Pain is a vexing condition. But when it’s sudden and sharp, it has the added element of an unpleasant surprise. While the source may seem mystifying, as Dr. Ya-Ling Liou explains in her book, Every Body’s Guide to Everyday Pain, pain is often the end result of a whole range of stressors. You twist this way, or move that way, and suddenly you’re in agony, but it’s been building all the time.

 Dr. Ya-Ling Liou’s useful guide maps out the nature and causes of pain clearly and with empathy: two decades of helping patients has been parlayed into a practical and reassuring approach. Knowing your body is key, says this long-time practitioner of chiropractic medicine, as all manner of imbalances, from mechanical and chemical to emotional, can contribute to discomfort. She offers a helpful perspective on the nature of inflammation, clarifying that it’s not the “aid vehicles,” as she calls our cellular relief-and-repair response, that the body has problems with, but how to circulate them out fast enough for a new crew to show up. That’s why the simple method of applying ice and heat works: the hot/cold intervals trigger the blood vessels to contact and expand, and that, in turn, improves circulation and flow.  [Read more…]

Book review of Organize Tomorrow Today: 8 Ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at Work and in Life by Dr. Jason Selk and Tom Bartow

What does it take to succeed? It’s a perennial question: Google “success” and you get about 1,120,000,000 answers, certainly not all useful. But a new book by Dr. Jason Selk and Tom Bartow — a sports training specialist and a business coach — does have a useful answer. What sets high achievers apart is very specific: they don’t multitask. They think, prepare, and prioritize. That’s the revelation you’ll find in Selk and Bartow’s Organize Tomorrow Today: 8 Ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at Work and in Life (Da Capo Press). If you want to focus on being successful, trying focusing.

The authors based this book on their own years of experience coaching people to excellence. As the director of mental training for the St. Louis Cardinals, Selk was instrumental in transforming the struggling team into the winners of three division titles and two World Series Championships; he’s also worked with Olympic and pro athletes. Bartow is a business coach who used to coach college basketball — so has long had athletic achievement in his sights. But he’s also known as the person who rewrote the book on training financial advisors. [Read more…]

Sunday jogger to top-ranked tennis icon, knee pain is a vexing reality for all of us. In late 2015, the one and only Serena Williams — and Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year — was practically brought to a standstill dy to excruciating knee pain. And in the U.S. alone, the number of knee replacements performed in 2012 exceeded 670,000 (to the tune of some $36.1 billion).

Were they necessary? And what is the best way to take care of our knees? You may well find the answers in Education4Knees: Everything You Need to Know for Happy, Healthy and Pain-Free Knees, a new book by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Gregory Martin. Turns out, it’s not that complicated. It just takes commitment, and consistency.

Dr. Martin is all about the knee. But he approaches knees as a necessary exercise in taking care of oneself, not as a crippling mystery of discomfort or worse that you’d best leave in the hands of experts. On the contrary: simple lifestyle changes can actually prolong the life of your knees. His common-sense approach (this leading surgeon is from a family of mechanics) is hard to argue with. Indeed, one comes away from the book feeling like ignoring his guidance could be a very bad choice. Essentially, he wants us to be far clearer-headed about what makes knees not only hurt, but deteriorate — and then, as we would for a car, treat accordingly. [Read more…]

The most up-to-date and complete guide to managing HIV

Living a Healthy Life with HIV, 4^th edition, by Allison Webel, RN, PhD, Allen L. Gifford, MD, Kate Lorig DrPH, et. Al

More than 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV infection today, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In 2013 alone, approximately 47,352 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with the HIV infection. But HIV is no longer a death sentence: over the past two decades, the prognosis has radically improved, and many can expect to have a normal lifespan. For those living with HIV, what matters most of all is self-management — and just how to tackle that is the subject of the latest edition of Living a Healthy Life with HIV.

To call this book comprehensive is an understatement: its authors — The authors — Allison Webel, RN, PhD, Allen L. Gifford, MD, Kate Lorig DrPH and four more — were all part of a research and development team at Stanford University School of Medicine’s Patient Education Research Center in California. Their benchmark approach to managing life with HIV was the result of decades of research, which clearly showed that patients who take responsibility for their own care and treatment fare better than those who don’t. In essence, since you’re the one living with this day-to-day, you’re the only one who can control its outcome, assert the authors. In this 4^th edition of this landmark tome — first published in 1996 — they’ve outlined all the ways to make it happen, updated according to the latest medical guidelines, medications, and protocols. [Read more…]

c.2012, William Morrow $14.99 / $16.99 Canada 263 pages

Sleep was all you wanted, but it wasn’t going to happen.

You knew as soon as you buckled yourself in, that it didn’t look promising. Your Chatty-Cathy seatmate pounced on you right away with friendly questions that weren’t deflected by closed-eyes-as-hint. Then the kid behind you kicked the back of your seat, thumpa-thumpa-thumpa, before he began to bawl.

You knew how he felt: you wanted to throw a tantrum yourself.

Instead, you snagged an airline attendant, who tried to make things better for you. And in the new book, Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet by Heather Poole, you’ll see that you had a chance to make things better for her, too.

Heather Poole never wanted to be an airline attendant.

There was always another, better job waiting for her. Sales, maybe, or something else, she wasn’t sure. She applied for airline attendant training only because of the perks, especially the free flights.

The mistake was in mentioning that.

[Read more…]

You’re staying. No, you’re going. You’re staying and then you’re going.

The truth is that it’s going to be a nice long summer, so you can do what you want to do. One thing’s for sure, though: you want to do it with a book. So here are some great new releases scheduled to come out this summer….

JUNE

If you like thrillers, you’re in luck this month!

Look for new heart-thumpers by Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, James Rollins, and Eric Van Lustbader in June.

If you’re looking for something a little gentler, you’ll find novels by Mary Kay Andrews out in June, as well as Dorothea Benton Frank, Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus, Ridley Pearson, Janet Evanovich, and Alexander McColl Smith.

James Carville has a new book coming out in June.  There are two different books about the Obamas being released; one about Michelle and one about the President. There’s a new memoir by Anthony Swofford, a new book of devotions by Billy Graham, diet books this month (because it’s never too late for beach-wear season), a new book for runners, too, as well as a new Rachel Ray cookbook, and lots more.

For the kids, look for a new Splat the Cat book, a new release by Rosemary Wells, and a delightful new young adult book by Jodi Picoult and her teenage daughter (and it’s not just for teens, either!)

[Read more…]