Sound Medicine 01-16-11 from Sound Medicine

This week: advice for exercising while sick; Dartmouth research on end-of-life care; why self-diagnosis on the Internet is a bad idea; and an interview with the co-author of the book Breakthrough, the history of the discovery of medical insulin. Also, why you should research health concerns when preparing to travel overseas. Listen to the podcast.

Antonio Damasio: Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

The study of the evolution of emotions dates back to the 19th century. Charles Darwin famously applied the theory of evolution and natural selection to the study of human communication in his 1872 work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Charles Darwin researched the expression of emotions in an effort to support his theory of evolution. He proposed that much like other traits found in humans and animals, emotions, also, evolved and were adapted over time. His work looked at not only facial expressions in both humans and animals, but attempted to point out parallels between behaviors in animals and in humans. It’s this area of science that author and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has focused on for much of his life. As he has done previously, Antonio Damasio (Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain) explores the process that leads to consciousness. Moreover, as he has also done previously, he alternates between some exquisite passages that represent the best popular science has to offer and some technical verbiage that few will be able to follow. Antonio Damasio draws meaningful distinctions among points on the continuum from brain to mind, consciousness to self, constantly attempting to understand the evolutionary reasons why each arose and attempting to tie each to an underlying physical reality. Antonio Damasio goes to great lengths to explain that many species, such as social insects, have minds, but humans are distinguished by the "autobiographical self," which adds flexibility and creativity, and has led to the development of culture, a "radical novelty" in natural history. Antonio Damasio ends with a speculative chapter on the evolutionary process by which mind developed and then gave rise to self. In the Pleistocene, he suggests, humans developed emotive responses to shapes and sounds that helped lead to the development of the arts.

"The time will come when the issue of human responsibility, in general moral terms as well as on matters of justice and its application, will take into account the evolving science of consciousness."

- Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

"Emotions proper are merely an integrated crown jewel of life regulation."

"In a generation that has grown up multitasking, in the digital age, the upper limits of attention in the human brain are being rapidly raised, something that is likely to change certain aspects of consciousness in the not-too-distant future, if it has not done so already. Breaking the glass ceiling of attention has obvious advantages, and the associate abilities generated by multitasking are a terrific advantage; but there may be trade-off costs in terms of learning, memory consolidation, and emotion. We have no idea what these costs may be."

- Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

"Which kind of consciousness is primordial? Is the self fundamental for consciousness, as Damasio suggests? Or does awareness come when we take in information without having to do anything about it, and is the attending and planning self merely an elaborate construction on top of that, as the Buddhists or David Hume would argue?"

- Alison Gopnik, Slate.com

In November 2010, Alison Gopnik wrote “How Weird Is Consciousness? Scientists may not even be asking the right questions.” for the Slate.com: Antonio Damasio is a neuroscientist who has done illuminating research on emotion, decision-making, and our perception of our own bodies. He was also one of the brave early researchers who tackled the problem of consciousness head-on, and he was rewarded by several successful popular books. Unfortunately, in Self Comes to Mind, Antonio Damasio seems to have jumped the shark. The book doesn't include either the new scientific research of the last 10 years or new philosophical clarity—although the style is readable, if a bit high-flown, it's often hard to make out the arguments. Instead, the book is a rather wandering and digressive restatement, with some minor variations, of Damasio's earlier views on consciousness. […] The trouble with Damasio's hypothesis, as with all the hypotheses about capital-C Consciousness, is figuring out how you could test it. There is only one organism that I'm sure is conscious (namely, me), and there are only a few more organisms that tell me they are also conscious (namely, my fellow humans), though I'm pretty sure that my other fellow animals are conscious, too. Just to make things worse, the more you think about it, the less sure you are about the nature of your own consciousness, let alone that of other organisms. The philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel has collected many examples that shake your belief that you always know about your own experiences. For example, were you conscious a moment ago of the feeling of your feet in your shoes? You are now, of course, but were you before I made you think about it?

"As humans debate the benefits or perils of cultural trends, and of developments such as the “digital revolution,” it may help to be informed about how our flexible brains create consciousness."

- Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

Timothy Ferriss: The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman

In "New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life!" for The New York Times, Dwight Garner wrote this about the new Timothy Ferriss book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman: The New York Times Book Review’s advice and miscellaneous best-seller list — the place where self-help books go to eyeball one another — is a boisterous rolling carnival of hustlers and hacks and optimists and jokers, with the occasional naked lady, tent preacher, dog trainer or television chef thrown in for good measure. Serious books do appear there, but they’re like guests who’ve wandered into the wrong party. Among the writers who’ve appeared on that list, Tim Ferriss — author of The 4-Hour Workweek and now The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman — is an unusually beguiling humanlike specimen. He’s a graduate of the prep school St. Paul’s and has a degree in East Asian studies from Princeton University. Timothy Ferriss is also a Guinness Book of World Records record holder for most consecutive tango spins in one minute, a feat he accomplished with a partner on “Live With Regis and Kelly.” [...] He can use without irony, as he does in “The 4-Hour Body,” lines like: “I was enjoying French food and a bottle of Bordeaux with a 25-year-old female yoga instructor new to San Francisco, fresh from the Midwest.” This poor woman lets slip that she’s unable to have an orgasm. Mr. Ferriss, as any humanitarian would, makes it a point to fix this problem for her. “I was able to facilitate orgasms,” he writes, “in every woman who acted as a test subject.” Everything about Tim Ferriss’s book declares: This is not your auntie’s self-help book. No muffled “I’m OK — You’re OK” tone here. The vibe is: I’m Superbad, bro, and I have dimples. You’re a mole person who, if you become an angel investor in my books, might someday touch the hem of my Speedo.





In "Author Timothy Ferriss says his book holds key to weight loss, great sex" for the San Jose Mercury News, Richard Scheinin wrote this about Timothy Ferriss and The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman: Wired magazine once dubbed Timothy Ferriss "the Superman of Silicon Valley." Now he has written a choose-your-own-adventure guide for the human body: The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. Tim Ferriss says he spent 10 years testing hundreds of fads, diets and workouts -- anything that might help readers overhaul their lives. He lives large: Only 33, he is a tango world record holder, a former national kickboxing champion, a faculty member at Singularity University (based at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View), as well as author of the bestselling "The 4-Hour Workweek."

Richard Scheinin: "Any self-tests you hated doing in your research?"

Timothy: "I tested all the extremes, so the reader didn't have to. What's extreme? To attempt to reverse degenerative disc disease in my spine, I had stem cell growth factor imported from Israel and injected up and down my spine. It didn't hurt me, but it scared the hell out of me. Needles + spine = unhappy camper. I found better, less invasive options, thankfully."

From Newsweek in "The World’s Best Guinea Pig," a staff writer wrote this: Tim Ferriss is one of those personalities you want to hate, a guy so wildly successful it’s almost comedic. His productivity manifesto, The 4-Hour Workweek, was an instant New York Times bestseller when it debuted in 2007, despite Ferriss’s not knowing the first thing about publishing. He then tried angel investing, and helped fund projects like Twitter. How about a position at Princeton? Sure. Setting a Guinness world record in tango? He’s done that, too. Timothy Ferriss is the epitome of a life hacker: someone who can approach a supposedly experts-only subject and with a few tweaks turn it on its head. His latest target is personal health: The 4-Hour Body is his attempt to understand the human machine with a dose of science and a whole lot of data crunching. He’s just the right guy for the task—he’s recorded almost every workout since age 18, performed more than 1,000 blood tests, and boasts drawers full of gadgets like pulse oximeters and REM sleep trackers. Ferriss’s willingness to be a guinea pig produces some fascinating results. Using a glucometer implanted in his abdomen (ouch), he discovers that food doesn’t move into the bloodstream until hours after a meal—thus rendering useless the pre-workout energy bar—and that both cinnamon and lemon juice can quickly lower your glucose level.



From Kym McNicholas's blog on Forbes.com, "Names You Need To Know In 2011: Timothy Ferriss." Tim Ferriss is starting his own army. It’s an army that’s marching to good health and longevity. He’s devoted his life and career so far, at age 33, to traveling the world searching for the secrets to longevity and living life to the fullest. Tim is an angel investor in start-ups like Twitter, StumbleUpon, Evernote, and other Silicon Valley success stories, but he’s best known for his #1 New York Times bestselling book, “The 4-Hour Workweek.” It’s been translated into 35 languages and has been on the lists for more than three years. His life-long pursuit to teach people how to live longer, healthier lives has now culminated into what could be a huge turning point for his career and for society. It’s called “The 4-Hour Body.” It’s a book about intelligent self-experimentation, at the cusp of a revolution in medical discoveries related to self-tracking. A revolution, you might ask? Imagine people around the world taking health into their own hands, tracking their own health, their physical activity, their diets, and their medicine. And crowdsourcing that data to help find new medical discoveries cheaper and faster than ever. The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman hit #1 on The New York Times its first week out this December.



