Archives de catégorie : Medecine

RISING UP de Brennan Spiegel

As long as life has existed on Earth—from the simplest organisms to Homo sapiens—gravity has inexorably shaped our world.

RISING UP
How Gravity Shapes Our Bodies and Minds
by Brennan Spiegel
St. Martin’s Press, Fall 2025
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

Although this hidden force strains every fiber of our bodies, every moment of our lives, we often neglect its relentless impact on our health. But to what extent does gravity shape our sensations, our emotions, and our overall wellbeing? The answers will astonish you.

In RISING UP, Professor Brennan Spiegel presents a groundbreaking exploration into how gravity influences not just celestial bodies, but also underlies conditions of body and mind that have puzzled medical professionals for centuries. Beginning with a simple observation at a family dinner and culminating in a landmark study by the author that garnered worldwide attention, RISING UP invites you on a captivating journey through the human body’s inner struggle to keep us upright and healthy.

Why do people with depression literally feel like they’re being dragged to the ground? Why do you get that butterfly feeling in your stomach when falling on a rollercoaster? Why do you get it when “falling” in love? What can we learn from astronauts with heartburn and swollen faces to inform our lives back on Earth? How do gut microbes help us fight gravity? And most important, just how do we change our relationship with gravity for the better?

In answering these questions, Spiegel unveils the concept of “gravity resilience” and introduces the “personal gravity profile” to help readers understand gravity’s imprint on their own mind and body. Understanding your profile can illuminate why certain activities feel more challenging or why you might experience discomfort in situations where gravity’s influence is altered, like on a rollercoaster, or during a yoga class, or up in an airplane.

Moreover, he introduces a new way of thinking about weight loss, exercise, diet, and meditation. Rather than just being lifestyle choices, these treatments are united by a profound and unexpected commonality: they all enhance our resilience to gravity. Throughout the book, Spiegel offers additional practices for withstanding gravity’s demands.

Equally rooted in hard science and compelling storytelling, Rising Up turns a new page in our understanding of what it means to be a human living on Earth. This isn’t merely a book about medicine or science; it’s a startling revelation about the very essence of the human condition.

Brennan Spiegel, MD, MSHS, is the Dorothy and George Gourrich Chair in Digital Health Ethics at Cedars-Sinai, Assistant Dean for Clinical and Translational Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Founding Director of the Cedars-Sinai Master’s Program in Health Delivery Science. He is the immediate past Editor-in-Chief for the American Journal of Gastroenterology and inaugural Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Medical Extended Reality. Dr. Spiegel has published widely in the fields of health services research, digital health science, and clinical medicine with 280 peer-reviewed manuscripts that have been cited over 23,700 times in the biomedical literature.

HIGH FUNCTIONING de Judith Joseph

Dr. Judith Joseph explores one of the most under researched mental health crises of our time, revealing how to break from from High Functioning Depression (HFD) and reclaim the joy in our lives.

HIGH FUNCTIONING
The New Face of Depression–and How to Reclaim Our Joy
by Dr. Judith Joseph
Little, Brown Spark, Spring 2025
(via Kaplan/DeFiore)

Many of us have experienced periods in our lives when something felt “off”: when we struggled to find joy in happy moments, felt pessimistic about the future, and took little pleasure in things we used to enjoy. On the surface, everything might have seemed fine – we were motivated and productive at work, pulling our weight at home, and conducting a normal social life – but behind that façade we were barely surviving, and certainly not thriving.

High-Functioning Depression impacts the lives of millions, yet has been under-researched, overlooked, and completely misunderstood. Because it doesn’t conform to the image that comes to mind when we think of depression – someone who is deeply sad and listless and finds it hard to get out of bed in the morning – people with HFD often have no idea why they are suffering, or what to do about it. Until now.

As the founder and chief investigator at Manhattan Behavioral Medicine, New York City’s premier clinical research site, a clinical assistant professor at NYU Langone Medical Center, chairwoman of the Women in Medicine Board at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and “social media’s favorite psychiatrist,” Dr. Judith Joseph is poised to become THE expert voice on this urgent and unexplored topic. In GOLDEN, she draws on original research, client stories, and personal experience with HFD to transform the way we see this condition, and provide the awareness, validation, and accessible, research-backed advice (in the form of her “Five V’s Framework) we need to break the cycle.

Judith Joseph, MD, MBA, is a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and researcher who specializes in mental health and trauma. She is the founder of and chief investigator at Manhattan Behavioral Medicine, New York City’s premier clinical research site. Passionate about teaching and creating an impact, Dr. Judith serves as a clinical assistant professor in child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan. She is also chairwoman of the Women in Medicine Board at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She holds an undergraduate degree from Duke as well as a medical doctorate and master’s in business administration from Columbia.

THE CAVE d’Amani Ballour

Written in the tradition of I Am Malala and based on the Oscar-nominated documentary The Cave, this searing memoir tells the inspiring story of a young doctor and activist who ran an underground hospital in Damascus, illuminating and humanizing the enduring crisis in Syria.

THE CAVE
A Secret Underground Hospital and One Woman’s Story of Survival in Syria
by Amani Ballour, M.D.
National Geographic, March 2024
(via Kaplan/DeFiore)

Simply put, there is no one in Syria with a story like Dr. Amani Ballour. The only woman to have ever run a wartime hospital, she saved her peers from the atrocities of war while contending with the patriarchal conservatism around her.

