Four More Fascinating Science Reads
Vladislav Novikov and Dika Ojiakor review four of their most recent science picks.
The Forgetting: Alzheimer’s: Portrait of an Epidemic – David Shenk
At one time, dementia was thought of as an inevitable fact of aging, minimized and misunderstood as mere forgetfulness in the elderly. Today, through decades of research, we have come to understand it as a disease of the brain – and one with a high individual burden and societal impact. In The Forgetting, a carefully researched and engagingly written synthesis of history, science, and human drama, David Shenk sets out to capture a fleeting portrait of Alzheimer’s – the leading cause of dementia – and to explore the profound implications of the disease, both on those diagnosed with it and those who love them. Shenk weaves through multiple accounts of ongoing research to discover potential cures, interspersing these with anecdotes of famous people we now know to have had Alzheimer’s. Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the central figures of the book, when asked about his health after his memory had begun to wane, replied, "Quite well; I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well." Indeed, the unique strength of The Forgetting lies in its moving descriptions of the impact of Alzheimer’s on its victims and their families, offering a grim but sympathetic look on this most devastating of illnesses and our fervent search for a cure.
How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures – Sabrina Imbler
From sex-changing eels to camouflaging cuttlefish, why so many bizarre sea creatures live in the Earth’s most inhospitable reaches is a mystery that has fascinated scientists for centuries. In How Far the Light Reaches, a debut collection of 10 personal essays, Sabrina Imbler – a queer, mixed-race science writer from Northern California – explores this mystery by interlacing elements of their own biography with absorbing stories of marine life. The result is a searing, powerfully engaging account of what it means to be young and trans in the 21st-century, a story with enough generosity to invite us to imagine new ways of living. In my favorite of their essays, entitled “If You Flush a Goldfish”, Imbler meditates on the unexpected grandeur of the goldfish which, having been flushed or otherwise abandoned and wound up in a lake, pond, or stream, grows much bigger than the bowl that once confined it. Ruminating on the ragged means by which such a creature adapts to the world around it, Imbler writes: “A dumped goldfish has no model for what a different and better life might look like, but it finds it anyway. I want to know what it feels like to be unthinkable too, to invent a future that no one expected of you.”
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams – Matthew Walker, Ph.D.
Our society’s obsession with self-improvement by way of changing our diet and fitness often neglects sleep as a crucial variable for a good life. On top of that, we carry many erroneous assumptions about sleep, thinking that we can always brush it off onto the back burner and make up for it over the weekend; or that we can flourish at peak performance on less than seven hours of sleep a day. Dr. Walker, a neuroscientist specialized in sleep research, shows in Why We Sleep that lost sleep is lost sleep: there is no way to make up for it. And the consequences are grim: as our sleep time evaporates, so does our lifespan – not to mention the increased risk of developing multiple devastating diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. After all, if sleep wasn’t all that important, we wouldn’t spend 40% of our lives engulfed in it. The truth is more complicated: society focuses so much on productivity that we have accustomed ourselves to sleeping badly. We sometimes think our poor sleep is a genetic and therefore intractable problem we call insomnia; but it is more likely our bad habits, rather than genes, masquerading as insomnia. The good news is that these habits are amenable to change, and reading Why We Sleep may be the first step in understanding what separates bad sleep from good sleep – and what can be done to improve its quality.
Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything – Randi Hutter Epstein, M. D.
Endocrinology, as a science, is about as complex as a field can get. Its focus on endocrine glands and the hormones they produce demands that we also understand its links with intricate bodily processes like metabolism, sleep, temperature, hunger, thirst, sex, and, well, just about everything else. In Aroused, Dr. Randi Epstein lays out the medical history of hormones and how we discovered their link to the myriad bodily functions we find so important. Her witty humor coupled with elegant prose takes the reader on a surprising and informative journey through the history and intricacies of our relationship with – and reliance on – our hormones. Be it the human craze about excavating pituitaries from cadavers as if they were gold, or underdog scientists dissecting animals in a restless search for hormonal pathways, Aroused covers just about every crucial nook and cranny that has lifted the world’s blindfold on the scintillating world of hormonal interactions.