The Body Clock Guide to Better Health: How to Use Your Body's Natural Clock to Fight Illness and Achieve Maximum Health

by Lynne Lamberg and Michael Smolensky

Book Overview

A medical breakthrough explained by the leading authority on the connection between health and your body clock. Chronotherapy -- adjusting the care of the body to coincide with the body's natural... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805056610
• ISBN13: 9780805056617
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 428 Pages
• Weight: 1.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

INTRIGUING - HOLDS THE READER'S ATTENTION!

I found this book to be thoroughly amazing from start to finish. From my studies in psychology, it was apparent to me that our lives are composed of patterns. We often awake at the same time and often become tired at the same time each evening, especially if a regulated sleeping pattern is followed. We generally have a schedule, or a certain order, in which we complete tasks when we do arise. Where sit at the dinner table, what time we leave for work and arrive home again, the order in which we dress ourselves, the order in which we perform our household chores, the path we take around the aisles of the supermarket - all these, and many more, comprise the patterns of our lives, and the patterns are unique to each individual person.This book allows one to develop a personal record monitoring such factors or "patterns" as alertness, pain threshold, hunger, sleeping patterns, etc. Our biological clock tells us when the best time is to perform a number of functions each and every day. Just as some individuals are more productive first thing in the morning others are more productive, particularly creative people, late at night or at 3 a.m. when others are sleeping soundly. Based on chronotherapy, "The Body Clock Guide to Better Health" suggests how to synchronise your health care and internal clock, based on your individualized body rythms. Your heart rate, body temperature and hormone production vary with your personal internal clock. This, in turn, influences such things as the best time to take medication, the easiest time to detect disease and even assists you in determining the ideal time, if their is such a thing as an "ideal" time, to have dental work completed. Generally, there is a time when each individual is more tolerant of pain, so if you are planning to have root canal work, you probably should not have this completed when your tolerance for pain is at its lowest.The material has clearly been thoroughly researched from a scientific approach and well written by authors who have extensive exerience in their chosen fields. What most impressed me about the book was the "completeness" of the subject matter. The material is in-depth, easy and enjoyable to read, and the content holds your attention from start to finish.

Timing is Everything in Life

I'm in the process of reading "Body Clock" and am overjoyed with some of the new facts I have discovered in the book. I'm finding it most informative on questions I've always thought about but never could find the answers to--even from my own doctors. For example, I never knew NOT to take my calcium WITH my thyroid as no internist ever told me that before. The book is full of information that is new to me and will be a wonderful addition to my library and a handy reference book. It is well written, easy to read,and full of information regarding the various diseases that many of my friends and family suffer from. I give this book a 5 star and I will be recommending it to everyone and I plan to give it to other members of my family as holiday gifts.

My 50 year old Body Clock is ticking better!

Because angels don't have bodies they don't need to read THE BODY CLOCK GUIDE TO BETTER HEALTH. For the rest of us - because we are human - it is a MUST read. And what a read! The book is just terrific! It must have taken years to summarize all the research about how the body is influenced by time be it hours, days, weeks, season, or years. After introducing the subject, The Body Clock helps the reader figure out if she or he is a lark (morning person) or an owl (night person). It explains what this means for your job, your marriage, and your social relationships. I learned from this book how to use the body's natural rhythms to my advantage and how to modify them if I need to. I found out when is the best time of day for me, personally, to make important decisions. The Body Clock's comprehensive section about insomnia and how to deal with it in all of its various forms is spectacular. The tools are there to figure out exactly what kind of insomnia one has and how to work around it. It also wisely points out when one should see a doctor about the problem. Things I have experienced all my life and never really understood, such as that mid-afternoon drag when I feel like taking a nap, are explained. This book is a how-to-guide for travelers who move between time zones and for those who must do shift work. It has fascinating information about the optimal time of day to consume vitamins and when to avoid coffee. But these are just a sampling. This book has changed the way I live my life, for example when I work out and when I go to sleep at night. On the topic of exercise it corrects out-of-date information with the latest research results. This eye-opening book includes information on why teenagers act the way they do. Often neglected topics relating to aging are considered including male hormones. I am going to buy this book for everyone on my holiday gift list-no kidding! There is something in it for everyone. The last half of the book summarizes what is known about time and every imaginable illness and disease. I believe I will return to The Body Clock to re-read the sections that are relevant for me again and again. This is because there are time related elements for so many health problems. The Body Clock is a book I don't want to loan out because I want it handy to consult when I get a cold or if I develop back pain or any of the other 30 to 40 medical problems assessed, each of which has a chapter of its own. Everything from high blood pressure to nosebleeds, from skin problems to toothache, from gout to heart disease is discussed. If you care about your body, you need this book. The Body Clock is a pleasure to read. Authors Smolensky and Lamberg make complex topics easy to understand because they write clearly and succinctly. They avoid complicated medical terms altogether and for this I am grateful. I don't have a lot of time for reading but this book is efficient - it doesn't waste a mi

Book on Body Time a Fascinating Read

As an adult, I've always known that I'm sharper at certain times of the day than others. Lamberg's book explains what many of us already know but don't understand. The Body Clock presents the facts in a straightforward way, but the underlying point is that we need to take all of this a lot more seriously than we have been. Teenagers need to go to school later. Companies need to respect the stress night-shift workers endure and protect against the consequences. Drowsy drivers are as a much of a hazard as drunk drivers.With their carefully layering of facts and approachable presentation, Lamberg and Smolensky make their case without shouting it. They let the material speak for itself. After reading this book I'll have a lot more respect for my own body clock and the consequences of ignoring it. A definite thumbs up!

Provides Underutilized Medical and Physiological Information

Whether you read the book from beginning to end or read the first few chapters and then use The Body Clock as a reference guide (or both!) there is a wealth of medical and physiological information in this book. It might have been subtitled "Everything you should have known about how your body's internal clock influences your life!" indicating that a multitude of interactions are related to your body's clock. These well-documented interactions include utilization of different medications at different time, the ability to lose weight by maximizing burning calories, enhancing or maximizing physical functioning during the course of the day, recurrent patterns of illness. The terms may be new and/unfamiliar, i.e., "chronobiology" but this book, written to be easily understood, is based upon sound scientific and medical research within the framework of the medical community. The book, however, takes the fragmented research, and integrates it into a larger framework.Buy two copies, one for yourself and one for your physician who might then have healthier patients and more time for himself.