Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Top five health & wellness books of 2010

At the Wall Street Journal, Laura Landro named her top five health and wellness books of 2010.

One title on the list:
"The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine," by Tom Goetz

While exploring advances in personalized medicine, genome research and early disease detection, the executive editor of Wired magazine provides useful suggestions on how individuals can use data, the Web and technology to make better medical decisions and manage their own care: iPhone apps that track food intake; social-media site PatientsLikeMe, which creates communities of patients; and 23andMe, the controversial genetic-profiling company. The author is an advocate of knowing everything you can about your own DNA. While a profile of your genes may not tell you everything, he argues, it is a starting point for making behavior changes that can affect the environmental and lifestyle part of the health equation, such as keeping up the exercise and healthy diet if you have higher than average risks for obesity and type 2 diabetes. In starting your own health-care decision tree, he writes, "thinking about what lies before us and what we can do to have better health … may be the most significant decision of all."
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue