Health Links News

If there is one thing that determines how fully you live at an older age, it is how well your brain works. Your brain controls and powers virtually every aspect of your life– from memory to moods, from thinking to sleeping, from movement to senses– and like the rest of your body, it changes with age. The good news is that now there is a single, reliable, comprehensive source with the information you need to keep your brain working at the highest possible level for the longest possible time. In Keep Your Brain Young, two of the world’ s leading brain doctors guide you through the changes you may encounter as you get older and your brain matures. They calm your concerns about normal changes and show how to minimize them while enhancing your mental and physical functioning.You’ ll learn what steps you can take to reduce the risk for serious diseases such as Alzheimer’ s and Parkinson’ s and how to recognize the symptoms of these diseases should they occur. You’ ll learn abou the brain-body link for other diseases, including heart disease and cancer. You’ ll also find out about the rapid progress being made in the treatment of brain disorders. Based on state-of-the-art research and supplemented with dramatic case histories from the authors’ patient files, Keep Your Brain Young shows you the latest techniques you can use to maintain your memory, manage stress, and cope with sleep disorders. You’ ll discover which foods provide the best nutrition for your brain an protect it from illness, how alcohol affects your brain, and how to recognize and cope with the symptoms of depression. Keep Your Brain Young includes prescriptive exercises you can putinto action right away. Don’ t let worries about senior moments interfere with your enjoyment of the second half of life.

Why are we in the United States so concerned with street violence and murder and so unconcerned about untimely deaths resulting from the routine workings of our society? Yet far more people die because of occupational illness than are violently murdered and as many again die because they cannot afford adequate health care. We are outraged and indignant when one child is murdered, but remain silent as 12,000 infants die as a result of poverty. In this fully revised, updated edition of her widely adopted textbook, sociologist Barbara Chasin examines both the interpersonal violence with which the news media keeps us familiar, and the less visible, but more costly, structural violence, which the media practically ignores. Dr. Chasin makes the important points that interpersonal violence is inflicted on its victims by identifiable others, is focused on by the media, and that remedies are available. By contrast, structural violence primarily affects the poor, the working class, blacks and other minority groups, and is a direct result of decisions made by society's elite. Consequently, it is practically ignored by the media and is rarely prosecuted with sincerity or vigor. But she convincingly demonstrates that both result from economic inequality. Throughout this thoroughly researched work, the author stresses the connections between violence and economic, ethnic, and gender inequalities, and she also links violence to profit seeking and militarism. Written for the college student, the book is thoroughly documented and includes recent statistics and tables, plus new material on the relation of U.S. foreign policy to terrorism, and the effects of media violence on a civil society. Whileremaining academically rigorous, Chasin makes compelling use of individual experiences to illustrate theoretical points.