An Instant New York Times Bestseller

From Johns Hopkins medical expert Dr. Marty Makary, the New York Times-bestselling author of The Price We Pay-an eye-opening look at the medical groupthink that has led to public harm, and what you need to know about your health.

More Americans have peanut allergies today than at any point in history. Why? In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a strict recommendation that parents avoid giving their children peanut products until they're three years old. Getting the science perfectly backward, triggering intolerance with lack of early exposure, the US now leads the world in peanut allergies-and this misinformation is still rearing its head today.

How could the experts have gotten it so wrong? Dr. Marty Makary asks, Could it be that many modern-day health crises have been caused by the hubris of the medical establishment? Experts said for decades that opioids were not addictive, igniting the opioid crisis. They refused menopausal women hormone replacement therapy, causing unnecessary suffering. They demonized natural fat in foods, driving Americans to processed carbohydrates as obesity rates soared. They told citizens that there are no downsides to antibiotics and prescribed them liberally, causing a drug-resistant bacteria crisis.

When modern medicine issues recommendations based on good scientific studies, it shines. Conversely, when modern medicine is interpreted through the harsh lens of opinion and edict, it can mold beliefs that harm patients and stunt research for decades. In Blind Spots, Dr. Makary explores the latest research on critical topics ranging from the microbiome to childbirth to nutrition and longevity and more, revealing the biggest blind spots of modern medicine and tackling the most urgent yet unsung issues in our $4.5 trillion health care ecosystem. The path to medical mishaps can be absurd, entertaining, and jaw-dropping-but the truth is essential to our health.

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all.

Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a tool kit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient, sustainable communities of liberation where no one is left behind. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.

Our healthcare system is broken. But it doesn't have to break you.

This practical, realistic guide is designed to help women fight medical bias and neglect in order to get the care they need--and deserve.

For women, the possibility of experiencing medical gaslighting--having a health care provider dismiss or ignore their concerns without considering appropriate testing or creating a treatment plan--has always been a very real and present danger, with consequences ranging from self-doubt and emotional stress to delayed diagnosis and death. And being a woman of color, transgender, or disabled only compounds the risk.

Today, more women are aware of medical gaslighting than ever--but awareness isn't enough. In Medical Gaslighting, you'll equip yourself with the tools you need to be fully heard at every step of the process, including:

Mastering the ability to request, revise, and read your electronic medical records so you and your medical team are on the same page.

Responding effectively when you recognize the signs, language, and scenarios associated with medical gaslighting

Give yourself a fighting chance against common medical bias by being mindful of how you present yourself as a patient.

With expert advice and stories from women across the medical spectrum who fought medical gaslighting and lived to tell their stories, patient advocate (and rare disease patient), Ilana Jacqueline provides a combat guide for increasing your confidence--and success--when advocating for your health.

You might have to get naked in the exam room, but you don't have to walk in unarmed. Medical Gaslighting is your guide to taking control of your healthcare.

The Occasional Human Sacrifice is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle that whistleblowers face, and why it is not the kind of struggle that most people imagine.

Carl Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy. For many years he fought for an external inquiry into a psychiatric research study at his own university in which an especially vulnerable patient lost his life. Elliott's efforts alienated friends and colleagues. The university stonewalled him and denied wrongdoing until a state investigation finally vindicated his claims.

His experience frames the six stories in this book of medical research in which patients were deceived into participating in experimental programs they did not understand, many of which had astonishing and well-concealed mortality rates. Beginning with the public health worker who exposed the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and ending with the four physicians who in 2016 blew the whistle on lethal synthetic trachea transplants at the Karolinska Institute, Elliott tells the extraordinary stories of insiders who spoke out against such abuses, and often paid a terrible price for doing the right thing.

This caregiver book is a crucial guide, workbook, and organizer that enables family caregivers to lead their loved one's care sensitively and effectively.

