Medical System

The first of two essential books about our most complex organ—the BRAIN—dives deep into why people all over the world are suffering with mental health and brain-related symptoms and conditions, and explains what to do to finally heal. Brain Saver unveils the why behind more than 100 brain- and nervous system-related symptoms, diseases, and disorders; Protocols reveals the truth about how to heal in even more detail.

For women, the possibility of experiencing medical gaslighting—having a healthcare 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. In Medical Gaslighting, you’ll equip yourself with the tools you need to be fully heard at every step of the process.

The brain remains a mystery to medical research and science when it comes to chronic illness. Measuring deficits of the brain doesn't equate to knowing what's really wrong or what to do about it. Where can you turn to get answers and finally find healing? In Brain Saver Protocols, Cleanses, and Recipes, Anthony William, the Medical Medium, provides compassionate, life-altering guidance to help you understand and heal from a vast range of brain symptoms, diseases, and disorders, including anxiety, autism, and addiction; tumors, Parkinson's, and ALS; and many more.

Nine million Americans are touched by aneurysms during their lifetimes. This is one story of love. Brainstorm is the candid and powerful memoir of the author's harrowing experience of an aneurysm and his road to recovery. It is a journey of love and devotion and a clash of medical beliefs and countercultures.

Unlocked begins with a vivid depiction of the author's life with her autistic son, Ben. Feelings of isolation, self-hate, and even moments of hatred toward her own child in response to his behaviors, as well as the impact on her marriage and younger daughter, impel her to seek solutions for his condition. Through years of trial and error, Susan eventually discovers methods that bring about radical improvement in Ben.

“Strokes are the third-leading cause of death in America, and for the ‘lucky’ stroke victims who don’t die, about half will spend the rest of their lives trying to recover.” Roughly 700,000 American suffer a stroke each year and around 140,000 of them are fatal. Different Strokes is an in-depth look at what surviving, or not surviving, a stroke can mean.

A political journalist and activist, Cousins was also a professor of medical humanities at UCLA, where he studied the biochemistry of human emotions and their relationship to healing. When Cousins was hospitalized with a debilitating collagen illness, he decided to take his health into his own hands. Cousins and his doctor combated the disease together by creating a regimen of laughter and vitamin C specifically calibrated to his needs. Against all odds, the treatment worked, proving to Cousins that a positive attitude was key to his improvement.

Psychotherapist Michael Pond is no stranger to the devastating consequences of alcoholism. He has helped hundreds of people conquer their addictions, but this knowledge did not prevent his own near-demise. In this riveting memoir, he recounts how he lost his practice, his home, and his family - all because of his drinking.

In this revelatory memoir, doctor Cynthia Li shares the truth other doctors don’t always understand and often won’t share if they do - that chronic illness is complicated, and that treatment is not just a matter of test results and prescriptions but requires a more comprehensive approach. By sharing her own struggle with a disabling autoimmune crisis, which forced her to question her own conventional medical training and embrace the integrative principles of functional medicine, Li reveals the insider knowledge sufferers need to truly begin healing - mind, body, and spirit.

In 2008 Dr. Afrin started coming to understand that a newly recognized type of mast cell disease, now called mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), was the underlying diagnosis in many patients he was seeing who were each suffering large assortments—quite different from one patient to the next—of chronic multisystem inflammatory illnesses of unclear cause.

More than twenty-five years ago, Kathryn Giusti was diagnosed with multiple myeloma at age thirty-seven and given three years to live. With a young child, a happy marriage, and a successful career, Giusti had too much to live for. An “impatient patient,” she overcame her fear and got to work, learning to advocate for her own care. This book is the result of all she’s learned about how to get the best outcome from America’s opaque and sometimes impossible-to-navigate healthcare system.

A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: These are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.

"We all have trapdoors in our lives. Sometimes we jump off just in time: we defuse an argument with a joke; we swerve to prevent a traffic accident. But sometimes we are unlucky enough to be on the trapdoor when the lever is pulled. My own trapdoor was hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford neurologist." When the trapdoor opened for Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, he plummeted into a world of MRI scans, a disobedient body and the crushing unpredictability of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. But, like Alice tumbling into Wonderland, his fall did something else.

Many know from experience that the medical system can be difficult to navigate. Take it from Randy Pherson, who struggled with a medical condition for five years before getting a proper diagnosis - and once he did, had to undergo a major surgery to save his life. Because of his experience, Pherson decided to help others facing similar situations. Using his background of analytics from the CIA, Pherson offers his readers precise, analytical techniques for using the system to their advantage.

Julie Flygare was on an ambitious path to success, entering law school at age 22, when narcolepsy destroyed the neurological boundaries between dreaming and reality in her brain. She faced terrifying hallucinations, paralysis, and excruciating sleepiness, aspects of dream sleep taking place while wide awake. Yet, narcolepsy was a wake-up call for Julie. Her illness propelled her onto a journey she never imagined, from lying paralyzed on her apartment floor to dancing euphorically at a nightclub; from the classrooms of Harvard Medical School to the start line of the Boston Marathon.

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.

The United States is the most advanced society in the world, yet the majority of pain medications, procedures, and surgeries are not solving this paindemic. Paindemic will open your eyes to what you should know. Too many unnecessary and risky interventions are being done, with little benefit and at great expense. It's time to gain a better perspective to guide you down a more rational path to address and improve chronic pain, even low-back pain. Ignorance is not bliss. What you don't know about your pain could hurt you.

At the peak of her career, classical homeopath and health-care columnist Katina Makris was stricken with a mysterious "flu". Only after five years of torment - two completely bedridden - and devastating blows to her professional and family life was Katina's illness finally diagnosed as Lyme disease.

Diagnosed as severely autistic at the age of three, Tito, nearly nonverbal, was brought up by his loving mother Soma, who taught him to read English and challenged him to write his own stories. The initial result was The Mind Tree, published in 2003, which Tito wrote between the ages of eight and 11. The Gold of the Sunbeams is an equally impressive, beautiful collection of stories, each prefaced by a charming note from Tito explaining how the story came into being.

The People's Hospital is the story of how Ben Taub Hospital strives to provide healthcare to Houston's most vulnerable population, against the background of the chaos of American healthcare. By telling the frequently heartbreaking stories of patients who have had to battle their desperate financial circumstances as well as life-threatening disease. These are extraordinary stories in which doctors are tied up with complex moral questions about money vs healthcare.