A tremendous amount of research has been performed looking at the relationship between personality and disease. Research on this topic has been spread throughout scientific journals on psychology, behavioral health, psychoneuroimmunology, oncology, and epidemiology. Personality and Disease brings this research together in one place for the first time. With contributions from world experts, the book summarizes research findings on personality as it relates to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma and allergies, dementia, and more. Is there such a thing as a cancer- prone personality? Do sadness, anger, stress, or shyness affect the likelihood that we will fall ill to specific diseases? Can we protect ourselves from disease through a positive outlook? This book will address both what we know, and what we persist in believing despite evidence to the contrary, and why such beliefs persist in the face of evidence. - Investigates whether and how personality affects disease generally - Includes cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, allergies, and dementia - Separates fact from fiction, evidence from beliefs - Collates research from a wide variety of scientific domains - Contains international perspectives from top scholars
When we or our loved ones fall ill, our world is thrown into disarray, our routines are interrupted, our beliefs shaken. David Morris offers an unconventional, deeply human exploration of what it means to live with, and live through, disease. He shows how desire—emotions, dreams, stories, romance, even eroticism—plays a crucial part in illness.
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in men and women. Unfortunately, women have traditionally been excluded from clinical trials, and female animals have been used less or sex was not reported in basic research studies. Until recently, consideration of both sexes was not required in clinical and preclinical studies focusing on cardiovascular diseases. However, the number of clinical and experimental papers dealing with sex differences and heart disease significantly increases during the last years. This trend is obviously the result of at least two facts: the number of examples of different behavior of the male and female heart under physiological and pathological conditions is steadily increasing and there were controversial reports on the beneficial and adverse effect of hormonal replacement therapy. Detailed molecular and cellular mechanisms of these differences are still unknown but one is clear already today: sex differences are so important that they should be considered by the selection of optimum diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in clinical practice. The book presents 16 manuscripts on sex differences of heart disease, as developed by several investigators; the volume is organized in four parts. Part I, dealing with sex differences in cardiac ischemic injury, includes 5 chapters on experimental aspects of cardiac ischemia/reperfusion injury, the role of testosterone, and clinical aspects of ischemic heart disease. Part II is devoted to sex differences in heart failure and includes four chapters. Discussion in this part of the book is centered around the sex differences in heart failure due to volume overload. Part III of this volume includes four papers on risk factors of cardiovascular diseases, namely hypertension and obesity, and, finally, three chapters in part IV deal with sex differences of cardiac mitochondria under different pathological conditions. We believe this book will be very useful for cardiovascular scientists, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and other health professionals.
In 1748, as yellow fever raged in Charleston, South Carolina, doctor John Lining remarked, "There is something very singular in the constitution of the Negroes, which renders them not liable to this fever." Lining's comments presaged ideas about blackness that would endure in medical discourses and beyond. In this fascinating medical history, Rana A. Hogarth examines the creation and circulation of medical ideas about blackness in the Atlantic World during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She shows how white physicians deployed blackness as a medically significant marker of difference and used medical knowledge to improve plantation labor efficiency, safeguard colonial and civic interests, and enhance control over black bodies during the era of slavery. Hogarth refigures Atlantic slave societies as medical frontiers of knowledge production on the topic of racial difference. Rather than looking to their counterparts in Europe who collected and dissected bodies to gain knowledge about race, white physicians in Atlantic slaveholding regions created and tested ideas about race based on the contexts in which they lived and practiced. What emerges in sharp relief is the ways in which blackness was reified in medical discourses and used to perpetuate notions of white supremacy.
Sander L. Gilman, whose pioneering work on the history of stereotypes has become a model for scholars in many fields, here examines the images that society creates of disease and its victims.
As the population of older Americans grows, it is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Differences in health by racial and ethnic status could be increasingly consequential for health policy and programs. Such differences are not simply a matter of education or ability to pay for health care. For instance, Asian Americans and Hispanics appear to be in better health, on a number of indicators, than White Americans, despite, on average, lower socioeconomic status. The reasons are complex, including possible roles for such factors as selective migration, risk behaviors, exposure to various stressors, patient attitudes, and geographic variation in health care. This volume, produced by a multidisciplinary panel, considers such possible explanations for racial and ethnic health differentials within an integrated framework. It provides a concise summary of available research and lays out a research agenda to address the many uncertainties in current knowledge. It recommends, for instance, looking at health differentials across the life course and deciphering the links between factors presumably producing differentials and biopsychosocial mechanisms that lead to impaired health.
Eat your way to better health with this New York Times bestseller on food's ability to help the body heal itself from cancer, dementia, and dozens of other avoidable diseases. Forget everything you think you know about your body and food, and discover the new science of how the body heals itself. Learn how to identify the strategies and dosages for using food to transform your resilience and health in Eat to Beat Disease. We have radically underestimated our body's power to transform and restore our health. Pioneering physician scientist, Dr. William Li, empowers readers by showing them the evidence behind over 200 health-boosting foods that can starve cancer, reduce your risk of dementia, and beat dozens of avoidable diseases. Eat to Beat Disease isn't about what foods to avoid, but rather is a life-changing guide to the hundreds of healing foods to add to your meals that support the body's defense systems, including: Plums Cinnamon Jasmine tea Red wine and beer Black Beans San Marzano tomatoes Olive oil Pacific oysters Cheeses like Jarlsberg, Camembert and cheddar Sourdough bread The book's plan shows you how to integrate the foods you already love into any diet or health plan to activate your body's health defense systems-Angiogenesis, Regeneration, Microbiome, DNA Protection, and Immunity-to fight cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative autoimmune diseases, and other debilitating conditions. Both informative and practical, Eat to Beat Disease explains the science of healing and prevention, the strategies for using food to actively transform health, and points the science of wellbeing and disease prevention in an exhilarating new direction.