Diabetes Books

Rapaport spends a few hundred pages telling us things that we already know. When somebody is going through a difficult time they will be emotional and will need the support of those who are important to them. This support will take many forms in different circumstances. There. I just saved you the knowledge you'll glean from reading the entire work. Perhaps a specific situation could be discussed with the author and she would be able to provide helpful pointers. However, for a general text it seems to boil down to nothing more than common sense.

This guide to emotional health focuses on families learning to cope with diabetes--but it is far more than that. The practical advice, tools for learning new coping skills, and stories about real people's struggles to adapt to their disease is inspiring for everyone dealing with the stress of illness. Dr. Rapaport synthesizes psychological strategies from her decades of research and practice to provide clear, straightforward, common-sense advice for the entire family to use everyday. Best of all, her style is breezy, often funny, and full of compassion and insight. She knows not only because she has academic credentials but because she has been there hereself.

This book is for anyone who lives with, is related to, is a friend of or knows someone with diabetes as well as for the person with diabetes. Some may think this book is for a nuclear family with one person who has diabetes but, the author covers many different realtionships like older grandparents and how their children or even grandchildren can relate to them. The book contains cited resources for further reading and many personal vignettes from the author's professional and personl experiences. Dr. Rapaport goes beyond describing the usual exercise, diet and medication management aspects of living with and coping with diabetes. She includes instruction in stress reduction, relaxation techniques, practical examples in assertive communication and other perspectives about living with diabetes. Attitiude and how it impacts on diabetes care and relationships is explored at length. For example, if one views diabetes as a psychosocial and spiritual condition with the medica! l complications the focus of treatment is on the lifestyle and relationships in the person with diabetes life.

I normally turn my nose up at these psycho-babble type books that pretend to know what it is that I'm going through as a person with diabetes for over 20 years. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book was real. Dr. Rapaport hits a lot of familiar chords, and knows her subject inside and out. She is not patronizing, and her style is clear and easy to follow. I found that I was able to apply her method of positive reframing not only to my diabetes related situations, but to my every day life situations as well. I strongly recommend this book for anyone living with diabetes, for the patient herself, or family, friends and significant others. I hope to see more of Dr. Rapaport's writing in the future. Thanks to her for giving me an improved way to deal.

This book was so generalized, it was of no value. The book is small, but none of the information was worth reading. If someone has even heard of insulin resistance, they know as much as they would get reading this book. Very disappointing.

Wonderful book on insulin resistants for beginners. Well written, and easy to understand. Buy this book if you have pre-diabetes, or diabetes. Very helpful!

A great book about insulin resistance, what causes it and who has it. It's super easy to read and understand - no big medical jargon to deal with. I've bought several copies for friends and family. Everyone has enjoyed it and has gained insight as to what is attributable to their weight gain and how being insulin resistant is at least, partly responsible. Not only does it explain what insulin resistant is but explains what you can do to correct the situation and avoid the inevitable, destructive path ahead of you - a burned out pancreas and a life of diabetes - if you don't make changes in your life. Great book! I applaud the author!

I bought this for a friend who needed the information but was unlikely to read anything overly detailed. This is just what she needed to get the information.

I found this book to be very basic. If you want real information, get it from your doctor, a class or from the net. Everything here is just plain logic.

Now in a completely revised, updated and expanded third edition, American Diabetes Association Complete Guide To Diabetes offers comprehensive and reliable information on preventing diabetes-based complications, achieving blood sugar control, handling diabetes-related emergencies, using a meter, using insulin pumps, the role of nutrition and exercise in diabetes management, sexuality and diabetes, coping with diabetes-imposed limitations, even family life, travel, insurance, and pregnancy as they are affected by diabetes. An essential, seminal, and strongly recommended addition to personal, professional, and community library reference collections, the American Diabetes Association Complete Guide To Diabetes is both "reader friendly" and invaluable in its provision of the best of self-care techniques and the latest medical breakthrough information. No matter what type of diabetes, American Diabetes Association Complete Guide To Diabetes will prove to be of extraordinary value in answering any and all diabetes-related questions, situations, and conditions.

This is a great book. We use it all the time. It is easy to read and a great reference. We have a child with type 1 diabetes. This book is a must for type 1 diabetics. We are very pleased with the format and the substance of the information. GET IT!

