrial complex whose defining core is the perpetuation of sickness. Calling for a new paradigm he describes the Commonhealth as "a system in which every segment of society is committed to the assurance of our personal and collective potential", which he identifies as our most important national resource. He shows in compelling terms how we can achieve that. With an urgent plea for each of us to take back ownership of our personal health, Dr. Bortz calls on all of us to step up to the primary responsibility for our own health -- and shows just how to do it.