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HMS and Simon and Schuster Release New BooksOver the summer, Simon and Schuster published two new books in its series with Harvard Medical School, Healthy Women, Healthy Lives and Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. The series, a collaboration with Harvard Health Publications, began in 1999 with the publication of the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide, the first health guide to have a companion website that is continually updated. All books in the series are written or edited by HMS faculty members, and HMS holds the copyright. Healthy Women, Healthy Lives, subtitled A Guide to Preventing Disease, from the Landmark Nurses' Health Study, gathers together findings from this long-running, comprehensive study, along with other major studies, to help women reduce the risk of developing diseases through adopting healthier lifestyles. Divided into three parts, "Getting Started," "Lowering the Risk of Diseases," and "Changing Behaviors," it covers everything from lowering the risk of coronary heart disease, breast cancer, stroke, diabetes, and ovarian cancer to discussions of physical activity, weight control, food, birth control, and postmenopausal hormones.
Healthy Women, Healthy Lives is edited by Brigham and Women's Hospital staff members Susan Hankinson, HMS associate professor of medicine and HSPH associate professor of epidemiology; Graham Colditz, HMS professor of medicine; JoAnn Manson, HMS professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at BWH; and Frank Speizer, the Edward H. Kass professor of medicine and codirector of the Channing Laboratory. In Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy, Walter Willett, chair of the Department of Nutrition at HSPH and professor of medicine at HMS, challenges the recommendations of the USDA's food pyramid. Willett provides a new pyramid, based on the best scientific evidence and latest nutritional information, to replace the current one, which he says "offers wishy-washy, scientifically unfounded" advice on what to eat. The new pyramid takes into account that not all fats are bad, not all complex carbohydrates are good, and meat is not the only source of protein. Included are recipes and menus to help get started eating healthfully. "These two wonderful new books, designed for the general public, highlight a profoundly important insight from the epidemiologic literature of the past 50 years: by adopting a healthy lifestyle, people can do more to protect their health than any medicines that their doctor can prescribe," said Anthony Komaroff, editor in chief of Harvard Health Publications and HMS professor of medicine. Last year, Harvard Health Publications released The Arthritis Action Program by Michael Weinblatt and Six Steps to Increased Fertility by Robert Barbieri, Alice Domar, and Kevin Loughlin. In his book for arthritis sufferers, Weinblatt, an HMS professor of medicine and director of the Robert B. Brigham Arthritis Center at BWH, writes about the latest medical treatments such as TNF blockers and disease-modifying immunosuppressants, as well as discussing new minimally invasive surgical techniques shown to improve treatment. For those experiencing problems becoming pregnant, Barbieri, Domar, and Loughlin have put together a six-step program that addresses the simplest and safest way to promote conception. They emphasize increasing the odds naturally through changes in diet, exercise, and stress reduction, among others, before advancing to more expensive and complicated high-tech interventions. Barbieri is the Kate Macy Ladd professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at HMS and chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Brigham and Women's; Domar is an HMS assistant professor of medicine and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute for Women's Health at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and Loughlin is an HMS professor of surgery at BWH. —Michael Higgins |