A new and innovative approach to this commitment of love called caregiving. ⎯Brian Bell, MD, FAAHPM, vice president and chief medical officer, Arkansas Hospice, Inc.

Today, more than 1 in 5 Americans are serving as unpaid caretakers for aging or ailing family members, friends, or neighbors, yet few receive guidance or emotional and structural support.

Care Boss fills this need by identifying and empowering the family caregiver as the leadership position it is. This testament to the importance of caregiving brings dignity, strategy, organization, and a whole lot of heart to the messy and seemingly impossible task of providing quality care to a loved one.

Jennifer A. O'Brien, MSOD, has over 35 years in healthcare leadership. She pairs professional acumen with her intimate experience as a family caretaker to her parents and her husband. With compassion and hard-earned wisdom, she teaches readers how to lead the care their loved one deserves.

Inside this family caregiver book, find:

• Essential resources if your loved one has cancer, dementia, or any life-limiting condition,
• Organizational tools to make sure the big questions get answered,
• Strategies for handling stress and self-care while dealing with death, dying, and serious illness,
• End-of-life planning guidance to facilitate tough conversations when caring for aging parents and
• other ill loved ones,
• Insights for navigating hospitals, hospice, and other professional care teams, and
• Self-care and management for well-being and leadership.

An invaluable family care book, readers of The Conscious Caregiver and The Art of Dying Well will appreciate the empowerment and camaraderie they find in Care Boss.

Make the most of precious time and lead the way through one of life's greatest challenges: caretaking for a loved one.

A game changer. Caregiving through the leadership lens will resonate with healthcare professionals and family caregivers alike.

⎯Lisa Pahl, LCSW, hospice social worker and founder of the Death Deck

​*** OVER 47,000 COPIES SOLD ​***

If you're like most people, you probably rely on your doctor to interpret the results of your blood tests, which contain a wealth of information on the state of your health. A blood test can tell you how well your kidneys and liver are functioning, your potential for heart disease and diabetes, the strength of your immune system, the chemical profile of your blood, and many other important facts about the state of your health. And yet, most of cannot decipher these results ourselves, nor can we even formulate the right questions to ask about them--that is, until now.

In Your Blood Never Lies, best-selling author Dr. James LaValle clears the mystery surrounding blood test results. In simple language, he explains all the information found on a typical lab report--the medical terminology, the numbers and percentages, and the laboratory jargon--and makes it accessible. This means that you will be able to look at your own blood test results and understand the significance of each biological marker being measured. To help you take charge of your health, Dr. LaValle also recommends the most effective standard and complementary treatments for dealing with any problematic findings. Rounding out the book are explanations of lab values that do not appear on the typical blood test, but that should be requested for a more complete picture of your current physiological condition.

A blood test can reveal so much about your body, but only if you can interpret the results. Your Blood Never Lies provides the up-to-date information you need to take control of your health.

Award-winning sociologist Joanna Kempner unearths how a group of ordinary people debilitated by excruciating pain developed their own medicine from home-grown psilocybin mushrooms--crafting near-clinical grade dosing protocols--and fought for recognition in a broken medical system.

Cluster headache, a diagnosis sometimes referred to as a 'suicide headache, ' is widely considered the most severe pain disorder that humans experience. There is no cure, and little funding available for research into developing treatments.

When Joanna Kempner met Bob Wold in 2012, she was introduced to a world beyond most people's comprehension--a clandestine network determined to find relief using magic mushrooms. These 'Clusterbusters, ' a group united only by the internet and a desire to survive, decided to do the research that medicine left unfinished. They produced their own psychedelic treatment protocols and managed to get academics at Harvard and Yale to test their results. Along the way, Kempner explores not only the fascinating history and exploding popularity of psychedelic science, but also a regulatory system so repressive that the sick are forced to find their own homegrown remedies, and corporate America and university professors stand to profit from their transgressions.

