Thursday, December 3, 2009

South Beach Heart Program or Fluent Bodies

South Beach Heart Program: The 4-Step Plan that Can Save Your Life

Author: Arthur Agatston

Over a million men and women in this country will suffer a heart attack this year. Another 600,000 will have a stroke. Doctors who practice aggressive prevention see another statistic entirely. Because the truth is, the great majority of these heart attacks and strokes can be prevented - right now, with medical knowledge we already possess. But instead of focusing on prevention, too many doctors and hospitals push for invasive procedures like bypasses that produce more income. In his most personal and passionate work, Dr. Arthur Agatston, who has helped millions of people find a healthy lifestyle, now hopes to champion a revolution in preventive medicine that will save lives. Drawing on nearly three decades as a practicing cardiologist, he outlines the key elements of his program:
Non-invasive imaging of the heart and blood vessels

Advanced blood testing

A regimen of diet, exercise, and medication

Repeat testing to assure the patient and physician that the treatment is working

Dr. Agatston has watched his patients thrive as a result of his prevention strategy. With expert advice from an expert they have learned to trust, the American public can join his Prevention Revolution and take the necessary steps to live healthier and longer.



Book review: Moo Baa La La La or The Cat in the Hat

Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance

Author: Jean M Langford

Fluent Bodies examines the modernization of the indigenous healing practice Ayurveda in India. Combining contemporary ethnography with a study of key historical moments as glimpsed through early-twentieth-century texts, Jean M. Langford argues that as Ayurveda evolved from an eclectic set of healing practices into a sign of Indian national culture, it was reimagined as a healing force not simply for bodily disorders but for colonial and postcolonial ills.

Interweaving theory with narrative, Langford explores the strategies of contemporary practitioners who reconfigure Ayurvedic knowledge through institutions and technologies such as hospitals, anatomy labs, clinical trials, and sonograms. She shows how practitioners appropriate, transform, or circumvent the knowledge practices implicit in these institutions and technologies, destabilizing such categories as medicine, culture, science, symptom, and self, even as they deploy them in clinical practice. Ultimately, this study points to the future of Ayurveda in a transnational era as a remedy not only for the wounds of colonialism but also for an imagined cultural emptiness at the heart of global modernity.

What People Are Saying

Vincanne Adams
This rich study incorporates a wide range of contemporary and historical materials to make wonderful theoretical interventions into the literature on Ayurveda and India. Langford pulls the reader into a new understanding of the nuanced relationships between history, nation, modernity, clinical debate, and the practices of Ayurveda.
— Vincanne Adams, author of Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepal Revolution


Lawrence Cohen
This is an important, ethnographically compelling work. Langford's insights will substantially change the field of studying Ayurveda.
— Lawrence Cohen, author of No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things




Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
1(Re)inventing Ayurveda1
2Ayurvedic Interiors25
3Healing National Culture63
4The Effect of Externality97
5Clinical Gazes140
6Medical Simulations188
7Parodies of Selfhood231
Epilogue263
Interlocutors271
Glossary273
Notes281
Bibliography291
Index305

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