Growing up in Assad’s Syria, Dr. Ballour knew she wanted to be more than a housewife, even as her siblings were married off in their teens. As the revolution unfolded, she volunteered at a local clinic and was immediately thrown into the deep end of emergency medicine. Here, she found her voice and the courage to continue.

Among the facets of this powerful tale: Becoming a hospital director. Shielding children from a horrific sarin attack. Losing colleagues. Starvation during the hospital siege. Attempting to employ more women in the hospital and challenging the patriarchy. Abandoning the hospital. Becoming a refugee. Living with trauma. Moving forward.

Amani Ballour is a role model and a game changer who, like Malala Yousafzai, will be remembered as one of history’s great heroines. She is an incredibly brave, passionately committed young humanitarian who, though deeply wounded by her experiences, is not content to quietly deal with her own trauma. Instead, Ballour is determined to seek justice and to do her utmost to ensure that others will not have to face the horrors that she survived.

Amani Ballour graduated from the University of Damascus in 2012. She began her pediatrics specialization before abandoning her studies to help the people of her hometown, under attack from the Assad regime, in an underground medical facility known as The Cave. In 2018, as Assad’s forces closed in, Ballour was forcibly displaced to northern Syria before settling in the United States with her husband in 2021. She is the recipient of the Council of Europe’s prestigious Raoul Wallenberg Prize. She lives in Patterson, New Jersey.

Rania Abouzeid is a multi-award-winning Lebanese-Australian journalist who has reported from across the Middle East for some two decades. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time magazine, National Geographic, and other outlets. She lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

THE CAVE d’Amani Ballour

Written in the tradition of I Am Malala and based on the Oscar-nominated documentary The Cave, this searing memoir tells the inspiring story of a young doctor and activist who ran an underground hospital in Damascus, illuminating and humanizing the enduring crisis in Syria.

THE CAVE:
A Woman’s Story of Survival in Syria
by Amani Ballour
National Geographic, March 2024
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Simply put, there is no one in Syria with a story like Dr. Amani Ballour. The only woman to have ever run a wartime hospital, she saved her peers from the atrocities of war while contending with the patriarchal conservatism around her.
Growing up in Assad’s Syria, Dr. Ballour knew she wanted to be more than a housewife, even as her siblings were married off in their teens. As the revolution unfolded, she volunteered at a local clinic and was immediately thrown into the deep end of emergency medicine. Here, she found her voice and the courage to continue.
Among the facets of this powerful tale: Becoming a hospital director. Shielding children from a horrific sarin attack. Losing colleagues. Starvation during the hospital siege. Attempting to employ more women in the hospital and challenging the patriarchy. Abandoning the hospital. Becoming a refugee. Living with trauma. Moving forward.
Amani Ballour is a role model and a game changer who, like Malala Yousafzai, will be remembered as one of history’s great heroines. She is an incredibly brave, passionately committed young humanitarian who, though deeply wounded by her experiences, is not content to quietly deal with her own trauma. Instead, Ballour is determined to seek justice and to do her utmost to ensure that others will not have to face the horrors that she survived.

Amani Ballour graduated from the University of Damascus in 2012. She began her pediatrics specialization before abandoning her studies to help the people of her hometown, under attack from the Assad regime, in an underground medical facility known as The Cave. In 2018, as Assad’s forces closed in, Ballour was forcibly displaced to northern Syria before settling in the United States with her husband in 2021. She is the recipient of the Council of Europe’s prestigious Raoul Wallenberg Prize. She lives in Patterson, New Jersey.
Rania Abouzeid is a multi-award-winning Lebanese-Australian journalist who has reported from across the Middle East for some two decades. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time magazine, National Geographic, and other outlets. She lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

HOMO EX MACHINA de Bernd Kleine-Gunk & Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

A compelling dialogue between a medic and a philosopher about the opportunities and risks associated with combining man and machine – and about its limits.

HOMO EX MACHINA
by Bernd Kleine-Gunk & Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
Goldmann/PRH Germany, June 2023

Pacemakers, running blades, stem cell research, life-prolonging medicine: these achievements might sound normal, but they are all part of what is called transhumanism. Transhumanism stipulates that humanity’s next evolutionary step will come about through the use of modern science and technology, but many people see it as a dangerous endeavour. They fear that it will dehumanise us, that we’ll become « cyborgised » and open ourselves up to ethically questionable genetic experiments and state-sponsored eugenics.
Medic Kleine-Gunk and philosopher Sorgner dive into the complex world of transhumanism, and dispel some of the myths surrounding it. They introduce the relevant theories and academic disciplines involved in the transhumanist movement, examine its history and critique its opportunities and risks. Among other things, they explain why it’s unrealistic to expect that we’ll be able to digitise our personalities within the next 20 years, and that modern technology doesn’t exceed « natural » humanity: rather, it can serve to improve our lives – but only if we want it to.

Bernd Kleine-Gunk is a professor of medicine and a leading anti-ageing expert. He is the president of the German Society for Preventative and Anti-Aging Medicine, and has published numerous academic and non-academic articles and books on the subject. He is a globally sought-after speaker, and advises several companies and institutions.
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is a professor of philosophy at the John Cabot University in Rome, director and co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, research fellow at the Ewha Womens’ University Institute for the Humanities in Seoul and fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies think-tank. He is one of the world’s leading post- and trans-humanist philosophers, and has published several monographs and co-authored books.