Your Good Health: How to Stay Well and What to Do When You're Not - Hardcover

This guidebook to a sensible, healthy life-style is not an encyclopedia of medical disease; rather its main focus is useful information to help the reader make informed choices for a healthier life...The editors provide a wealth of diverse information: tips for preventing osteoporosis, insomnia, hypertension, wrinkles, hemorrhoids, and backaches. They offer methods of diagnosis and treatment of infertility, glaucoma, impotence, migraines, premenstrual syndrome, and other medical conditions. Chapters are devoted to the basics of fitness, nutrition, and weight control; recreational drugs, from caffeine to cocaine; and environmental factors influencing well-being... Discussed are new medical discoveries--e.g., cholesterol-lowering drugs, antibalding agents, dental implants, improved birth-control pills. A worthwhile medical update on current health concerns from the editors of the popular Harvard Medical School Health Letter. Much of this material originally appeared in that publication, and has been updated and expanded here...Throughout, this is clear, current information told in a forthright manner. "Your Good Health" covers everything from gingivitis to macular degeneration, estrogen and menopause, microwave pollution, polluted doctors ('the impaired physician') and living wills--and does so with reasonableness and sure judgment. Quality is rare, but this book has it. No exclamations, no jargon, no oversimplification. Just direct English grounded in a firm grasp of health issues. The authors are, respectively, the editor, chairman and consulting editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter. A useful guide to help you ask the right questions about diagnoses and treatment.--Francesca Lunzer "Forbes " While no doctor will totally agree with everything in this compilation of advice from the Harvard Medical School Health Letter, the information offered is essentially sound, extremely helpful to both the doctor and the patient, worth having, and, best of all, offered in a brief, easy-to-understand manner...It is difficult to conceive of any health question a patient might have that is not answered within these pages.--Edward R. Pinckey "Science Books and Films " The folks who bring us the monthly Harvard Medical School Health Letter have gathered their wisdom into a highly readable and at times wry book which avoids pat answers and shows us how to make a reasoned response to things that trouble us--gas, panic attacks, overweight, high cholesterol, or where to get the best cancer therapy. It is refreshingly nondogmatic about conditions for which medical therapies are no more successful than home remedies...The book emphasizes everyday miseries over the rare or gruesome, but its scope is broad...Readers will gain confidence in their ability to mantain their well-being without expensive gadgets and extreme habits in the gym or at the table.--Yvonne Baskin "New York Times Book Review "

Your doctor is the second most important person taking care of your health. You're the first. This book was written so that you can do a better job, without going to medical school. It is designed to help you sort out the vital health information you need--what to consider, what to ignore, what to worry about, what to forget. Deciding how to take care of a pain, an injury, a fever--and whether to call in expert advice--is not always an easy task. Knowing how to prevent disease can be even harder: Will I really live longer and feel better if I cut down on dietary fat, or alcohol, or overwork? The main focus of this book is on prevention: habits you can modify, choices you can make in daily life. Good choices do make a difference. The life expectancy of American adults has been increasing, and it is quite clear that professional medical care is not the only reason people are living longer. But when you do call in the professionals, this book will guide you in asking the right questions about your diagnosis and treatment. When medical decisions must be made, you can be an active partner in making them. The doctors who wrote this book have made some fundamental assumptions about their readers: they are people who want to make their own choices about their health, based on the best possible evidence; they want straightforward information unencumbered with excessive detail; when they talk with their physician, they want to ask intelligent questions and understand the answers; they want to live a long life, but also enjoy it along the way; and they want to see the big picture--how their personal health is affected by environmental and social forces.