Dr. Patrick Walsh’s Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer – by Dr. Patrick Walsh & Janet Farrar Worthington
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Prostate cancer is not glamorous or fun, and neither is this book.
Nevertheless, it’s a disease that affects 12% of men in general, and 60% of men aged 60+, with that percentage climbing every year after that.
So, if you have a prostate or love someone who has one, this book is worthwhile reading—yes, even as a preventative.
Like many cancers, prostate cancer is easy to treat if caught very early, becomes harder to treat as it goes, and almost impossible to cure if it gets as far as metastasis (i.e., it spread). Like all cancers, it’s better off avoided entirely if possible.
This book covers all the stages:
- How to avoid it
- How to check for it
- How to “nip it in the bud”
- Why some might want to delay treatment (!)
- What options are available afterwards
This latter is quite extensive, and covers not just surgery, but radiation, thermo- or cryoablation, and hormone therapy.
And as for surgery, not just “remove the tumor”, but other options like radical prostatectomy, and even orchiectomy. Not many men will choose to have their testicles removed to stop them from feeding the prostate, but the point is that this book is comprehensive.
It’s asking whenever possible “is there another option?” and exploring all options, with information and without judgment, at each stage.
The writing style (likely co-author Worthington’s influence; she is an award-winning science-writer) is very “for the layman”, and that’s really helpful in demystifying a lot of what can be quite opaque in the field of oncology.
Bottom line: absolutely not an enjoyable read, but a potentially lifesaving one, especially given the odds we mentioned up top.
Click here to check out Dr. Patrick Walsh’s Guide To Surviving Prostate Cancer, and be prepared!
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The Worst Way to Wake Up (and What to Do Instead)
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Not everyone is naturally inclined to be a morning person, but there are things we can do to make things go more easily for our brains!
Cause for alarm?
Dr. Tracey Marks, psychiatrist, explains the impact of our first moments upon awakening, and what that can do to/for us in terms of sleep inertia (i.e. grogginess).
Sleep inertia is worse when waking from deep sleep—and notably, we don’t naturally wake directly from deep sleep unless we are externally aroused (e.g. by an alarm clock).
Dr. Marks suggests the use of more gradual alarms, including those with soft melodies, perhaps birdsong or other similarly gentle things (artificial sunlight alarms are also good), to ease our transition from sleeping to waking. It might take us a few minutes longer to be woken from sleep, but we’re not going to spend the next hour in a bleary-eyed stupor.
For more details on these things and more (including why not to hit “snooze”), enjoy:
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Make Your Coffee Heart-Healthier!
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Health-Hack Your Coffee
We have previously written about the general health considerations (benefits and potential problems) of coffee:
The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
Today, we will broadly assume that you are drinking coffee (in general, not necessarily right now, though if you are, same!) and would like to continue to do so. We also assume you’d like to do so as healthily as possible.
Not all coffees are created equal
If you order a coffee in France or Italy without specifying what kind, the coffee you receive will be short, dark,
and handsomeand without sugar. Healthwise, this is not a bad starting point. However…- It will usually be espresso
- Or it may be what in N. America is called a French press (in Europe it’s just called a cafetière)
Both of these kinds of coffee mean that cafestol, a compound found in the oily part of coffee and which is known to raise LDL (“bad” cholesterol”), stays in the drink.
Read: Cafestol and Kahweol: A Review on Their Bioactivities and Pharmacological Properties
Also: Cafestol extraction yield from different coffee brew mechanisms
If you’re reading that second one and wondering what a mocha pot or a Turkish coffee is, they are these things:
- Mocha pot: a stovetop device used for making espresso without an espresso machine
- Turkish coffee pot: also a stovetop device; this thing makes some of the strongest coffee you have ever encountered. Turks usually add sugar (this writer doesn’t; but my taste in coffee been described as “coffee like a punch in the face”)
So, wonderful as they are for those of us who love strong coffee, they also produce the highest in-drink levels of cafestol. If you’d like to cut the cafestol (for example, if you are keeping an eye on your LDL), we recommend…
The humble filter coffee
Whether by your favorite filter coffee machine or a pour-over low-tech coffee setup of the kind you could use even without an electricity supply, the filter keeps more than just the coffee grinds out; it keeps the cafestol out too; most of it, anyway, depending on what kind of filter you use, and the grind of the coffee:
Physical characteristics of the paper filter and low cafestol content filter coffee brews
What about instant coffee?
It has very little cafestol in it. It’s up to you whether that’s sufficient reason to choose it over any other form of coffee (this coffee-lover could never)
Want to make any coffee healthier?