This is one of the books I've read as I've considered and studied weight loss surgery. I found this book very informative and especially liked the discussions of the history of this surgery. The text is easy to read (i.e. you don't have to be a doctor to understand it).

I read this book with the hope of answering numerous questions I have had about the various surgical procedures available for treating obesity. I found most of the answers I wanted. I also created a whole new list of questions because the author does a good job of discussing the topic. As he did this I found questions about things I hadn't even thought of. He left me wanting to know more. I am very glad I read the book and would recommend it highly to anyone who is seriously considering surgical options to treat obesity. I was glad to have this resource available with information coming directly from a practicing physician. I plan to, of course, look at the other side of things again too, so I can weigh the benefits and consequences. The book is also written fairly plainly so that everyone can understand. Some of the diagrams and things should have maybe been compared to "normal" people so we could differentiate what needed to change, etc. But, for the most part, the book was excellent!

Well, I must say that I was a bit surprised by the author's tone in the first few chapters. Although the book is about (and is even titled) "the answer for the dangerously overweight", the author seemed a bit harsh against the obese and, although showing this option, also is able to chastize many readers.

Although I am only half done with it right now, I feel it is worthwhile to read, if only because negative views can be just as important to know as the positive views.

Very helpful tool for diabetics and non-diabetics. Being a grad student in nutritional science, I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe in here for a presentation on healthy baking for diabetics. Surprisingly tasty. The introduction has some excellent tips on how to cut back on fat and sugar while keeping your blood glu levels on target. Well written!

Some of The recipies in this book have super expensive ingredients in them. Some of the recipies are very good. I wish that the book had more of the things that real people can afford. Overall this is a nice book for diabetic cooking.

Forbidden Foods: Diabetic Cooking presents 150 recipes for diabetics and other health conscious eaters. Many traditional comfort foods are transformed to great tasting, flavorful, lower fat versions that are healthful and delicious. Full counts of dietary exchanges, calories, fat and fiber are included with each recipe, as well as prep and cooking times and serving sizes. The introduction contains suggestions for ways to reduce fat, sugar and salt and how to increase flavor. Recipe categories include beverages, snacks, sauces and dressings, faux fried, favorites, pizza and pasta, bread and muffins, and multiple delicious desserts, pies, cookies, puddings and cakes.

It is hard to believe that you can make Eggplant Parmigiana, Banana Cream Pie, Cheesecake, Oven Fried Chicken, French Fries, Buttermilk Biscuits, and salad with Thousand Island dressing and still stay on a balanced reducing or maintainence diet, but you can according to Forbidden Foods. Of course the desserts are fabulous, but it is certainly comforting to know you can have Spaghetti and Meat Balls or Raisin Scones, or Enchilada Casserole in your daily menu. A cookbook like this encourages everyone to find a way to prepare their favorite foods that is within acceptable healthful eating limits.

Being myself a diabetic, I highly recommend Forbidden Foods.

Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer

I saw Dr. Yavari on CNN and knew right away that he could help me with my medical problems. I bought his book and discovered new information on problems I had dealt with all of my life. I made a life-changing decision to move to Connecticut from California to go to Dr. Yavari's clinic. His program as described in this book has changed the course of my life. I have lost weight and am close to being free from insulin dependence. I hope that other over-40 women and diabetics who are battling stubborn weight gain, particularly in the stomach, will take advantage of this book and finally find relief.

Current medical coverage on television and the Internet supports the newly-discovered existence of metabolic syndrome where excess body fat causes diabetes and heart disease. Cross-talk between fat cells, appetite and stress centers in the brain and metabolism are discussed in an easily comprehensible style for the lay person. Both Parts I and II of the book have plenty of material on meal planning, food choices and exercise. You will learn why stress reduction is so important, why skipping meals or crash dieting shuts down your metabolism and why abdominal fat accumulates because of changes in your hormones. Do yourself a favor and become an advocate of this system. I and other patients of Dr. Yavari are living proof that it's not "our fault" and that there really is a way out of the "repeated failure" system of dieting. Good luck!