Timothy Ferriss grew up in East Hampton, NY and graduated from St. Paul's School. He received a degree in East Asian Studies from Princeton University in 2000. In 2001, at the age of 23, Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, a San Jose-based online company that sells sports nutrition supplements. He sold the company in January 2009 to an unnamed London-based private equity firm. He is now a full-time angel investor and has invested in the following companies: Twitter, Posterous, DailyBurn (formerly Gyminee), Reputation Defender, Foodzie, Badongo, RescueTime, and SimpleGeo. He also acts as an advisor to StumbleUpon and Shopify, which he has alluded to in interviews with Kevin Rose are in exchange for equity. He holds the Guinness Book of World Records' record for the most consecutive tango-spins in one minute. Ferriss and his dance partner Alicia Monti set the record live on the show Live with Regis and Kelly. Prior to his writing career, Ferriss served as an advisor to professional athletes and Olympians and claims he became the national champion in the 1999 USAWKF Sanshou (Chinese kickboxing) championship through a process of shoving opponents out of the ring. Critics dispute Tim Ferriss' San Shou championship claims by attributing the 1999 championship to Marvin Perry and by the omission of his victories from all major fighting databases. In 2008, Timothy Ferriss won Wired Magazine's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" prize and was named one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Business People of 2007". Ferriss has also spoken at the EG Conference. His show "Trial By Fire" aired on the History Channel in December 2008. In the show, Ferriss had one week to attempt to learn a skill normally learned over the course of many years and in the pilot episode he practiced the Japanese art of horseback archery, Yabusame. The Aspen Institute named Ferriss a 2009 Henry Crown Fellow in March, 2009. The fellowship "is designed to engage the next generation of leaders in the challenge of community-spirited leadership".

Barbara Ehrenreich: Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

From Publishers Weekly: Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) delivers a trenchant look into the burgeoning business of positive thinking. A bout with breast cancer puts the author face to face with this new breed of frenetic positive thinking promoted by everyone from scientists to gurus and activists. Chided for her anger and distress by doctors and fellow cancer patients and survivors, Ehrenreich explores the insistence upon optimism as a cultural and national trait, discovering its symbiotic relationship with American capitalism and how poverty, obesity, unemployment and relationship problems are being marketed as obstacles that can be overcome with the right (read: positive) mindset. Building on Max Weber's insights into the relationship between Calvinism and capitalism, Ehrenreich sees the dark roots of positive thinking emerging from 19th-century religious movements. Mary Baker Eddy, William James and Norman Vincent Peale paved the path for today's secular $9.6 billion self-improvement industry and positive psychology institutes. The author concludes by suggesting that the bungled invasion of Iraq and current economic mess may be intricately tied to this reckless national penchant for self-delusion and a lack of anxious vigilance, necessary to societal survival.



From Bookmarks Magazine: No critic completely dismissed Ehrenreich's critique of America's "happiness" culture. But reviewers' enthusiasm for her critique seemed to depend on their assessment of the book's moral urgency. Several critics felt that the message of Bright-Sided was essential to readers in the aftermath of last year's economic meltdown. But others felt that Ehrenreich's ideas, while relevant, had been better expressed by others. They also criticized the author for "cheap shots" and outdated research. For example, she criticizes the book Who Moved My Cheese?, which has long been superseded by other, even sillier titles. But many readers may react like Hanna Rosin, who wrote in the New York Times Book Review that even when she did not agree with Ehrenreich's arguments, she felt less guilty about not sharing in our smiley :-) culture.

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Barbara Ehrenreich (born August 26, 1941, Butte, Montana) is an American feminist, democratic socialist, sociologist and political activist, a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She is a widely read columnist and essayist, and the author of nearly 20 books. Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Alexander. Her father was a copper miner who went on to study at Carnegie Mellon University and who eventually became an executive at the Gillette Corporation. Ehrenreich studied physics at Reed College, graduating in 1963. Her senior thesis was entitled Electrochemical oscillations of the silicon anode. In 1968, she received a Ph.D in cellular biology from Rockefeller University. Citing her interest in social change, she opted for political activism instead of pursuing a scientific career. She met her first husband, John Ehrenreich, during an anti-war activism campaign in New York City. In 1970, her first child, Rosa (now Rosa Brooks), was born. Her second child, Benjamin, was born in 1972. Barbara and John divorced and in 1983 she married Gary Stevenson, a warehouse employee who later became a union organizer. She divorced Stevenson in the early 1990s. From 1991 to 1997, Ehrenreich was a regular columnist for Time magazine.

