Medical Advice
Over Six Decades
W. Gifford-Jones MD began his medical career with his audacious application to Harvard Medical School in 1945. He launched a parallel career as a writer in 1961 with the publication of his first book on hysterectomy. A retrospective read through the nine books below is like a storied journey through the modern history of health and medicine, told from the point of view of a doctor who has the courage to challenge the medical establishment and the passion for informing patients and the public about all sides of the health issues facing society.
There can be no doubt, the times have changed over these many decades. While today’s health consumers have ready access to much more information about their health and medical concerns, the challenge from W. Gifford-Jones, MD remains as poignant as ever. He has argued consistently for informed healthcare decisionmaking based on a fulsome understanding of the facts. He has advocated relentlessly for compassionate care, championed by doctors with their patients, not by politicians. And he has urged us all to take responsibility for our lifestyle choices — most notably, striking a balanced diet, being active, and thinking twice before relying on synthetic drugs and surgical procedures when natural approaches may offer the best preventative medicine.
Healthy Retirement Residence Living
W. Gifford-Jones, MD, draws on his experience as a medical doctor and health journalist to offer practical advice for seniors and their families. Packed with health tips, candid humor, and decades of medical wisdom, this book is an essential guide for navigating a move into retirement living, delivered in his trademark straight-talking style.
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No Nonsense Health — Naturally!
The Natural Health Philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, MD
W. Gifford-Jones, MD has influenced complementary and alternative medicine like no other. His greatest impact on health care and on progress in considering, safe, effective, and low-cost natural approaches has been through his medical column that reaches millions of readers across North America. This new book, written from the perspective of his daughter, Diana Gifford-Jones, includes a selection of the best articles by W. Gifford-Jones, MD on topics ranging from natural ways to lower cholesterol to laughter as good medicine.
To order a hard copy of this book:
Send $24.95 $14.95 (sale price, includes shipping and handling)
- by cheque payable to W. Gifford-Jones, MD and addressed to:
W. Gifford-Jones, MD, P.O. Box 43509, 1601 Bayview Ave, Toronto, ON M4G 3B0 - by e-transfer to diana@docgiff.com
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90+
How I Got There!
How is such a busy, professional, well-travelled doctor and writer able to extol great advice at 90+? By leading a healthful, intentional life, and by applying his knowledge and common-sense approach – gained from years of research — to his own daily routines. Journey with W. Gifford-Jones, MD as he discusses in a frank and meaningful manner the “do’s and don’ts” of reaching the age of wisdom. Among his great advice, he writes of the many unsung health benefits of high doses of vitamin C and lysine and how it’s helped to keep him healthy following his heart attack two decades ago.
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What I Learned as a Medical Journalist
What I Learned as a Medical Journalist is a collection of columns from Dr. W. Gifford-Jones’ decades of sharing common sense medical advice. In this book he shares his experiences interviewing medical authorities and challenging medical issues, some of which have been exceedingly controversial. The book offers insight on medical conditions and practices, natural remedies and his own take on the medical establishment. His association with a wide variety of researchers and medical authorities has allowed an insider’s look at hot topics and controversies in health and health care.
“You’re Going to Do What?”
This memoir follows Dr. W. Gifford-Jones through his life as a hotel doctor, ship’s surgeon, family physician, surgical specialist, syndicated medical journalist, and maverick. For 45 years his weekly newspaper column has reached over seven million readers. And his common sensical, folksy style has endeared him to many. But few people know the price he’s paid for refusing to sit on the fence about controversial social issues. This book tells what it’s like to be a syndicated medical journalist. How it’s been the best and the worst of times. How the experience has shaped his thinking on the grave problems facing patients and society. It’s the inside story of his battle against huge odds to legalize heroin to ease the agony of terminal cancer pain. The toll it took on his family when he decided to perform legal abortions. How renowned organizations sometimes distort the truth.
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The Healthy Barmaid
The 216-page book takes place in a fictitious pub called the Red Lion, situated on the River Thames and surrounded by London’s teaching hospitals. For 40 years it’s been the haunt of distinguished medical professors who drop by for a pint and confide the day’s medical issues to Ida the barmaid (named after a secretary and friend who died several years ago.) Ida has become keenly interested in medical issues and learned to live to a healthy 85. She and a parade of medical experts impart their knowledge to a visiting Canadian insurance executive and his two medical student children on topics ranging from the benefits of moderate drinking and the role of cholesterol in cardiovascular disease, to sporting injuries, birth control and vitamin therapy.
Medical Survival
In an entertaining and highly accessible style, W. Gifford-Jones, MD addresses many medical problems and answers many questions you may not have thought to ask. Medical consumers are not getting the right message on how to prevent disease. There are two kinds of diseases – the ones we get and the ones we make. One North American in three will have a heart attack before age 60; every 60 seconds a new diabetic is diagnosed in North America. What is needed is a new philosophical and psychological approach to degenerative disease. Medical Survival provides that approach. It also remembers that if you lose your sense of humour, you lose everything, and so a number of controversial issues are covered, from “Should you rob the children’s piggy bank to buy Vitamin E?” to “Is it possible to obtain better medical care than the rich?”
What Every Woman Should Know about Hysterectomy
In this frank, no-holds-barred book, a practicing gynecologist tells exactly what a woman needs to know about having a hysterectomy. Dr. Gifford-Jones dispels the misconceptions many women have about this operation and what it will and will not do.
The Doctor Game
This book is a common sense guide that unravels the rules and deflates the myths of the modern medical maze. A Canadian doctor whose wholesome, levelheaded, reassuring straight talk made his On Being A Woman an international bestseller in several translations, W. Gifford-Jones MD knows how you can find the best doctor in your area, how to tell a good (or bad) doctor, how to avoid unnecessary surgery, how to be a good patient and how to make the best – and avoid the worst – of the doctor you choose. The Doctor Game is full of practical advice on surgery, on talking about sex with your doctor, on getting the truth from your doctor, on fads and phobias, x-rays, cancer and virtually every medical concern.
On Being A Woman
This easy-to-read guide to gynecology covers every aspect of the functioning of a woman’s body, from the cradle to the grave. It explains exactly how the female anatomy works. It discusses everything from the most common female diseases, their symptoms and their treatment, to sex, marriage and birth-control. W. Gifford-Jones, MD is a down-to-earth, lucid writer, who knows how to put scientific fact into lively, every-day language. His witty and spirited style is further enhanced by a number of delightful drawings, and by the informal but excellent medical diagrams which appear in the book.
Hysterectomy?
This simply written book is designed to give information to patient herself. It provide facts for those who require a hysterectomy, rather than the guesses of well-wishing but uninformed acquaintances. Indeed, the book may well be of use also to those members of the patient’s family with a sympathetic interest in knowing more of what the operation involves. Starting with an explanation of the organs, their functions, and the nature of the operation, the author describes what are the commonest causes of pelvic trouble and why the operation is often necessary. The last part of the book is concerned with cancer, and explains the nature of this disease as it affects the various pelvic organs, the warning signs, and the action that must be taken.