From the windswept shores of the North Sea through the verdant jungle of Peruvian Amazon to a kitschy underground palace built in a missile silo in Kansas, Psychedelic Outlaws chronicles the rise of psychedelic medicine amid a healthcare system in turmoil. Kempner's gripping tale of community and resilience brings readers on a eye-opening journey through the politics of pain, through the stories of people desperate enough to defy the law for a moment of relief.

'A radical antidote to the constraints of our current conceptualisation of mental health' Dazed

'Exposes the underlying truth that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with our wellbeing, and teaches us how to transform the ways we understand madness, illness, and disability to build a better world' Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-author of Health Communism

Mental health is a political issue, but we often discuss it as a personal one. How is the current mental health crisis connected to capitalism, racism and other social issues? In a different world, how might we transform the ways that we think about mental health, diagnosis and treatment?

These are some of the big questions Micha Frazer-Carroll asks as she reveals mental health to be an urgent political concern that needs deeper understanding beyond today's 'awareness-raising' campaigns.

Exploring the history of asylums and psychiatry; the relationship between disability justice, queer liberation and mental health; art and creativity; prisons and abolition; and alternative models of care; Mad World is a radical and hopeful antidote to pathologisation, gatekeeping and the policing of imagination.

Micha Frazer-Carroll is a columnist at the Independent. Micha has written for Vogue, HuffPost, Huck, gal-dem and Dazed. She was nominated for the Comment Awards' Fresh New Voice of the Year Award, and the Observer/Anthony Burgess Award for Arts Criticism.

As a practicing primary physician, Dr. Coe has seen too many adult patients that are struggling with burgeoning chronic medical conditions and illnesses. They feel frustrated and overwhelmed as they try to juggle busy lives while striving to maintain the quality of life they deserve. Maintaining and advocating for one's health is not easy, but it can be done.

This self-help book gives detailed information about how to proactively help you care for yourself and also help your physician/provider care for you in a more substantial way. There are numerous ways people can promote and maintain their health, as well as improve when they're unwell. Dr. Coe's goal is to provide everyday individuals with a single comprehensive resource, sharing the wisdom and practical tips from her clinical practice on health, mental health, and overall well-being. Her philosophy and unique approach to caring for people is informed by the many self observations that she has accumulated from her patients over the years. The information in this book will greatly simplify the reader's approach to health so that it doesn't seem so daunting and create a cause for fear or avoidance of seeking medical advice and paying attention to one's health. This book is invaluable to people who have doctors but are not getting what they want out of their health care interactions.

The advice contained in these pages stems from listening to the life stories and experiences of many patients throughout Dr. Coe's 27-year career as an Internal Medicine physician. Actively listening to patients helped her hone her clinical skills such that she has developed a distinctive way of taking care of patients that helps them get improvement of their health when they have not been satisfied with the care that they have been receiving from previous doctors. Paying attention to what her patients communicate has propelled her to be a distinguished clinician, diagnostician, counselor and advocate for the people that she cares for. Dr. Coe gives practical ways to make healthy choices in life with respect to eating, prevention and management of chronic diseases and conditions and keeping track of your mental health status.

There is so much health information that people have access to, however it is hard for people to sift through the noise and focus on what is important and what actually makes a difference in health and wellness. Despite the amount of money that we spend on healthcare in this country, our collective health should be much better than it is. This book gives practical advice about how to be, become, and/or stay healthy in a practical and concise form.

This book tells people, in clear terms, full of lists, charts and checklists, about how to keep up with mental and physical health, such that they can actually help their doctor take better care of them and become an engaged and informed advocate for their own health. Dr. Coe's advice can help improve health, control and reverse many chronic medical illnesses and conditions, and can even decrease or eliminate the need for prescription medications.

A comprehensive and compassionate guide to help families understand and navigate psychiatric hospitalization.

Each year, millions of Americans face psychiatric hospitalizations, yet this process often remains shrouded in stigma and mystery. In this indispensable guide, Mark J. Russ, MD, offers patients and families essential support and vital information to navigate this challenging process, from admission to discharge.

