Don't Sweat the Program

Consumer health publishers in mid-2007 recall those elliptical machine addicts—they've fallen into a safe holding pattern that should maintain their weight in the market. In other words, mind-body books and recovery memoirs are back, as are a bevy of diet and fitness manuals. And why not? People buy into the health and medicine genre—LJ's annual book-buying survey once again gave the category top marks for circulation (“Circ's Up, Budgets Leap,” LJ 2/15/07) —and even if this summer's selections lack originality or spin, they make up for it in popular appeal.

We're in on the eating habits of the French, hip to the dieting tactics of the South Beach and Saint-Tropez sets. And as further testament to our willingness to lose pounds, we're ready to go wherever the next book takes us.

Luckily, we've got all the options in the world, beginning in May with art historian Debra Friedland's When in Rome: How an American Woman in Italy Lost Weight Eating, Living, and Loving the Italian Way (HC, formerly ReganBooks), a memoir/diet book replete with recipes and shopping tips. Then it's off to South America for fitness professional Regina Joseph's The Brazilian Bikini Body Program: 30 Days to a Sexier Body and Mind (St. Martin's), which includes meal plans, recipes, and an illustrated exercise regimen.

Healthcare professional Roni DeLuz's 21 Pounds in 21 Days: The Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox (HC) will schedule us for a stopover in the United States to swap secrets with East Coast summerers. Two more destinations, in June: physician Fedon Alexander Lindberg's Eating the Greek Way: More Than 100 Fresh and Delicious Recipes from Some of the Healthiest People in the World (Clarkson Potter) and self-help guru Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len's Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More (Wiley).

Beyond these how-tos, find out why Americans are driven to pound-dropping madness with Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (Farrar, May) and Deirdre Barrett's Waistland: The (R)Evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis (Norton, Jun.).

Today, diabetes ranks as the sixth most common cause of death in the United States, and publishers are responding. In Take Charge of Your Diabetes: A Revolutionary Plan for Reversing Your Symptoms and Preventing Complications (Da Capo Lifelong, Jul.), Sarfraz Zaidi, M.D., discusses symptom management and reversal for types 1 and 2 diabetes, focusing mostly on the culprit of insulin resistance. Diabetic Michael A. Weiss and diabetes educator Martha M. Funnell's The Little Diabetes Book You Need To Read (Running Pr., Jun.) is a guide not to treating the condition but to living optimally with it. And Marlowe & Company, which has been producing books for diabetics since 1999, will introduce into its “New Glucose Revolution” series The New Glucose Diabetes: The Definitive Guide to Managing Diabetes and Prediabeties Using the Glycemic Index (May) by glycemic index (GI) authorities Jennie Brand-Miller, Stephen Colaguiri, Kay Foster-Powell, and Alan Barclay. The volume features GI-based recipes, menus, and dietary guidelines for the many variations of diabetes (e.g., type 1, type 2, gestational, juvenile) and for related conditions like obesity and celiac disease.

Controlling sugar intake also interests nondiabetics. Being well versed in the language of the GI and glycemic load (GL) is for this decade what calories were for the Eighties.

“Sugar Busters!, all the sugar books,” says Diana Baroni, editorial director of Wellness Central (formerly Warner Wellness), “they've seemed to hit a real nerve in the market.”

The imprint bought Peter H. Gott's Dr. Gott's No Flour, No Sugar™ Diet, originally published in 2006 by Quill Driver Books in paperback, and reissued it in hardcover earlier this year in response to the demand. For summer, dietitian Nigel Denby's The GL Cookbook and Diet Plan: A Glycemic Load Weight-Loss Program with Over 150 Delicious Recipes (Ulysses Pr., May), complete with GL-scored recipes, should satisfy cravings for low-sugar fare.

Then there's Managing Diabetes with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Controlling Your Blood Sugar with Mindfulness and Values-Based Action (New Harbinger, Aug.) by Jennifer Gregg, Glenn M. Callaghan, and Steven C. Hayes. First, the authors address the basics of diabetes management—e.g., diet, exercise, blood glucose testing, insulin administration—then, they deal with the emotional and psychological facets of this increasingly prevalent disease. This mind-body approach pops up with other conditions, especially heart disease (see below).

Ever since 2003, when the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute revised its recommendations in response to studies showing that heart disease can begin at lower blood pressures than previously believed, books on hypertension have achieved peak circulation. That will continue to be the case owing to books like physician Alan L. Rubin's High Blood Pressure For Dummies. This paperback original from 2002 will appear in a revised edition in August with new suggestions for detection, findings regarding risk, recommendations for treatment, and explorations of newly developed drugs.

