Health Systems

Images and sounds of war, natural disasters, and human-made devastation explicitly surround us and implicitly leave their imprint in our muscles, our belly and heart, our nervous systems, and the brains in our skulls. We each experience more digital data than we are capable of processing in a day, and this is leading to a loss of empathy and human contact. This loss of leisurely, sustained, face-to-face connection is making true presence a rare experience for many of us, and is neurally ingraining fast pace and split attention as the norm.

Brain diseases are now the world's leading source of disability. The fastest growing of these is Parkinson's: the number of people with Parkinson's doubled to over six million over the last 25 years and is projected to double again by 2040. Harmful pesticides known to cause Parkinson's proliferate, many people remain undiagnosed and untreated, research funding stagnates, and the most effective treatment is now a half century old.

After an accident that left him permanently paralyzed over ten years ago, Dr. Bradford Berk made it his mission to help others recover from acute neurological injury (ANI). As the founder and director of the University of Rochester Neurorestoration Institute, he brings his abundant experience in working with patients and making his own ongoing recovery to Getting Your Brain and Body Back, the most up-to-date guide for survivors of spinal cord injury (SCI), stroke, and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Arthritis is the most common cause of disability in the world - greater than both back pain and heart disease. One example, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), is the most common autoimmune disease, affecting 1% of the US population, and almost 68 million people worldwide. Conventional medicine tends to treat arthritis with strong, gut-damaging, immune-suppressing pain medications, temporarily relieving the symptoms of the disease without addressing its root causes.

More and more, science is proving that a healthy digestive system is the key to a healthy brain and body—making this book the natural follow-up to Dr. Colbert's Healthy Gut Zone and Beyond Keto.

Balance and heal your mind, body, and soul by tapping into the connections between your chakras and your diet. Chakras, Food, and You is a revolutionary approach that customizes health assessments based on the chakras - the ancient system that modern-day yogis exalt and the ancients across all cultures and periods embraced as the secret to enlightenment.

Our human nervous system has the power to cope with high stress but not when it's been ground down by the relentless stimuli of today’s world. Over time, these persistent demands leave us burnt out because our nervous system is stuck in survival mode. In this mode, we have reduced capacity for rational thinking and less capacity to care. Dr. Claire Plumbly draws on polyvagal theory and her professional insights as a trauma therapist working with clients experiencing anxiety, trauma and burnout to give you tools to thrive amidst the challenges of modern life, at work, at home.

In her harrowing, defiant, and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological. The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions.

In My Stroke of Insight, Taylor shares her unique perspective on the brain and its capacity for recovery, and the sense of omniscient understanding she gained from this unusual and inspiring voyage out of the abyss of a wounded brain. It would take eight years for Taylor to heal completely. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, her respect for the cells composing her human form, and most of all an amazing mother, Taylor completely repaired her mind and recalibrated her understanding of the world.

We are in the midst of a mental health crisis. An estimated one in five American adults suffer from some form of mental illness. Despite the billions of dollars spent in pharmaceutical research and the rising popularity of antidepressant drugs, we are more depressed and anxious than ever before. What if we’re looking for solutions in the wrong places? What if instead of treating mental illness with prescriptions and medication, we changed what we eat and how we feed our brains?

A new epidemic is sweeping the country. Some people call it ADHD, scatter brain, or brain fog. Some simply say they just don't feel like themselves - and haven't for a long time. People are thinking and feeling worse than ever. Why? Because our brains are not getting the support they need to produce the essential brain chemicals that keep us energized, calm, focused, and inspired.

In Concussion Rescue, Dr. Kabran Chapek shares the programs and protocols that he uses at the Amen Clinics to put patients on the pathway to healing from traumatic brain injury. From general assessment using sophisticated tools (SPECT imaging, MRIs, and CAT scans) to very specific blood tests (out-of-balance lab values in blood can point to symptoms of brain injury and may explain why the brain is not healing), Dr. Chapek guides listeners to getting the proper medical care.

Until Dr. Barnard's scientific breakthrough, most health professionals believed that once you developed diabetes, you were stuck with it—and could anticipate one complication after another, from worsening eyesight and nerve symptoms to heart and kidney problems. But as this groundbreaking work reveals, this simply is not true. In a series of studies—the most recent funded by the National Institutes of Health—Dr. Barnard has shown that it is possible to repair insulin function and reverse type 2 diabetes.

Now in its third edition, Stronger After Stroke gives the power of recovery to the listeners by providing simple-to-follow instructions for reaching the highest possible level of recovery. The audiobook's neuroplastic recovery model stresses repetition of task-specific practice, proper scheduling of practice, setting goals, and measuring progress to achieve optimal results. Researcher Peter G. Levine breaks down the science and gives survivors evidence-based tools to retrain the brain and take charge of recovery.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the shocking mortality figures obscured the fact that death is not the only adverse outcome of the virus. Today, as many as 30 percent of COVID-19 survivors still experience symptoms long after their acute illness has passed, with cognitive and mental health problems especially prominent. For long haulers, this struggle with Long COVID has irrevocably changed their lives. In Clearing the Fog, neuropsychologist Dr. James C. Jackson offers people suffering from Long COVID and their families a roadmap to help them manage their “new normal.”

A riveting thriller reminiscent of The Hot Zone, this true story dives into the mystery surrounding one of the most controversial and misdiagnosed conditions of our time - Lyme disease - and of Willy Burgdorfer, the man who discovered the microbe behind it, revealing his secret role in developing bug-borne biological weapons and raising terrifying questions about the genesis of the epidemic of tick-borne diseases affecting millions of Americans today.

A diagnosis of Parkinson's disease is as disorienting as it is devastating. The Complete Guide for People with Parkinson's Disease and Their Loved Ones helps make sense of what comes next and what can be done, not just for those suffering from the disease, but for their family and friends as well.

The Concussion Repair Manual is created as a user’s guide for those suffering after head traumas and those who support them. It is one-part “textbook”, packed with the leading research on medical technologies for healing the injured brain, and one-part “workbook”, offering a step-by-step method for making and tracking a personalized recovery regimen.

Drawing on decades of experience in treating fibromyalgia, Mayo Clinic Guide to Fibromyalgia offers research-supported, practical strategies that can help anyone with fibromyalgia live their best life now. From personal stories of people living with fibromyalgia to the compassionate expertise of its medical editors, this book seeks to first connect with people who have fibromyalgia in a way that they may not have experienced from loved ones and even doctors.

The Polyvagal Theory Workbook for Trauma offers evidence-based activities to help you heal the effects of trauma, rewire your nervous system, and return to a state of balance and calm. You'll begin by getting to know your nervous system, including an exploration of polyvagal theory and the vagus nerve. You'll also learn soothing, body-based practices to help you rewire your nervous response, including rhythmic movements (EMDR and tapping), conscious breathing, mindful movement, and more.