The Family Guide to Psychiatric Hospitalization provides a comprehensive look into the procedures, treatments, and dynamics of the psychiatric care system. Dr. Russ provides invaluable information on:
- The history and evolution of psychiatric hospitals
- The logistics of the admission process, including how to choose the right hospital based on patient needs
- What families and patients can expect during every treatment phase, from initial assessment to active treatment to planning for discharge
- The critical role of family involvement in the care and recovery process
- The legal aspects of hospitalization, including patient rights and advocacy
- The strategies for aftercare and avoiding readmission, highlighting the importance of ongoing support after discharge

Dr. Russ shares not only professional insights but also his own personal journey with psychiatric hospitalization. His dual perspective as both physician and patient brings an unprecedented depth of compassion and understanding to this guide. Designed to educate and empower families, this book serves as a beacon of hope and a testament to the healing power of informed and compassionate care.

In this newly updated and re-edited 2012 edition, the side effects of cholesterol lowering statins are thoroughly assessed. Also reviewed are dietary and supplement choices that may offer benefit in the prevention of heart disease and in combating and preventing statin damage. The cholesterol lowering drugs known as statins are of proven benefit for some groups of people for the prevention of heart attacks and stroke, but statins also have a dark side. Tens of thousands of people have been victims of a huge array of statin drugs side effects, ranging from permanent cognitive dysfunction and severe personality change to disabilities from permanent peripheral neuropathy, permanent myopathy and chronic muscular degeneration. It has recently been reported that muscle pain cases frequently become permanent and many neurologists now regard statin neuropathy as predictably resistant to traditional treatment. When statins were first marketed there was seemingly no awareness of possible mitochondrial DNA effect or the importance of glial cell cholesterol to cognitive function and little or no concern that to inhibit cholesterol means to interrupt its pathway shared by both CoQ10 and dolichols and many other vital substances. Nor was it known that statins are powerful anti-inflammatory agents, the fundamental reason for their benefit in cardiovascular risk. The outmoded concept of looking at cholesterol numbers as a predictor of cardiovascular risk is increasingly being dismissed as studies point to cholesterol levels as being seemingly irrelevant to the process of atherosclerosis. In addition to the crisis of thousands of people disabled by statin associated neuro-muscular problems is the fact that many physicians still remain unaware that statins can even do this. Then there is the crisis of the growing trend of the insurance industry to use cholesterol levels as a reason to deny health care coverage or life insurance coverage. Some employers even require cholesterol levels to be below a certain number as a condition of employment. Plus the crisis of patients being forced into taking a statin because not to do so would result in having to find a new doctor. The Statin Damage Crisis looks at how statins work, the importance of cholesterol in the body, inflammation and atherosclerosis, anti-inflammatory alternatives to statins, serious side effects of statins, and dietary supplements of possible benefit to those taking statins or that were forced to stop taking a statin due to unpleasant and even disabling side effects.

New York Times bestseller
Business Book of the Year--Association of Business Journalists

From the New York Times bestselling author comes an eye-opening, urgent look at America's broken health care system--and the people who are saving it--now with a new Afterword by the author.

A must-read for every American. --Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, FORBES

One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of the business of medicine and its elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable.

The Price We Pay offers a road map for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.

