Why Can't I Stop? Reclaiming your Life from a Behavioral Addiction by Jon E.Grant, JD, MD, MPH, Brian L.Odlaug, PhD, MPH, & Samuel R. Chamberlain, MD, phD

Why Can't I Stop? Reclaiming your Life from a Behavioral Addiction by Jon E.Grant, JD, MD, MPH, Brian L.Odlaug, PhD, MPH, & Samuel R. Chamberlain, MD, PhD is a Johns Hopkins Press Health book of great interest.

In this book treated all that behavioral addictions that sometimes become clinically treatable because not anymore under control: gambling, food, sex, stealing, internet, shopping and buying, hair pulling and skin picking.
All these behaviors, in a common person are perfectly normal.
Sometimes, for a reason or another, maybe for a moment of weakness, maybe for stress, depression, sadness, situation becomes more serious with high repercussion for the personal life-style of the person involved in that compulsive behavioral addiction but also for the rest of his/ her family.
Some examples?
Gambling. It is not a bad activity but if it becomes compulsive the person can loses a lot of money, with heavy repercussion for everyone; sexual addiction; if the person, using cocaine, a drug in grade to let you see the happiest side of life, is sexually compulsive it's high the percentage of starting to suffer of terrible illnesses like HIV/AIDS, because he/she won't use any kind of protection living in promiscuity relationship and changing partners pretty quickly in search, constantly, of new emotions.

Stealing is a behavior in general adopted by rich people or, anyway people in grade to buying the object they are stealing with simplicity.
We speak of people who want to discover an emotion; serial stealers because they can't do anything different: they must steal.
Of course this act at long bring nasty consequences for the person and her family. In general stealers are more women than men.

Internet is an important voice of behavioral addiction; not yet classified as a behavioral addiction, it's a young "dependence" just 20 years old,  for work, for pleasure, time passed close to a device passes by in a few click. But...In what way people spend their time close to a device? Do they work and are productive or they search constantly and compulsively for something? Maybe becoming addicted to some games? Sites? There are apps, like https://freedom.to/ (the word, freedom says all, to my point of view) in grade to block every kind of internet activity. Again: not yet clinically recognized as a proper illness or addiction, internet starts to be taken in serious consideration.

Food addiction is dangerous for obvious reasons. Gaining weight means the arrival of a lot of illnesses. I found very interesting the inter-connections existing in the brain, and our second brain, the emotive one, the intestine.

Buying and shopping is good; a moment of gratification just for ourselves but when it becomes a compulsion, it is dangerous: a lady told in the book that she had bought wagons of bags, still new. She didn't need them after all but she bought them.
You see: these clinical behaviors are not just dangerous for the person but also for his/her family.
The student internet addicted won't be in grade to be productive in college because he won't study; he will be weak after hours spent online and maybe confused (too many informations need to be digested by our brain.) He will lose his friends, perception of the reality; a compulsive shopper will spend more than what she can, like for the gambler; the sex addicted, apart spending money, can also brings home dangerous illnesses like syphilis, or HIV/AIDS; stealing, when it's possible to buying it's embarrassing and dangerous because it's not said that all the stores-owners understand the illness of the person. Maybe in little centers but not in big cities.
Some of them can call the police with heavy repercussion for the life of the subject and the one of her/his family.

For all these disturbs, including of course hair pulling and skin picking,there are remedies passing through the utilization of medicines and therapy.

This book will be illuminating, if you have one of these behavioral addictions or if you know someone with these problems. With clarity, simplicity, every behavioral addiction is explained with clarity, vividly,offering answers like the best approaches for removing it from the life of your beloved ones or from your one.

Highly recommended.

I thank Johns Hopkins University for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Conquering Lyme Disease Science Bridges The Great Divide by Brian A.Fallon, MD and Jennifer Sotsky, MD

Spring will come to town soon. Gardening, long walks, hours of sun, possibilities of walks in forests with our friends and with our dear dogs, roads in lovely countrysides will become our best allied for re-generating mind and body, picnics, taking pictures of beautiful seascapes and landscapes, gym in opened-spaces or reading a book under a big refreshing tree-shadow, adventurous trips...
This one is the most magical moment of the year so waited and loved because in grade of refreshing body and soul after a rigid winter-time.

Yes: spring and summer are all of it and much more.

Less romantically it's also the moment of the arrival of ticks. Yes: the negative part of the story.

Columbia University Press recently published: Conquering Lyme Disease Science Bridges The Great Divide by Brian A.Fallon, MD and Jennifer Sotsky, MD a wonderful, impressive study on the topic, under all possible angles.
Ticks, diagnosis of Lyme Disease, tests, exams, treatments, family and psychological support and much much more explained with clarity and desire of being helpful.

It is crucial to understand what can potentially means for a body Lyme Disease if contracted because of a tick bite, and important in particular if you live in certain areas of the USA.

But... I wouldn't want to relegate, confine this book just at American readers. Lyme Disease is a reality in most places and countries and it is better to know what it could means to suffer because of this illness.
Informative, captivating, very-well written and for specialists and common people, you will be more than satisfied of all the informations received, trust me.

What is exactly Lyme Disease? Authors explains that it is the most commonly reported vector-born illness in the USA.

I would add that this one is a "systemic illness" because if not treated it involves all organs of our body, brain and heart included.

Discovered in the USA the Lyme disease is a complicated illness.

This book will catapult you in a dimension of great complexity with an apparent innocuous illness starting like a common flu in most cases  becoming a terrible, horrible illness with invalidant symptoms, long cures, sometimes per years and with a medical world skeptical and divided regarding Lyme Disease.

Step-by step, with photographic help, it will be clear what happens when you starts to develop symptoms, what damaging this illness can does at various levels, cardiac and brain one included, but also the latest tests, exams and treatments discovered more recently without forgetting that ticks brings with them potentially other infections explained with clarity like also diagnosis and treatments.
An interesting topic the one about the cycle of a tick-life and what can be done by population for trying to avoid this danger, staying safe.

A chapter involves all that illnesses apparently considered part of Lyme Disease but that are a complete different story. Some example? Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Celiac Disease,  Chronic Heavy Metal Poisoning and so on.

It's important to understand that prevention is important with Lyme Disease. An environment plenty of deer, wild pigs, rats, can be a great humus for ticks.

Good news: although this one is a spirochetal infection, and syphilis transmitted sexually, studies say that in this case there is no evidence of sexual transmission.

A special section is dedicated to newest vaccines but also what to do when you are bitten by a tick, how to do for removing the tick successfully and when we should start to be alarmed because bitten.

Lyme Disease is still a dividing illness and a controversial illness as said before. Not all doctors accept the illness and treat it with desire. I found hilarious the cartoon I am posting here and taken from the book:

but it is true.

This book has a very optimistic approach and soon let's hope this illness will be defeated and just a distant memory.
If you want to stay informed about Lyme Disease, this book is for you and for all your dear ones.

Highly suggested to everyone.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this beautiful book!

Anna Maria Polidori

Your Cholesterol Matters What Your Numbers Mean and How You Can Improve Them by Richard Furman, MD, FACS

No I don't have cholesterol if you want to know that. In my latest blood exam I complained because it was 156 so high to my point of view. My family doctor reassured me: "More than good." I think it's the Parmesan I add in a daily base in the pasta...It would be better to keep cholesterol under 100.

Said that: considering that I have seen the hell in terms of people with very big problems associated at bad customs and wrong life-style I picked up this book Your Cholesterol Matters What Your Numbers Mean and How You Can Improve Them by Richard Furman, MD, FACS published by Revell immediately after the festivities ;-) with great joy.

One day I was talking with a schoolmate. We were speaking about people and doctors and we agreed on a fact: that always more young people fall, and fall seriously ill, sometimes at a point of no return, for strokes or heart attacks, something never seen in the past decades, when strokes were associated to old people, at the end of their existence but not at people of 30-40-50 years or sometimes younger than that.
We concluded saying: "It's not normal at all!"

I hate to see dying very young people because of smoke, bad habits in terms of food. I hate to see sufferance because I have seen sufferance.

Written by a doctor who, for more than 30 years cleaned up the arteries of many patients, the book is plenty informative regarding our body, our car, let's put this comparison and how we can maintain it efficient, and cholesterol free.

Richard Furman add that keeping your weight ok, eating properly without exaggeration in terms of bad fat and doing some exercise you will be fine and... You will avoid the cholesterol pill plenty of collateral effects as also explained.

In the USA first of all before to prescribe the cholesterol pill doctors suggest these three things: losing weight, exercise and a good diet for bilancing cholesterol. Most people don't read what their physician say and they start to take this pill that in most cases can cause serious problems, muscular problems.

There are two kind of cholesterol: the one in our blood affecting directly the arteries and the other one of the food. This one will have the most important impact on our blood cholesterol.

Cholesterol is in good percentage a great allied of  our body: it helps the assimilation of vit. A,D, E.

There are two kind of cholesterol: one is lethal for the health and another one considered by the doctor a real hero.
It is important to keep the bad one as low as possible and the hero one as high as possible.

It's important to use good sense affirms Richard Furman: first of all much more than a medication we must take care of ourselves. Silly to take the cholesterol pill and then eat all the food you were eating in the past because "I take the pill for the cholesterol."

Cholesterol will pass through a good life-style and three words: exercise, weight control/loss and food. In this way you won't take the cholesterol pill.
Exercise is tremendously important because a heart kept strong, the heart is a muscle, will be in grade to work much more efficiently and plus it will be possible to lose weight bad cholesterol.

This book will reveal to you how, in a society plenty of temptations (remember that all good food is bad food for your body!)  in culinary term better to avoid to eat more than the necessary.

It's possible to change. It's possible to say: no I want to stay health!
Try it.

It will save your life.

Please: read this book and then spread the word and start to live a new chapter of your existence.


Anna Maria Polidori