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Friday, November 18, 2011

November is National Diabetes Month: Highlighting Cookbooks

One way to control diabetes is through appropriate diet. Here are a few current selections to help with that goal.

Just What the Doctor Ordered Diabetes Cookbook, is written by Joseph D’Amore, a medical doctor, and his sister Lisa D’Amore-Miller, a nutritionist. The book includes 125 recipes that are designed to be easy to prepare and taste delicious. The authors also include “Prescription for Success” tips that provide cooking, diet, lifestyle and diabetes self-management advice.

The Mediterranean Diabetes Cookbook, written by Amy Riolo, presents recipes for a diet of fruits, vegetables, lean meats and whole grains. They are based upon the typically healthy recipes found in Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, and other countries in the region.

The Essential Diabetes Cookbook: Good Healthy Eating from around the World, written by Antony Worrall Thompson, includes two hundred recipes from all international cuisines that are modified to suit the diabetic diet.

The Diabetes Comfort Food Cookbook: Foods to Fill You Up, Not Out, written by Robyn Webb, presents healthy versions of classic comfort foods for the diabetic. Selections include lasagna, meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, cake and more.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

Contrary to popular belief, our conscious brain is not in charge of human behavior. Author David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine, relies upon his in-depth research of medical journals and texts (listed in bibliographic format at the end of the book) to present a thorough analysis of the human brain. However, we still have a lot to learn about our subject. Below the conscious level, we rely on instincts, impulses, automatic systems and emotions to guide ourselves through life. Is brain development reliant on genetics or environment? Is free will a misnomer? There are no easy answers to any of the questions brought up in this book.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness

Author and psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi presents his premise that the most successful political leaders during times of war and other calamities are not those who are mentally healthy. Instead, it is those individuals who have suffered some of the symptoms of depression, bipolar disorder and other diseases both mental and physical that are most successful in leading their people through times of crisis. These conditions provide the individual with such attributes as realistic outlook (as opposed to optimism), empathy, creativity, and resilience. These leaders, including John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, and others, have been successful. Adolf Hitler doesn’t fit in with this group, the author contends, because of his overmedication with opiates, barbiturates and amphetamines. Other leaders such as George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Tony Blair and Neville Chamberlain, while mentally healthy enough to lead in times of peace and well-being were not capable of command during crisis.

Ghaemi’s theories will have some readers nodding in agreement and others totally opposed.