Beating The Flu or Eating Drinking Overthinking

Beating The Flu: The Natural Prescription For Surviving Pandemic Influenza and Bird Flu

Author: J E Williams

Experts agree that the world is due for a flu pandemic, and the Bird Flu virus--with a 70% kill rate--may cause just such a catastrophe. Even conservative estimates say such a scenario could kill 2 million Americans and shut down economic services as the virus rages across the globe. As the world community busily prepares for the potential nightmare, it's essential that individuals arm themselves with up-to-date information. In Beating the Flu, Dr. J. E. Williams apprises the situation honestly and offers vital advice for avoiding Bird Flu as well as steps for safely overcoming the virus should you contract it. Dr. Williams argues that due to a severe shortage in antiviral pharmaceutical drugs, natural medicines will play a crucial role in minimizing the outbreak and ensuring good health for you and your family. Dr. J. E. Williams has practiced Oriental Medicine for more than two decades and is the author of three books. Presently, he is the Academic Dean at the East West College of Natural Medicine.

Book review: Cuestiones Profesionales en Patología de lengua del Discurso y Audiology

Eating, Drinking, Overthinking: The Toxic Triangle of Food, Alcohol, and Depression--and How Women Can Break Free

Author: Susan Nolen Hoeksema

A noted expert on women and depression offers a guide to balancing women’s relationship to eating, alcohol, and overthinking

Based on extensive original research, Eating, Drinking, Overthinking is the first book to show women how they can navigate the often painful and destructive worlds of the title.

While it is widely known that women suffer from depression in disproportionately large numbers, what is less well known is the extent to which many women use food and alcohol to regulate their moods. Integrating the insights of her popular first book, Women Who Think Too Much, Yale psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema has written a pathbreaking and highly readable account of the ways in which eating, drinking, and overthinking, can wreak havoc on women’s emotional well-being, physical health, relationships, and careers.

As Eating, Drinking, Overthinking reveals, the coping strategies that lead women into the “toxic triangle” can be turned around to guide them out of it. Instead of letting negative thoughts gain the advantage, Nolen-Hoeksema provides exercises to help women manage their thoughts and maintain a balanced perspective.

Publishers Weekly

Nolen-Hoeksema (Women Who Think Too Much) presents a theory that women who battle eating disorders, alcohol abuse and depression are really suffering from a single disorder for which she has coined the term "toxic triangle." The author claims to be among the first to recognize this (most experts, she says, choose one as the cause of the other two), but doesn't offer anything beyond her own observations as proof that this is true. The book's main strength is its excellent exploration of the impact of all three problems, individually and collectively, on women's lives. Eating disorders, alcohol abuse and depression affect women's relationships, careers, health and put them at risk for assault. Nolen-Hoeksema helps readers make sense of their past experiences and the genetic influences that can also make a difference, perhaps leading to a better understanding of their behavior. But she flounders between writing a clinical dissertation and penning a self-help book meant to guide readers to a solution. She constantly switches voices, speaking directly to the reader at some points and talking about the reader at others. Nolen-Hoeksema makes a provocative argument, but the book's lack of clinical research and cohesive narrative make it a tough sell. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Many people use alcohol or food to cope when life gets difficult. Psychologist Nolen-Hoeksema (Women Who Think Too Much) believes that women in particular often combine unhealthy eating and/or drinking habits with depression-what she calls the "Toxic Triangle." As she sees it, women's tendency to overthink (i.e., to get stuck in the past by rehashing events), combined with peer pressure and media images of slender, accomplished women, can trigger the triangle and lead to misery. She proposes the following strategies for overcoming this cycle: reduce stress through meditation, keep a diary to record feelings, find substitutes for destructive behaviors, use problem-solving techniques, and build positive relationships. She also suggests that parents teach young girls to use these techniques so that they, too, will not develop toxic habits. Although the Toxic Triangle model may be new, there is nothing here that cannot be found in other self-help books. Still, the information is useful, and Nolen-Hoeksema has appeared on popular media outlets like The Today Show and CNN, so buy for demand where self-help books are popular. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/05.]-Barbara M. Bibel, Oakland P.L., CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.