A book in which the author’s fascinating, well-researched ideas regarding holistic health may presage a paradigm shift in...
Fully 90 percent of human cells are microbial. This astonishing fact means that we are not merely human but a superorganism whose “microbiome” plays a major role in health and disease.
Despite decades of advances in medical technology, nearly 65 percent of deaths today are still caused by illness. Known as “non-communicable diseases,” this class of ailments includes heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, celiac disease, psoriasis, and many others. The biological factor that these conditions share is a dysregulated immune system, which can lead to chronic inflammation, which leads to illness. Through decades of research, Dietert (Immunotoxicology/Cornell Univ.; co-author: Science Sifting: Tools for Innovation in Science and Technology, 2013, etc.) makes the cogent and eye-opening argument that the microbiome—the collection of microbes that lives in our bodies and on our skin—is the arbiter of immune system homeostasis. This news is good, if unexpected, because it means that treatments, including pre- and probiotics (which naturally “re-seed” the body with good bacteria), have the potential to reset one’s microbiome and restore systemic health. In his comprehensive addition to a growing body of literature about microbial health, the author engagingly outlines the biology underlying this symbiotic relationship. He discusses not just how the microbiome affects nearly every aspect of our health, from food allergies to depression, but also how factors including overuse of antibiotics and lack of nutritional diversity have resulted in skyrocketing numbers of chronic illnesses. Presenting empirical data from several lines of research, Dietert converts scientific findings to practical health advice regarding everything from birth practices to geriatric medicine. He argues that “rebiosis” is feasible no matter one’s age and that a shift toward a healthy microbiome may usher in a new era of individualized health care resulting in a dramatic reduction of NCDs.
A book in which the author’s fascinating, well-researched ideas regarding holistic health may presage a paradigm shift in medicine.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-98390-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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