Every one of us has experienced health care, but too many times, the experience has not been good. Perhaps our records have been lost or the physician is rushed and abrupt, spending more time looking at the computer than talking to us. Perhaps we are made to get tests we don't need or treatments that aren't fully explained, treatments we might not have gotten if we'd been fully informed about risks, benefits, and alternatives. And then we get an incomprehensible bill - usually, many different bills - that leaves us confused, frustrated, and in the worst cases, looking at a dire personal financial crisis. Why is that? Why, when the U.S. spends more on health care than any country in the world, can't we get it right? In Unraveled, physicians William B. Weeks and James N. Weinstein look at the health care experience through the eyes of patients and prescribe practical, effective remedies for a dysfunctional system. They offer simple steps that patients can take now to ensure that their care is effective, efficient, and satisfying, and that they have the information necessary to make the best health care decisions for themselves and their families. With easy-to-understand language and real-life examples, they explain how and why the health system works as it does, and what we can do to fix it. And they give a glimpse of a not-too-distant future where care will be built around the needs of the patients and delivered conveniently, seamlessly, with greater effectiveness and at lower cost. It's a future that offers greater satisfaction for patients AND for their providers, many of whom now feel trapped by an overly complex, bureaucratic system that robs them of the joy they once experienced in caring for patients. The Affordable Care Act provided millions with access to health care. Unraveled tells us how we can take the next steps to make health care work for all of us.

Warm, compassionate, and brimming with wisdom and expert advice (Kate Washington, author of Already Toast), Stand By Me provides caregivers with new ways to juggle the responsibilities and emotional ups and downs of caregiving.

As the founder of the only devoted Caregivers Clinic in the country, clinical psychologist Dr. Allison Applebaum is no stranger to the intensity of being an unpaid, untrained family caregiver. She also understands that it is often the strength and well-being of these very caregivers--the parents, children, partners, siblings, and friends of patients--that are the true linchpin determining each patient's illness experience.

Stand By Me puts the practical tools and transformative support of the Caregiver Clinic in your hands, empowering you to provide your loved one with the best quality of life and care possible, while promoting your own well-being. The book covers crucial topics including:
-Getting the most from any healthcare system
-Productive advance care planning
-Navigating changing roles and relationship dynamics
-Finding meaning and purpose in the caregiving experience

Stand By Me draws on more than a decade of clinical and research experience as well as Dr. Applebaum's personal journey as the primary caregiver for her own father, legendary musician Stanley Applebaum, at the end of his life. Dr. Applebaum recognizes caregivers for who they truly are: invaluable healthcare team members. Offering critical insight and takeaways, Stand By Me is a rich resource of invaluable information and expert advice for caregivers (Dr. Kathleen M. Foley, Emeritus Professor of Neurology, Weill Cornell Medical College).

This is the first book for the general public, written by a physician, to guide you through what really happens in the Emergency Department (ED).

In Canada there are over 15 million Emergency visits a year. In the USA, over 145 million annually - a shocking 46 visits for every 100 persons! Learn what to expect if you, or a loved one, becomes one.

- What happens and why from the ambulance to the trauma bay?
- What and whom should you bring?
- Why do you have to wait so long? Why did that person get seen before you?
- Who gets seen faster? How can you get treated sooner?
- Why do you have to tell the same story over again?
- Who are all these people?
- What should you do to prepare?

Dr. Voon also busts some common myths and provides tons of practical tips and tricks to help you stay out of the ED:

- What might not be an emergency after all?
- What should everyone stock in their Home Medicine Cabinet?
- What internet sites can we trust?

As an in-depth and comprehensible resource, this non-fiction is a reference that belongs in every household and every waiting room.

Find out more on the web at DrVoon.com.

Many people believe that vaccines are safe, adverse reactions are rare, and no peer-reviewed scientific studies exist showing that vaccines can cause harm. This book -- Miller's Review of Critical Vaccine Studies, Volume II -- provides a more realistic perspective that is seldom told. It contains summaries of 400 important scientific papers to help parents, doctors, and other researchers increase their comprehension of the medical literature on vaccinations.

How does a mere molecule--a chemical structure--become a drug? And, how do we know that it works safely? In a one-trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry with high-stakes profits and perils, battles are raging every day to successfully bring a molecule to its birth: an FDA-approved medicine. In Race for a Remedy, internationally renowned expert in cancer treatment and drug development Makhdum Ahmed, MD, takes readers behind the scenes of the fascinating and intense world of cancer drug development.

