The definitive, stand-alone companion book to the acclaimed documentary—now with 50 plant-based recipes and full-color photos to help you start changing your health for the better There's something terribly broken in our industrial food, medical, and pharmaceutical systems. What's going wrong? Can we really avoid the leading causes of death just by changing our diet? Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, creators of the revolutionary What the Health and the award-winning Cowspiracy documentaries, take readers on a science-based tour of the hazards posed by consuming animal products—and what happens when we stop. What the Health will guide you on an adventure through this maze of misinformation with the same fresh, engaging approach that made the documentary so popular. Journey with Andersen and Kuhn as they crisscross the country, talking to doctors, dietitians, public health advocates, whistle-blowers, and world-class athletes, to uncover the truth behind the food we eat. With the help of writer Eunice Wong, they empower eaters with knowledge about the lethal entwining of the food, medical, and pharmaceutical industries, and about the corporate web that confuses the public and keeps Americans chronically—and profitably—ill. Plus, discover 50 recipes to help you reclaim your life and health, including: • Creamy Mac • PB&J Smoothie • Winter Lentil and Pomegranate Salad • Mom's Ultimate Vegan Chili • Black Bean Fudgy Brownies • Baked Apple Crumble with Coconut Cream If the film was a peephole, then the book knocks down the whole door, featuring expanded interviews, extensive research, and new personal narratives. There's a health revolution brewing. What the Health is your invitation to join.

What is health? What does health mean to people? How do we make sense of health and experience it? There are no simple answers to these questions. Health is complex, subjective and varied. Drawing on theory, research and contemporary debates, Ruth Cross explores the nature of health in depth and challenges our thinking about it. Moving beyond taken-for-granted assumptions, she gives the meaning of ‘health’ its due attention, exploring everyday perspectives as well as ‘expert’ medical, academic and policy understandings and approaches. In doing so, the book brings together different knowledge and expertise on health, also considering the inextricable links between human and planetary health. This book is important for all those working in the health field, or training to do so, seeking a broad understanding about health and all its complexity.

An argument that health is optimal responsiveness and is often best treated at the system level. Medical education centers on the venerable “no-fault” concept of homeostasis, whereby local mechanisms impose constancy by correcting errors, and the brain serves mainly for emergencies. Yet, it turns out that most parameters are not constant; moreover, despite the importance of local mechanisms, the brain is definitely in charge. In this book, the eminent neuroscientist Peter Sterling describes a broader concept: allostasis (coined by Sterling and Joseph Eyer in the 1980s), whereby the brain anticipates needs and efficiently mobilizes supplies to prevent errors. Allostasis evolved early, Sterling explains, to optimize energy efficiency, relying heavily on brain circuits that deliver a brief reward for each positive surprise. Modern life so reduces the opportunities for surprise that we are driven to seek it in consumption: bigger burgers, more opioids, and innumerable activities that involve higher carbon emissions. The consequences include addiction, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and climate change. Sterling concludes that solutions must go beyond the merely technical to restore possibilities for daily small rewards and revivify the capacities for egalitarianism that were hard-wired into our nature. Sterling explains that allostasis offers what is not found in any medical textbook: principled definitions of health and disease: health as the capacity for adaptive variation and disease as shrinkage of that capacity. Sterling argues that since health is optimal responsiveness, many significant conditions are best treated at the system level.

This informative volume synthesizes the literatures on health economics, risk management, and health services into a concise guide to the financial and social basics of health insurance with an eye to its wide-scale upgrade. Its scope takes in concepts of health capital, strengths and limitations of insurance models, the effectiveness of coverage and services, and the roles of healthcare providers and government agencies in the equation. Coverage surveys the current state of group and public policies, most notably the effects of the Affordable Care Act on insurers and consumers and the current interest in universal coverage and single-payer plans. Throughout, the author provides systemic reasons to explain why today’s health insurance fails so many consumers, concluding with reality-based recommendations for making insurance more valuable to both today’s market and consumer well-being. Included among the topics: ·Defining health insurance and healthcare finance. ·Consuming and investing in health. ·The scope of health insurance and its constraints. ·Matching health insurance supply and demand. ·The role of government in health insurance. ·Ongoing challenges and the future of health insurance. Bringing a needed degree of objectivity to often highly subjective material, What Is Health Insurance (Good) For? is a call to reform to be read by health insurance researchers (including risk management insurance and health services research), professionals, practitioners, and policymakers.

Health: What Is It Worth?: Measures of Health Benefits is a collection of papers that tackles concerns in health care services and health benefit systems. The title first deals with the measure of health status, along with the policy that governs it and the results of contemporary biomedical research. The text also covers the approaches for the assessment of long-term care. The next part talks about valuing health and health benefits. Next, the selection deals with a method for the computation of the social rate of returns derived from investments in biomedical research. The last part discusses the concerns in health resource allocation. The book will be of great interest to the legislative bodies of governments, health officials, and health professionals.

An anesthesiologist chips a patient's tooth during a difficult intubation. A surgeon leaves tiny abrasions on a patient's abdomen during a delicate surgical procedure. And an operating room nurse accidentally nips a patient's finger with a pair of scissors.Not all of these examples of medical mistakes will result in malpractice suits. But for the o

This book combines a collection of essays by leading experts from several OECD countries with papers discussing the results of the OECD Ageing-Related Diseases study.

Families experiencing the stress of a chronic or serious illness typically find themselves forced to make many life-altering decisions, and often with little time to contemplate the best course of action. This book serves as a practical guide to help what all of us will one day experience when we find ourselves sorting through the complex maze of obtaining good health care. Unlike other books written by doctors, nurses, and chaplains, this book comes from the perspective of a social worker who knows first hand the struggles families experience with obtaining the right information so that good decisions can be made. Written with the idea in mind that the reader may be experiencing an exorbitant amount of stress, the book is laid out in direct, straightforward, and easy language to help with the following: good communication with the health care team establishment of goals for care and getting everyone on board the different ways to ensure you're heard when you can't speak for yourself what to do (and not to do) during a hospitalization the secrets to selecting a good nursing home what to do when someone refuses to go to a nursinghome choices available when a situation becomes terminal how to help prevent a financial crisis during a health crisis ways to get needed medications when you can't afford it This is a book that all of us will need someday if not now.