I found this book incredibly helpful for I finally understand why the fad diets just don't work. This book is not just another diet book nor is it a weight loss book; so don't expect to find weight loss tricks here and there. I have used this book as part of the program offered at the Doctor's center in Connecticut. For the first time in my life I am losing weight while I am eating plenty of healthy foods. I feel satisfied, calm, and much happier, plus I am exercising and enjoying it too! I feel great and have more energy than ever. The best part is that my health has dramatically improved. Finally, I am learning that it is not about dieting as much as it is about my lifestyle that needs to change to maintain good health.

I personally found the discussion of how stress and fad dieting can cause weight gain very insightful. The book also has excellent and easy to read chapters on metabolic syndrome, a pre-diabetes state that causes heart disease and full blown diabetes if not reversed. The recipes, meal plan and the six-month clinical program in part II of the book are the same as the plan I have followed at Dr. Yavari's center. I recommend this great book to anyone who is tired of fad diets and is interested in living a healthy lifestyle while preventing diabetes

Overall, the book is full of not so interesting background information rather than useful tip for weight loss. I travel 100% of the work week. I live in hotels and eat in restuarants except for the weekends. This book was not particularly helpful to me.

This book started the Self-Management approach to chronic illness. I trained in the Self-Management program and have led groups for years, and have seen people make wonderful changes. This experience and knowledge inspired me to write my book, The Art of Getting Well.

Drs Lorig, Holman, Sobel and the other authors lay out all you need to know to develop your programs of exercise, relaxation, emotional support, and healthy eating. They also teach how to deal successfully with medical systems and treatments.

The book stresses living the best possible life, not just following medical orders or watching everything you eat. It's an excellent complement to my book, which will provide some inspiration to attempt the behavior changes that "Living a Healthy Life" explains so well.

This book, written in a very simple, "self-help" style, seems to be geared to the senior citizen suffering from chronic illness and emphasizes developing and implementing management plans for exercise, diet, and medical care. While much of it is common sense, it does offer bulleted, structured outlines for communicating with medical professionals, managing medicines, planning for the future (and possibly greater physical degeneration), and most of all acknowledges the feelings and depression that often accompany chronic illness.

This book does an excellent job of presenting how chronic illness patients are overwhelmed and how they can aggressively
confront the debilitating cycle and successfully manage the lifestyles they must lead. Everyone with a chronic illness is forced to live differently than all others, no matter their age.
The book analyzes and describes the depleting cycle that anyone with a chronic, dibilitating illness encounters, and offers proven solutions on how to break the debilitating cycle and progress outward inspite of the illness.

This book is based on the traditional high-carbohydrate American Diabetic Association diet. I prefer to follow the newer alternative low-carbohydrate solution in dealing with my diabetic condition. Furthermore, "Managing your Diabetes" uses the exchange method of diet planning. I find this to be utterly confusing and meaningless in trying to plan a good diet. The book is repetitious of information I already have access to. But it is organized in such a way that people following the traditional approach would find very useful.

As a diabetes educator serving members over the phone, I recommend this book routinely. It is practical, upbeat and empowering. The few outdated bits of information can be supplemented with a good magazine like Diabetes Self Management.

I tried the low carb approach to dealing with my Diabetes and it didn't work for me. I ended up GAINING weight and felt like I was going to stroke out from all that fat and chloresterol laden stuff. I even suffered some angina while following a low carb life style. I also felt very deprived when dining with others. Now I'm following the food plan outlined in Managing Type II Diabetes and the weight is coming off slowly and I feel great. I think different approaches work for different people. I highly recommend this plan for people who can't live with the low carb diet. In fact, it's a healthy way of living for not only the diabetic in your family but other family members as well.

While the book provided some good information, I was expecting more judging by the title. (I was also surprised at how small the book was given its cost.) Bottom line? There is much more specific and far more up-to-date information available for free on the internet. A quick search under "diabetes mellitus and pregnancy" will provide a wealth of it, including specific (and current) rates of birth defects at what blood sugar levels and which tests should be conducted during which trimester.

I think the problem may be that it's trying to do too much. The introduction states that the book is designed to "present to the clinician a complete package of protocols." Given some of the very basic information, I hope there are no clinicians who don't know some of this stuff.

The first chapter discusses the fact that it's a good idea to talk to women before conception about the importance of good blood sugar control (does anyone not know that?) and lists the doctors one should see and some of the tests that should be conducted. It basicaly suggests a thorough exam for all the diabetic trouble spots--eyes, kidneys, A1c levels, thyroid, etc. All good sense. However, the second chapter is on contraception, which seems unecessary and out of place. Worse, the first chapter boldly states that if the woman has "clinically proven" cardiac disease, she should not only be counseled against pregnancy, but "should be asked to consider permanent sterilization"(!). No discussion about risk factors or degrees of severity--just any cardiac disease equals sterilization. If the book is only geared toward "clinicians," perhaps that's acceptable. But a discussion of birth control, and a list of what kinds of insulin exist and their duration seems geared toward the completely uninitiated. I found it shocking.

A large problem I had was with the graph of birth defect rates, something I was very, very concerned with. It doesn't seem to be labeled accurately. It says it measures number of spontaneous abortions, major malformations and no major malformations in conjunction with HA1c levels in the first trimester. However, above the HA1c levels it says "Mean + SD (standard deviation)." You can't tell what the SD refers to, and it reports some pretty high numbers. I contacted the ADA (publisher) about this since it suggests that an A1c between 7.7 and 9.3 has fewer incidents of major malformation than an A1c below 7.7. The person I corresponded with was very nice, and told me a few times they would get back to me. They finally said I should check with my doctor if I'm pregnant, which did NOT answer the question. I checked the source material listed at the end of the chapter--this graph is based on information from "reference 13," which was an article published in 1979. I found much more current info on my own with a simple internet check.

There was information about the fact that insulin requirements will increase as the pregnancy progresses, but my doctor has a chart that shows you the typical increases. Further, the book Pumping Insulin has a good chapter on pregnancy and what to expect in dosage increases, diet breakdowns and blood sugar goals pre- and post-meal.

Much of the rest of the book seems like common sense, things you could find in almost any book on pregnancy or in some other book designed for the lay person written from the diabetic's point of view rather than the clinician's.

Overall, I wish someone had steered me toward better information. Given the title, I was expecting it to be sort of a "one-stop shop" where I could get all the factual information I would need. Perhaps I expected too much.

I am a pregnant diabetic woman with no medical training, and I highly recommend this book to others like me who want some good information on pregnancy and diabetes. It is appropriate for type I, type II, and gestational diabetes.

It has great facts such as a graph of 1st trimester HbA1c's vs. number of congenital malformations and a table with each congenital malformation and the associated factor of increased risk. Those two things right there were worth the price of the book for me. It also serves as a guide for your entire pregnancy from pre-conception through breastfeeding. It explains the tests that should be performed throughout your pregnancy, how your diabetes should be treated during labor and delivery, and how your baby should be treated after he/she is born.

There were a few small downsides to this book. I did not understand about 5% of it, although I was almost always able to get the gist of it. Another 5% was just more information than I needed or wanted. Also, it sometimes gave perfect-world recommendations that didn't seem practical given the real-world limitations of time, money, and the fact that pregnant diabetic women are humans, not machines!

If you want an informational book on pregnancy and diabetes and you aren't scared off by medical terminology, this is the one to get.

This is a book for diabetic women planning or in pregnancy. It is very detailed and some of the language may be difficult for the lay person. However it goes into great detail about diabetes managment and reducing the risks of complications in the pregnancy. You will learn more here than in any doctor's office. If you are not medically inclined, get the book, read it then ask your doctor or nurse to explain questions that the book evokes about your situation.

This book is not worth $10.95 - $4 or $5 maybe... It is a discription of ONE person's experience. The grammar mistakes distracted me.

I was expecting a book, not a pamphlet.

Shows with the author's example that with discipline and proper food selection you can live a normal life. Very captivating, afforded me a total understanding of my experience with reactive hypoglycemia.

This is a great book and packs a lot of info on a little known subject. It delivers what the subtitle offers, a personal journey or voyeuristic look into the world of someone dealing with a condition that may seem foreign to the average person.

I have found a number of articles regarding hypoglycemia on the NET, but these articles are very impersonal usually stating the taboos or do's and don'ts of this condition. These articles are very antiseptic and do not relate an eyewitness account of how someone can suffer on a day to day basis until they find what seems to be a simple cure albeit a painful one in this day and age of the sweeter the better.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who may be feeling like their battery has gone dead and can't figure out why. The author hits the nail on the proverbial head.