Similarly, medical journalist Robert E. Kowalski—author of the 1987 No. 1 New York Times best seller The 8-Week Cholesterol Cure—will introduce The Blood Pressure Cure: 8 Weeks to Lower Blood Pressure Without Prescription Drugs, which draws on newly developed ways of managing hypertension through herbs, supplements, diet, and exercise.

Where there's high blood pressure, of course, there's risk of heart trouble, and cardiovascular disease still claims the most lives of Americans over age 25. Don't let this summer's titles on the condition confuse you, however—they tread psychological ground. Take Lawson R. Wulsin's Treating the Aching Heart: A Guide to Depression, Stress, and Heart Disease (Vanderbilt Univ., Jul.). Through personal accounts, scientific explanations, and medical illustrations, it addresses the relationship between emotions and heart problems. Expect the book to be balanced: Wulsin, a psychiatrist, is married to a public health physician.

Cardiologist Gerry Maddoux will also be taking an emotion-based approach to heart disease in his Your Heart: Treat It Like You Love It (Loving Your Heart LLC, Jul.), which is rife with hard medical data as well as personal vignettes aimed at enlightening lay readers.

“There is a definitive, growing need and importance of viewing health conditions from a whole systems perspective and using an integrative approach to healing any condition, mental or physical,” says Wendy Millstine, assistant acquisitions editor of health books, New Harbinger Publications.

Consumer health writers often apply the mind-body angle to specific diseases, but this summer they are putting that slant on general healing and improvement.

Asked what she's been seeing a lot of lately, Millstine validates this trend, answering, “whole system assessment, positive thinking and its effects on recovery and healing, and the benefit of meditation and prayer and its effects on recovery and healing.”

The number of forthcoming diet books incorporating mental strategies is, well, mind-boggling. May will mark the publication of Mind Over Muscle: The Effortless Way to a Perfect Body (Hatherleigh Pr.) by James Villepigue, coauthor of the best-selling “Body Sculpting Bible” series, and Shrink Yourself: The Ultimate Program To End Emotional Eating (Wiley) by UCLA psychiatrist Roger Gould.

In June, we'll test the theories of fitness coach Nordine Zouareg's Mind Over Body: The Key to Lasting Weight Loss Is All in Your Head (Springboard) and hypnotherapist/biofeedback therapist Rena Greenberg's The Craving Cure: Break the Hold Carbs and Sweets Have on Your Life (McGraw-Hill). In July, clinical psychologist Les Fehmi and science writer Jim Robbins's The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention To Heal the Mind and Body (Trumpeter) and Timothy McCall's Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing (Bantam) will shed new light on our ailments, while Judith Lederman and Larina Kase's Joining the Thin Club: Tips for Toning Your Mind After You've Trimmed Your Body (Three Rivers) proffers thinking patterns for maintaining one's svelter figure, not to mention advice on shopping for it.

A psychological perspective even jells with the way we think about sickness. To wit, May will herald Jill Sklar's The Five Gifts of Illness: A Reconsideration (Marlowe & Co.), which outlines positive insights that anyone who's experienced a life-altering illness can claim. Marlowe & Co. VP and publisher Matthew Lore says he sees the book “doing for illness what Elisabeth Kübler-Ross did for grief and what Harold Kushner did for bad things—forever redefining our understanding of an epochal event in our lives.”

Eating disorders have sparked significant output this summer—not surprising considering the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry asserts that anorexia, bulimia, et al., are more rampant than ever and now affect a broad ethnic and socioeconomic base without precedent.

A handful of titles point to the myriad sufferers: science writer Trisha Gura's Lying in Weight: The Hidden Epidemic of Eating Disorders in Adult Women (HarperCollins, May), former anorexic Carrie Arnold and physician B. Timothy Walsh's Next to Nothing: A Firsthand Account of One Teenager's Experience with an Eating Disorder (Oxford Univ., Jun.), and Nadia Shivack's self-illustrated Inside Out: Portrait of an Eating Disorder (Ginee Seo Bks: S. & S., Jul.).

In the face of this dispiriting reality come books that aim to imbue sound eating habits early. In May, Perigee Trade will serve up Mandy Francis's Raising a Healthy Eater: Help Your Kids Develop a Taste for Good Nutrition, another addition to the “52 Brilliant Ideas” series.

Last year, the desire of consumers to take control of their health stood out as a trend (think Mehmet Oz and Michael F. Roizen's best-selling You: On a Diet). In 2007, that empowerment manifests itself in debunkings and exposés. Doctors, health marketers, and the food industry are the targets. To boot, the grocery store aisles are potential pathways to degenerative disease in medical writer Nancy Deville's Death by Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down, and Poisoning of America (Barricade Bks., Jun.), and fraudulent intentions pave the road of the multibillion-dollar health and fitness industry in fitness advocate Craig Pepin-Donat's The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie: Enrich Your Life and Improve Your Health Without Getting Ripped Off in the Process (Waterside Pub., May).

And is it any wonder? A survey by the Harvard School of Public Health showed that 34 percent of people say they or their families have experienced a medical error (in the case with chronic illnesses, that number rises to 50 percent). The Institute of Medicine backs that perception, estimating that 40,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year from medical errors.

Patients aren't the only ones sweating these statistics—doctors are bothered by them, too. In Straight Talk About Cosmetic Surgery: A Comprehensive Guide for Making Informed Decisions and Avoiding Fraud and Useless Treatments (Yale Univ., Jul.), plastic surgeon Arthur W. Perry separates the wheat from the chaff of surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures.

In How Doctors Think, a spring publication from Houghton, Harvard Medical School professor Jerome Groopman expresses a willingness in the medical community to educate lay readers on the limits of medical care and to demystify the process. His confessions are at once discouraging, enlightening, and brave, e.g., doctors stereotype middle-aged women more commonly than they do other patients, often attributing their symptoms to the effects of menopause.

Following in that vein are oncologist Stephen C. Schimpff's The Future of Medicine: Megatrends in Health Care That Will Improve Your Quality of Life (Nelson Bks., Aug.), which explores current and future techniques and treatments in the fields of genomics, technology, imaging, stem cells, and complementary medicine, warts and all; and pediatrician Laura W. Nathanson's What You Don't Know Can Kill You: A Physician's Radical Guide to Conquering the Obstacles to Excellent Medical Care (Collins, May), which tackles the prevalence of medical errors and educates readers on what can go wrong and why. Nathanson writes from a frustrated patient's perspective as much as from a doctor's: she was widowed in 2003 when her husband was misdiagnosed.

Taylor Grant also has a personal stake in healthcare improvement. Her son's health crisis inspired her career as a consumer healthcare advocate, in addition to her upcoming book, Health Matters: 8 Steps That Can Save Your Life—and Your Family's Health (Wiley, Aug.). Meanwhile, pediatrician Perri Klass's Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor, a June entry in the “Art of Mentoring” series from Basic Books, takes a bird's-eye view of the doctor-patient relationship, illuminating the roles of both parties as well as addressing the complex issues involved on both sides: grief, fear, and ethics.

University Health Publishing director Joan Mullally predicts that with the population aging, living longer, and postponing having children, there will be a “tween generation” raising kids while dealing with elder care issues, plus their own or their spouse's health concerns. This familial pileup will “lead to unprecedented health challenges in this country in the next few years, and, indeed, the foreseeable future.”

Caveat Press president Gary Kliewer also observes that “national healthcare—or the lack of it—is a hot topic, spurred perhaps by the presidential debates and 'experts' offering warring solutions.”

Even on a small-press marketing budget, Caveat's frontlist best seller, last year's Practicing Medicine Without a License! The Corporate Takeover of Healthcare in America, by obstetrician and gynecologist Don Sloan, is attracting national media attention. In August, George Halvorson, who headed the successful nonprofit health plans Health Partners (MN) and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan (CA), presents a model he believes could untangle and streamline this country's convoluted healthcare system in Health Care Reform Now! A Prescription for Change (Jossey-Bass, Aug.).

Rodmell Press publisher Linda Cogozzo's citing of “yoga books focusing on specific health issues” as an emerging trend has definite traction. We might even adjust that to “specific people, problems, perspectives, and parts.” Bobby Clennell's The Women's Yoga Book: Asana and Pranayama for All Phases of the Menstrual Cycle (Rodmell, May) addresses the “people” and “problems” categories. For “perspectives,” see Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul (FaithWords, Aug.), in which yoga instructor Brooke Boon appropriates the Eastern practice for the religious West, interspersing her routines with scripture. And exemplifying “parts” is yoga teacher Anne-Elise Hagen's The Yoga Facelift: Anti-Aging Yoga for the Face (Avery, Aug.), which touts “Yotox” as a healthy substitute for invasive cosmetic procedures.

The differences between this year's health trends and those of the recent past aren't that great, but the key signature is intriguing, namely, a stronger emphasis on eating disorders and the willingness of medical professionals to dissect the nature of the patient-doctor relationship. As long as Americans keep these scores—42 percent of those age 55–64 have high blood pressure, 57 percent are physically inactive, and 12 percent are diabetic, according to one survey—we'll be stuck on the same old publishing track.