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- The mindful body : thinking our way to chronic health / by Langer, Ellen J.,1947-author.;
"A groundbreaking account of the power of our thoughts to improve our health--by the "mother of mindfulness" and first female tenured professor of psychology at Harvard. When it comes to our health, too many of us think that a medical diagnosis describes a static or worsening condition. We then live our lives as though our ailments--our stiff knees or frayed nerves or failing eyesight--can only change in one direction: for the worse. Ellen J. Langer's life's work proves the fault in that logic. She has spent more than forty years testing the limiting effects of our negative assumptions as well as the healing power of being mindful--present in the moment and not distracted by memories or projections into the future. In The Mindful Body she unpacks her findings and boldly demonstrates how our thoughts and perspectives have the potential to shape our well-being for the better. Taking us into Langer's trailblazing Harvard lab, The Mindful Body recounts many of her colorful experiments to illustrate the influence of expectation and belief on how our bodies function, how we heal, and even how we age. In one study, Langer rigged eye charts so that participants would get some of the smaller letters correct right away, giving them the expectation that they could improve their overall eye test scores. And they did. In another, she showed that wounds heal faster when subjects are placed in rooms with accelerated clocks; when you think that time is passing faster, your body heals faster! On the other hand, her work reveals that discouraging health news can lead to a worsening physical state: she showed that learning you are pre-diabetic--even when only a fraction separates your blood sugar from a "normal" categorization--may actually play a part in the development of the disease. A paradigm-shifting book by one of the great psychologists of the twenty-first century, The Mindful Body returns the control over our bodies back to us and reveals that a true understanding of health begins with our mindset"--- Subjects: Mind and body.; Mindfulness (Psychology); Thought and thinking.;
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- The wisdom of plagues : lessons from 25 years of covering pandemics / by McNeil, Donald G.,Jr.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."For a certain class of American's, Donald McNeil was a comforting voice when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. He was the regular reporter on the New York Times's popular Daily podcast, and he was telling folks to prepare for the worst. A generation of NYT readers went out and stocked up on food and PPE stuff because of his clear advice. He'd covered public health for the Times for 25 years and understood what he was seeing out of China. THE WISDOM OF PLAGUES is his account of what he learned over a quarter-century of reporting on public health in over 60 countries: part-memoir, part history, and part activism. Many science reporters understand the basics of diseases--how a virus works, for example, or what goes into making a vaccine. But very few understand the psychology of how small outbreaks turn into pandemics: How everyone from hunters to farmers to guano-diggers gets exposed to animal diseases. How diseases spread through networks of similar people and by "mass-gathering" events. How surveillance fails. How countries respond slowly or even cover up outbreaks. Why people refuse to believe they're at risk, or why they reject protective measures like quarantine or vaccines. How wild rumors spring up and scare people away from common sense responses. How greedy makers of false remedies spread confusion. Why public health agencies fumble and let things spiral out of control. The Covid pandemic was the story McNeil had trained his whole life to cover. His experience and deep bench of sources let him make many accurate predictions in 2020 about the course that a deadly new respiratory virus in Wuhan, China, would take and how different countries would respond. By the time McNeil wrote his last Times stories about the Covid-19 pandemic he had not lost his compassion, but he had grown far more stone-hearted about how he thought governments should react. He had witnessed so many failures and read enough history to realize that while every epidemic is different, failure was the one constant. Again and again, containable outbreaks ballooned into catastrophes because weak leaders were mired in denial. Citizens refused to make even minor sacrifices for the common good and were encouraged in that by money-hungry entrepreneurs and power-hungry populists. Science was ignored, obvious truths were denied, and the innocent too often died. THE WISDOM OF PLAGUES is ultimately about what we can do to improve global health and be better prepared for the next pandemic, which is coming"--- Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemiology.; Pandemics.; Public health surveillance.; Public health;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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