A healthful, diet-focused program aims at stemming and even reversing the effects of Type 2 diabetes. Dietician Chan teams up with physician Ruan in the creation of a lifestyle modification plan and recipe guidebook directing readers toward improving their health. In this debut manual, Chan channels her immense passion for food and lifestyle positivity into the text, believing that “the intimate relationship we have with what we put in our body should help us live a fruitful, healthy life.” Ruan’s motivation stems from a number of his patients, newly diagnosed with diabetes, who embarked on a regimen of mindful diet and exercise changes to stabilize blood sugar levels. This routine’s cornerstones involve tracking eating habits, establishing healthy goals, and obtaining greater food knowledge. The authors explain that the widespread use of processed sugars in foods sparked a diabetes epidemic, with a contributing factor consumers’ addiction to an “instant reward and gratification” system. The book describes diabetes in layperson’s terms, making the guide accessible to a diverse audience. The authors’ co-developed, cohesive plan, called Layers of Living Success, aims to “bring the idea of food back to the basics of simple meal decisions.” Their program is simply structured around a model of food recategorization using multiple nutrition layers alongside the critical role each food group plays in the development (and possible reversal) of Type 2 diabetes. The program is founded on the ideals of portion control; nutritional components like protein, fats, and refined grains; dietary education; and the concepts of glycemic index charting and insulin resistance. Patient compliance is a sticking point, the authors contend. By using graphs and charts in a center section, the plan’s categorization techniques come to life by clearly delineating behavioral requirements for success as well as the foods included in each of the system’s layers and a tracking log. The plan is further fortified with a color photography section detailing a refreshingly diverse recipe selection. These inviting recipes, tailored toward the Living Success protocol, feature categories like soups, meats, fish, and even baked goods. Well-structured and written with care and compassion, the book is ideal for newly diagnosed diabetics searching for nonpharmaceutical remedies. The authors’ helpful and healthful guidance seeks to enable readers to seize control of their condition and offers tips on the maintenance of overall health, wellness, and vitality. A smart, informational, and greatly applicable addition to the diabetic guidebook genre.
Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5391-4201-0
Page Count: 138
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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