Whether it's a small molecule, a versatile monoclonal antibody, or the fancy, poster child of cutting-edge cell therapy, modern drugs are built upon a centuries-old solid foundation set by the pioneers of medicine and immunology. This revealing book also explores the struggles for current-day pharmaceutical and biotech industries to overtake competitors and make sure their molecule reaches the finish line first. For leading cancer drug developers, that means achieving the ultimate goal: creating the next live-saving cancer medicine.

Readers will also find answers to common questions on drugs, such as:

• How long does it usually take for a drug to come to market?
• When can we expect a cure for cancers like leukemia and lymphoma?
• Are experimental medicines unsafe?
• Given my illness (or that of my loved one), should I join a clinical trial and what are the odds it will help?

A leading medical expert on the frontlines of drug creation, Dr. Ahmed offers basic pharmacological insights, revolutionary science, and the gripping arc of new drug development. Race for a Remedy will change the way readers think about medicine.

From Johns Hopkins medical expert Dr. Marty Makary, the New York Times-bestselling author of The Price We Pay-an eye-opening look at the medical groupthink that has led to public harm, and what you need to know about your health.

More Americans have peanut allergies today than at any point in history. Why? In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a strict recommendation that parents avoid giving their children peanut products until they're three years old. Getting the science perfectly backward, triggering intolerance with lack of early exposure, the US now leads the world in peanut allergies-and this misinformation is still rearing its head today.

How could the experts have gotten it so wrong? Dr. Marty Makary asks, Could it be that many modern-day health crises have been caused by the hubris of the medical establishment? Experts said for decades that opioids were not addictive, igniting the opioid crisis. They refused menopausal women hormone replacement therapy, causing unnecessary suffering. They demonized natural fat in foods, driving Americans to processed carbohydrates as obesity rates soared. They told citizens that there are no downsides to antibiotics and prescribed them liberally, causing a drug-resistant bacteria crisis.

When modern medicine issues recommendations based on good scientific studies, it shines. Conversely, when modern medicine is interpreted through the harsh lens of opinion and edict, it can mold beliefs that harm patients and stunt research for decades. In Blind Spots, Dr. Makary explores the latest research on critical topics ranging from the microbiome to childbirth to nutrition and longevity and more, revealing the biggest blind spots of modern medicine and tackling the most urgent yet unsung issues in our $4.5 trillion health care ecosystem. The path to medical mishaps can be absurd, entertaining, and jaw-dropping-but the truth is essential to our health.

For everyone involved, having an infant in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is full of many emotions overshadowed by anxiety. An admission to the NICU is not anticipated and therefore can be a very trying experience. Explaining the hospitalization of the baby to the other children in your home can be challenging. The baby's siblings may be too young to understand, fearful of hospitals, or even upset that you are spending more time at the hospital than at home. This short book can serve as a introduction to the NICU and foster more discussion with your other children or young relatives.

The surgeon's mask is one of the most iconic symbols of the medical profession. A simple piece of fabric, it serves both a practical purpose and creates an air of mystery around the person who wears it. It obscures their identity, which can spark intrigue and contemplation about the individual behind the mask. What drives someone to pursue this difficult and demanding career? What motivates them to endure years of intense education and training? How do they handle the emotional toll of practicing in an environment where human suffering and life-or-death situations are a daily reality?

Daily practice as a surgeon is a blend of routine tasks and high-stakes moments when everything is on the line. The emotional and psychological toll is immense, as the surgeon frequently faces life-altering decisions and the harsh realities of human pain and catastrophe.

At the end of a long career, many surgeons reflect on the personal sacrifices they made-sacrifices that often come at the cost of family time, personal well-being, and even mental health.

This book offers a raw, truthful account of life as a surgeon, shedding light on the rewards and costs of the profession. It's intended to provide clarity for the general public and valuable insights for those considering a career in surgery.