Finding the right therapist can be hard. Sometimes, even just accessing a therapist, any therapist, can be hard, if circumstances are adverse. Sometimes we’d like therapy, but want to feel “better prepared for it” before we do.

Owen O’Kane, a highly qualified and well-respected psychotherapist, wants to put some tools in our hands. The premise of this book is that “in 10 minutes a day” one can give oneself an amount of therapy that will be beneficial.

Naturally, in 10 minutes a day, this isn’t going to be the kind of therapy that will work through major traumas, so what can it do?

Those 10 minutes are spread into three sessions:

• 4 minutes in the morning
• 3 minutes in the afternoon
• 3 minutes in the evening

The idea is:

• To do a quick mental health “check-in” before the day gets started, ascertain what one needs in that context, and make a simple plan to get/have it.
• To keep one’s mental health on track by taking a little pause to reassess and adjust if necessary
• To reflect on the day, amplify the positive, and let go of the negative to what extent is practical, in order to rest well ready for the next day

Where O’Kane excels is in explaining how to do those things in a way that is neither overly simplistic and wishy-washy, nor so arcane and convoluted as to create more work and render the day more difficult.

In short, this book is a great prelude to (or adjunct to) formal therapy, and for those for whom therapy isn’t accessible and/or desired, a great way to keep oneself on a mentally healthy track.

Click here to check out “How To Be Your Own Therapist” on Amazon today, and take appropriate care of yourself!

There’s a lot going on here, as this book tackles very many kinds of common contaminants, from waste products and industrial chemicals (such as from fracking), pesticides that are banned in most places but not the US, smog and soot from coal and oil power, mercury and other heavy metals, dioxins, Teflon and its close relatives, phthalates, BPA, and other things again regulated out of use in many countries but not entirely in the US (which bans them only in some things, like baby bottles), drinking water issues of various kinds, and much more.

Indeed, there’s a whole chapter on the US and international regulation of toxic substances; the problem is often that on a political level, the same people who are against nebulous “chemicals” are also against environmentalist regulations that would ban them. This is mostly not a political book though, and rather is chiefly a book of chemistry (the author’s field).

It does also cover the medical maladies associated with various contaminants, while the bulk of the data is on the chemistry side of such things as “elimination times for toxic chemicals”, “amounts of pesticides in fruit and vegetables”, “antibiotics and hormones used in animal agriculture”, and so forth.

The style is dense, and/but it is clear the author has made an effort to not be too dry. Still, this is not a fun read; it’s depressing in content and the style is more suited to academia. There are appendices containing glossaries and acronym tables, but reading front-to-back, there’s a lot that’s not explained so unless you also are a PhD chemist, chances are you’ll be needing to leaf forwards and backwards a lot.

Bottom line: this book is not thrilling, but what you don’t know, can kill you.

Click here to check out Healthy Living In A Contaminated World, and improve your odds!

As we get older, we often become more forgetful—despite remembering many things clearly from decades past. Why?

Dr. Daniel Shacter takes us on a tour of the brain, and also through evolution, to show how memory is not just one thing, but many. And furthermore, it’s not just our vast memory that’s an evolutionary adaptation, but also, our capacity to forget.

He does also discusses disease that affect memory, including Alzheimer’s, and explores the biological aspects of memory too.

The “seven sins” of the title are seven ways our (undiseased, regular) memory “lets us down”, and why, and how that actually benefits us as individuals and as a species, and/but also how we can modify that if we so choose.

The book’s main strength is in how it separates—or bids us separate for ourselves—what is important to us and our lives and what is not. How and why memory and information processing are often at odds with each other (and what that means for us). And, on a practical note, how we can tip the scales for or against certain kinds of memory.

Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand human memory in all its glorious paradoxes, and put into place practical measures to make it work for you the way you want, this is a fine book for you.

Click here to check out The Seven Sins of Memory, and get managing yours!