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Currently, the author contributes regularly to The Progressive and has also written for the New York Times, Mother Jones, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms, The New Republic, Z Magazine, In These Times, Salon.com, and other publications. In 1998, the American Humanist Association named her the Humanist of the Year. In 1998 and 2000, she taught essay writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2004, Ehrenreich wrote a month-long guest column for the New York Times while regular columnist Thomas Friedman was on leave and she was invited to stay on as a columnist. She declined, saying that she preferred to spend her time more on long-term activities, such as book-writing. Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after the release of her book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. In her article "Welcome to Cancerland," published in the November 2001 issue of Harper's Magazine, she describes her breast cancer experience and debates the medical industry's problems with the issue of breast cancer. In 2006, Ehrenreich founded United Professionals, an organization described as "a nonprofit, non-partisan membership organization for white-collar workers, regardless of profession or employment status. We reach out to all unemployed, underemployed, and anxiously employed workers — people who bought the American dream that education and credentials could lead to a secure middle class life, but now find their lives disrupted by forces beyond their control." Ehrenreich is currently an honorary co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. She also serves on the NORML Board of Directors and The Nation's Editorial Board. In 2000 Ehrenreich endorsed the Presidential campaign of Ralph Nader. In February 2008, Ehrenreich expressed support for Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.

Sherry Turkle: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

In January 2011, Jessica Bennett wrote “The promise of technology is connectedness. But could modern gadgetry be making us lonelier than ever?” for Newsweek Magazine. The advantage to all that gadgetry, of course, is connectedness: email lets us respond on the go, and we are in touch with more people during more hours of the day than at any other time in history. But is it possible we're more lonely than ever, too? That's what MIT professor Sherry Turkle observes in her new book, Alone Together, a fascinating portrait of our changing relationship with technology. The result of nearly 15 years of study (and interviews with hundreds of subjects), Turkle details the ways technology has redefined our perceptions of intimacy and solitude—and warns of the perils of embracing such pseudo-techno relationships in place of lasting emotional connections.

“The reason that I put the robot part first, even though it hasn't really arrived yet, is that with robots, there's this new diction of "alive enough." This generation of kids has something very specific in mind when they say that things are alive enough: "[The robot] is alive enough to be a friend — it's alive enough to do X with me." They're willing to move the whole discussion of what it means to be alive off of the philosophical terrain and onto the pragmatic terrain, where things become alive only for various purposes.”

- Sherry Turkle, author of the book: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

“People would rather text than talk, because they can control how much time it takes. They can control where it fits in their schedule. When you have the amount of velocity and volume [of communication] that we have in our lives, we have to control our communications very dramatically. So controlling relationships becomes a major theme in digital communication. And that's what sometimes makes us feel alone together — because controlled relationships are not necessarily relationships in which you feel kinship.”

- Sherry Turkle, author of the book: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

In January 2011, Meredith Melnick wrote “Is Technology Making Us Lonelier?” for Time Magazine. Digital communication is so pervasive that most of us don't even bother to question its role in society. That's not the case with Sherry Turkle, who has tracked the way we interact with computers and artificial intelligence since the 1970s. Founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, Turkle has written a new book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, that asks a simple question: Do digital methods of communication connect us the way interaction in the real world does? In late December, Turkle sat with TIME to discuss robot puppies, teen texting and what "full attention" means in an age of smart phones.

“But many of these same ideas no longer seem abstract or esoteric when you immerse yourself in life on the Internet. For example, the idea that you are constituted by and through language is not an abstract idea if you're confronted with the necessity of creating a character in a MUD. You just have to do it. Your words are your deeds, your words are your body. And you feel these word-deeds and this word-body quite viscerally. Similarly, the idea of multiplicity as a way of thinking about identity is concretized when someone gets an Internet account, is asked to name five "handles" or nicknames for his activities on the system, and finds himself "being" Armani-boy in some online discussions, but Motorcycle-man, Too-serious, Aquinas, and Lipstick in others.”

- Sherry Turkle, author of the book: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

Gary Taubes: Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

In "Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?", Gary Taubes wrote this, for the New York Times:

Once upon a time, women took estrogen only to relieve the hot flashes, sweating, vaginal dryness and the other discomforting symptoms of menopause. In the late 1960s, thanks in part to the efforts of Robert Wilson, a Brooklyn gynecologist, and his 1966 best seller, “Feminine Forever,” this began to change, and estrogen therapy evolved into a long-term remedy for the chronic ills of aging. Menopause, Wilson argued, was not a natural age-related condition; it was an illness, akin to diabetes or kidney failure, and one that could be treated by taking estrogen to replace the hormones that a woman’s ovaries secreted in ever diminishing amounts. With this argument estrogen evolved into hormone-replacement therapy, or H.R.T., as it came to be called, and became one of the most popular prescription drug treatments in America.

Read Taubes' NYT piece here. The author was also a guest of NPR's Talk of the Nation in 2007. The podcast of that show is posted/embedded below. See also: Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage), Nobel Dreams: Power, Deceit and the Ultimate Experiment, Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, The Diet Delusion: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Loss and Disease.

Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself

In a year-end review of bestselling health related books, the Med Page Today website published a list of the top titles. Among them, "Clean;" this is what the website had to say about the book and author:

Among the celebrities who used and/or promoted various cleansing or detox regimens were Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Beyonce, Blair Underwood and especially Gwyneth Paltrow. Health claims derive from the belief that many chronic medical conditions occur when the body becomes a victim to a build up of “toxins.” As Dr. Alejandro Junger, designer of the Clean detox program, said: “When our systems are overtaxed, they begin to break down in a multitude of ways. Allergies, headaches, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, fatigue, weight gain and insomnia are just a few of the symptoms that can result. The majority of these common ailments are the direct result of toxin build-up in our systems that has accumulated during the course of our daily lives.” Most mainstream physicians, such as complementary and alternative medicine expert Dr. Edzard Ernst (pictured) say that this is nonsense and there's only one substance reliably removed from people using detox/cleanses: “Money from their bank accounts.”

Read that full article here. See the book and author's promotional webpage here.

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health

In March 2010, The Boston Globe mentioned the book, "The China Study," this way:

Eric Faulkner, a professional in high tech, is baking a batch of vegan cookies in his Lowell loft. He minces few words to explain why he became a vegan. “I’m scared to death of cancer,’’ says the lanky 42-year-old. After reading “The China Study’’ (Benbella Books), which purports that animal protein can accelerate the growth of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, Faulkner ate his last cheeseburger. For the past eight months meals in his household have been healthy remakes of meaty standbys. “I make a great avocado Reuben sandwich, a faux meat loaf, roasted butternut squash soup, and lots of pasta,’’ says Faulkner, whose wife and 8-year-old daughter have also converted.

Read the rest of that Boston Globe piece, here. There's plenty criticism about the book, however. Take Chris Masterjohn at Cholesterol-And-Health.Com as an example:

The generalization from the milk protein casein to all "nutrients from animal-based foods" is clearly unwarranted. If Campbell took caution to study the issue further before generalizing from casein to all proteins, why didn't he take the same caution before generalizing from casein to all animal proteins or all animal nutrients? Indeed, in later pages of The China Study, Campbell acknowledges that he is making this generalization: ". . . casein, and very likely all animal proteins, may be the most relevant cancer-causing substances that we consume."16 Why this generalization is "very likely" to be true is left unexplained. Campbell is aware that casein has been uniquely implicated in health problems, and dedicates an entire chapter of The China Study to casein's capacity to generate autoimmune diseases.17 Whey protein appears to have a protective effect against colon cancer that casein does not have.18 Any effect of casein, then, cannot be generalized to other milk proteins, let alone all animal proteins. Other questions, such as what effect different types of processing have on casein's capacity to promote tumor growth, remain unanswered. Pasteurization, low-temperature dehydration, high-temperature spray-drying (which creates carcinogens), and fermentation all affect the structure of casein differently and thereby would affect its physiological behavior.

Read that full article here.

