For many, healthcare is a complicated, frustrating and expensive maze. Time with physicians is carefully metered out, and often the road to a conclusive diagnosis and a successful treatment seems unnecessarily lengthy and costly. In his new book, The Patient Will See You Now, Eric Topol, a distinguished cardiologist, presents a new vision of healthcare that is both more effective and more democratized.
Stuart Brown, a physician, psychiatrist, clinical researcher and the founder of the National Institute for Play, has made a career of studying the effects of play on people and animals. His conclusion is that play is no less important than oxygen, and that it’s a powerful force in nature that helps determine the likelihood of the very survival of the human race.
For centuries the human brain was thought to be a fairly fixed and unregenerative organ that, if injured or diseased, is subject to only very limited recovery. In his new book, “The Brain’s Way of Healing”, Norman Doidge shows how the new science of neuroplasticity is changing that belief. He chronicles the growing understanding that the human brain is in fact capable of much more significant self-repair and healing. Not only that, but much of the healing–for conditions that range from Parkinson’s disease, to autism, to stroke, to traumatic head injury–can be stimulated by conscious habits of thought and action, by teaching the brain to essentially “rewire itself.”