This one isn’t about the cafestol, but…
If you take l-theanine (see here for our previous main feature about l-theanine), the l-theanine acts as a moderator and modulator of the caffeine, amongst other benefits:
The Cognitive-Enhancing Outcomes of Caffeine and L-theanine: A Systematic Review
As to where to get that, we don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Lucid Dreaming – by Stephen LaBerge Ph.D.
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For any unfamiliar: lucid dreaming means being aware that one is dreaming, while dreaming, and exercising a degree of control over the dream. Superficially, this is fun. But if one really wants to go deeper into it, it can be a lot more:
Dr. Stephen LaBerge takes a science-based approach to lucid dreaming, and in this work provides not only step-by-step instructions of several ways of inducing lucid dreaming, but also, opens the reader’s mind to things that can be done there beyond the merely recreational:
In lucid dreams, he argues and illustrates, it’s possible to talk to parts of one’s own subconscious (Inception, anyone? Yes, this book came first) and get quite an amount of self-therapy done. And that hobby you wish you had more time to practice? The possibilities just became limitless. And who wouldn’t want that?
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How to Prepare for Your First Therapy Session
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Everyone (who ever has therapy, anyway) has a first therapy session. So, how to make best use of that, and get things going most effectively? Dr. Tori Olds has advice:
Things to prepare
Questions that you should consider, and prepare answers to beforehand, include:
- Why are you here? Not in any deep philosophical sense, but, what brought you to therapy?
- What would you like to focus on? Chances are, you are paying a hefty hourly rate—so having considered this will allow you to get your money’s worth.
- How will you know when you’ve met your goal? Note that this is really two questions in one, because first you need to identify your goal, and then you need to expand on it. If you woke up tomorrow and all your psychological problems were solved, how would you know? What would be different? What does it look like?
If you have a little time between now and your first session, journaling can help a lot.
Remember also that a first therapy session can also be like a mutual interview, to decide whether it’s a good match. Not every therapist is good at their job, and not every therapist will be good for you specifically. Sometimes, a therapist may be a mismatch through no fault of their own. Considering what those reasons might be can also be a good thing to think about in advance, to help find the best therapist for you in fewer tries!
For most on these ideas, enjoy:
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This Book May Save Your Life – by Dr. Karan Rajan
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The title is a bold sell, but the book does include a lot of information about what can go wrong in your body, and how those things can be avoided.
What it’s not: a reiteration of Dr. Michael Greger’s “How Not To Die“. It’s not dense medical information, and it doesn’t cite papers at a rate of ten per page.
What it is: an easy-reading tour guide of the human body and its many quirks and foibles, and how we can leverage those to our benefit. On which note…
Hopefully, your insides will never see the light of day, but this author is a general surgeon and as such, is an experienced and well-qualified tour guide. Here, we learn about everything from the long and interesting journey through our gut, to the unique anatomical features and liabilities of the brain. From the bizarre oddities of the genitals, to things most people don’t know about the process of death.
The style of the book is very casual, with lots of short sections (almost mini chapters-within-chapters, really) making for very light reading—and certainly enjoyable reading too, unless you are inclined to squeamishness.
Bottom line: in honesty, the book is more informative than it is instructional, though it does contain the promised health tips too. With that in mind, it’s a very enjoyable and educational read, and we do recommend it.
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The Body: A Guide for Occupants – by Bill Bryson
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Better known for his writings on geography and history, here Bryson puts his mind to anatomy and physiology. How well does he do?
Very well, actually—thanks no doubt to the oversight of the veritable flock of consulting scientists mentioned in the acknowledgements. To this reviewer’s knowledge, no mistakes made it through into publication.
That said, Bryson’s love of history does shine through, and in this case, the book is as much a telling of medical history, as it is of the human body. That’s a feature not a bug, though, as not only is it fascinating in and of itself, but also, it’d be difficult to fully understand where we’re at in science, without understanding how we got here.
The style of the book is easy-reading narrative prose, but packed with lots of quirky facts, captivating anecdotes, and thought-provoking statistics. For example:
- The least effective way to spread germs is kissing. It proved ineffective among volunteers (in what sounds like a fun study) who had been successfully infected with the cold virus. Sneezes and coughs weren’t much better. The only really reliable way to transfer cold germs was physically by touch.
- The United States has 4% of the world’s population but consumes 80% of its opiates.
- Allowing a fever to run its course (within limits) could be the wisest thing. An increase of only a degree or so in body temperature slows the replication rate of viruses by a factor of 200.
Still, these kinds of things are woven together so well, that it doesn’t feel at all like reading a trivia list!
Bottom line: if you’d like to know a lot more about anatomy and physiology, but prefer a very casual style rather than sitting down with a stack of textbooks, this book is a great option.
Click here to check out The Body, and learn more about yours!
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