Michael Pollan: Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

Austin 360 recently wrote:

In his most recent book, "Food Rules," Pollan doles out 64 guidelines that are as easy to remember as his most well-known mantra: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (His second most-repeated rule? "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.") "I really don't want people to have to count calories and to read labels," he says. How we eat has changed so much in the past 50 years that we all could use the reminders: "Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk." "Always leave the table a little hungry." (One of his personal favorites is "The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead.") Pollan says that one of the biggest problems is that we've been conditioned, primarily by food marketers and manufacturers, to think that we're supposed to spend as little time as possible shopping for, cooking and eating our meals.

Find the rest of that article here.

The 99ers from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Dan Ariely, behavioral economist at Duke University and author of The Upside of Irrationality, takes a look at the so-called 99ers -- the segment of the population that has been unemployed for over ninety-nine weeks, at which point their unemployment benefits end. What's next for them?

View the WNYC webpage about this feature story here. Download the podcast for this episode here. See also: Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, A Taste of Irrationality: Sample chapters from Predictably Irrational and Upside of Irrationality, The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. Below is a YouTube video of the author's talk at Google.

New Horizons: David Freedman from New Horizons in Education

Bob Kustra interviews David Freedman about his book, "Wrong" about why experts get it wrong and how to discern when their advice is off target.

Download the New Horizons podcast here. Last month, The Atlantic published an article by Freedman called, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science." In the article, he describes biostatistician's presentation that asked: "were drug companies manipulating published research to make their drugs look good?" This is the way that the protagonist of Freedman's story is introduced, Dr. John Ioannidis; "Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science." The article's definitely worth the time; find it here. See also, this New Yorker article, by Jonah Lehrer. The article's called, "The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method?" Find that New Yorker article here.

When Depression Kills from Fox News by Dr. Keith Ablow

Hegel’s tragic story may, as much as anyone’s, demonstrate the fine line between psychiatric disorders and violent behavior. We don’t know whether Hegel suffered with major depression or psychotic thinking, but some of the students he held hostage noted that he seemed depressed and that he didn’t seem to have any clear goal in mind when he brandished two handguns, shot up a film projector, then refused to let them leave their classroom. [...] When depression takes hold, mood falls, sometimes dramatically, and anxiety levels often rise precipitously. More trouble for one’s state of mind comes as sleep becomes scarce (or excessive) and appetite falls off, triggering physiological changes that accelerate the disease process, making it impossible to concentrate and not infrequently convincing the depressed person that nothing will ever get better—only worse. He will never be able to work, never be able to learn, never have another friend, never have a romance, embarrass himself and his family and be a burden to everyone he once loved. Some depressed people have told me that they look at photos of their children and feel as though they are strangers. They feel utterly, completely alone, as though God has Himself forsaken them. [...] I am one psychiatrist and—even without my work in forensics—I have treated a billionaire with depression who believed he was utterly penniless and wanted to die, a depressed woman who was convinced her son had been kidnapped and replaced by a masquerading double (who she thought she might need to kill), a college student who came to believe that his arms were not his own arms and needed to be severed (which was prevented), a depressed mother who wanted to kill her new baby, and a depressed business professional who was convinced the CIA was pursuing him and would ultimately kill him—if he didn’t kill them first. They all recovered. It took the right medicines and a deep and empathetic exploration of past psychological [...]

Read the article, "When Depression Kills," at Fox News. See also: Living the Truth: Transform Your Life Through the Power of Insight and Honesty, Inside the Mind of John Mark Karr, Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson

"Don't Confuse Depression and Grief, Author Advises" from Psychiatric News by Aaron Levin

Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., who has endured mental illness and her husband's death, realizes that depression is destructive and alienating, but that grief acts to preserve the self and draw people together. “It has been said that grief is a kind of madness,” Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., told listeners at APA's Institute on Psychiatric Services in Boston in October. “I disagree.” Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D.: “Madness prepared me for grief. It gave me an unsentimental gauge by which to test my sanity within my grief and a respect for the true terror that is at the core of madness.” She spoke in hope of adding to the discussion over proposed elimination of the grief exclusion from the DSM-5's criteria for major depressive disorder. That possible change has been characterized by some as medicalizing normal human experience. “There is a kind of sanity to grief,” continued Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and honorary professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “It provides a path—albeit a broken one—by which those who grieve can find their way. Grief is not a disease; it is a necessity.”

Read that full article, here, at Psychiatric News. These are also good books on the topic of depression, by Kay Redfield Jamison: Nothing Was the Same, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Exuberance: The Passion for Life, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide