Womens Health or Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplements

Womens Health: Complexities and Differences

Author: Sheryl Ed Ruzek

Challenging purely biomedical definitions of women's health, Women's Health: Complexities and Differences draws attention to social, cultural, and behavioral elements crucial to a broader understanding of the issues. The contributors to this volume raise important questions about the directions currently being taken to improve women's health in the United States: Is women's health merely the absence of disease? What have been the consequences of promoting narrow biomedical models of health? What do the pervasive patterns and puzzles in the distribution of disease, illness, and death among different groups of women tell us about the sources of ill health? How well do national agendas address all women's health care priorities? What are the implications for social action? Particular attention is paid in this collection of essays to how race, class, gender, and culture shape and in turn are shaped by treatment options and health care for certain subpopulations among Native American, Latina, Asian American, and African American women. Discussions of reproductive health, mental health, violence, and the treatment of stigmatized women raise perplexing issues about choice, chance, and social change.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Preface
Pt. I	What Is Women's Health?	1
1	Social, Biomedical, and Feminist Models of Women's Health	11
2	Patterns and Puzzles: The Distribution of Health and Illness among Women in the United States	29
Pt. II	What We Share and How We Differ	47
3	What Are the Dynamics of Differences?	51
4	The Last Sisters: Health Issues of Women with Disabilities	96
Pt. III	Creating Women's Health: Health Practices, Working and Living Conditions, and Medical Care	113
5	Women, Personal Health Behavior, and Health Promotion	118
6	The Ergonomics of Women's Work	154
7	"Less than Animals?": The Health of Women Workers in Garment Manufacture, Agriculture, and Electronics Assembly	173
8	Access, Cost, and Quality of Medical Care: Where Are We Heading?	183
9	A Note from Louise: Understanding Women's Health in Appalachia	231
Pt. IV	Culture and Complexities	245
10	Beauty Myths and Realities and Their Impact on Women's Health	249
11	Old Woes, Old Ways, New Dawn: Native American Women's Health Issues	276
12	Asian/Pacific American Women and Cultural Diversity: Studies of the Traumas of Cancer and War	300
13	Issues in Latino Women's Health: Myths and Challenges	329
Pt. V	Intersections of Race, Class, and Culture	349
14	African American Women's Health: The Effects of Disease and Chronic Life Stressors	353
15	Women, Power, and Mental Health	380
16	Who Cares? Women as Informal and Formal Caregivers	397
17	Older Women: Income, Retirement, and Health	425
Pt. VI	Power and Social Control	447
18	Responses to Stigma and Marginality: The Health of Lesbians, Imprisoned Women, and Women with HIV	451
19	"You Can Be Safer, But ...": Different Women, Many Violences	473
	Introduction	473
	Women's Lived Experiences of Abuse	476
	The Battered Women's Movement	486
	Rape	492
	A Survivor Speaks about the Victim Input Program	501
	Anti-Lesbian Violence	503
	Sexual Harassment	510
20	The Ongoing Politics of Contraception: Norplant and Other Emerging Technologies	520
Pt. VII	Challenges and Choices for the Twenty-first Century	547
21	Research to Improve Women's Health: An Agenda for Equity	551
22	Strengths and Strongholds in Women's Health Research	580
23	Conversing with Diversity: Implications for Social Research	607
	Contributors	637
	Index	645

New interesting book: American Armageddon or McCain

Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplements

Author: Paul M Coates

Situated as a scientific checkpoint for the many over-the-counter supplements carried in today's nutritional products marketplace, this definitive Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplements presents peer-reviewed, objective entries that rigorously review the most significant scientific research-funneling basic chemical, preclinical, and clinical data into a descriptive form universally useful to health care professionals, researchers, and educated, health-conscious consumers.

Library Journal

All the editors of this scientific volume are highly placed at the National Institute of Health, while the institutions of the 100 contributors range from Columbia University to Memorial University, Newfoundland. Seventy-five supplements are included, among them S-Adenosylmethionine (better known as SAM-e), ephedra, evening primrose, reishi mushrooms, riboflavin, and zinc. Though the focus of each entry is the supplement's chemical or biochemical properties (chemical structures are included), there is also detailed information where relevant on historical use, physiology, mechanisms of action, clinical and preclinical studies, potential health benefits, safety, adverse effects, and numerous other topics. All tables, charts, and figures are in black and white, though some figures may be viewed (with difficulty) in color at the publisher's web site, www. decker.com, where updates to the encyclopedia will also be available. Each entry includes a lengthy bibliography of references, mostly from the most current medical literature and occasionally from web sites. There is an index but no appendixes. Alternative resources to consider are the free International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements database, http://grande.nal.usda.gov/ibids/index. php, which contains 730,000 citations drawn from four major databases, and the fee-based Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database (also available in print), which contains more than 1000 evidence-based monographs about dietary supplements and herbs. Bottom Line The inclusion of more than 75 supplements would have been welcome (something that might have been easily accomplished through the use of less white space, smaller typeface, and thinner paper). Additionally, the preface states that the encyclopedia was written for "students and researchers of physiology and chemistry, for healthcare providers, and for consumers," but it would take an extremely dedicated consumer to make the most of this book. Dietary Supplements, edited by Pamela Mason (Pharmaceutical, 2001) is written for the health professional, but the entries are far more readable. Given the emphasis on chemistry and biochemistry, the Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplements would be suitable for pharmacy, pharmaceutical, and medical libraries.-Martha E. Stone, Massachusetts General Hosp. Lib., Boston Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.