- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Atlantic Books (10 Mar 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1843544288
- ISBN-13: 978-1843544289
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 674,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
What's going on when we're tetchy, spotty, fearful, tearful or just plain awful? Hormones rule our internal world: they control our growth, our metabolism, weight, water balance, body clocks, fertility, muscle tone, mood, the speed of ageing, whether you want sex or not (and whether you enjoy it) and even who we fall in love with. Their effects may occur in seconds and be over in a flash, or take months and last for thirty years. While we can name some hormones we rarely know what they actually do. But that doesn't stop us claiming that 'it's my hormones' whenever our behaviour seems erratic. As it happens, we're right. It is our hormones. And yes, we are completely in the thrall of things we know nothing about. In The Truth About Hormones Vivienne Parry explains how, exactly, these mysteriously powerful things affect us. The Truth About Hormones is also a treasure trove of fascinating stories. For example: Were Brad Pitt a true Trojan, he would have practised the first known instance of hormone replacement therapy, by eating the glands of his dead conquests. It's a fact that growth hormone that is released mainly at night. Cut back on sleep and your growth can be stunted. The hormones used for infertility treatment are still manufactured using nun's urine, collected daily from the Vatican City.
About the Author
VIVIENNE PARRY is a science commentator for the Guardian and the science editor of Good Housekeeping magazine. She has been a presenter of the BBC science programme, Tomorrow's World, a columnist for the News of the World and a reporter for Panorama.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant science writer,
By
This review is from: The Truth About Hormones: An Up-to-the-minute, Highly Entertaining Guide to Those Mysteriously Powerful Things, Hormones (Paperback)
It is impossible to think of anyone to whom, or for whom, this book is not relevant. The challenging tone is set in the first sentence: “Hormones rule your world.” “Oh no they don’t”, I reply to myself - or more precisely, as befits my senior citizen status - “Oh no they didn’t.” But read on.It has life-altering messages for parents, teenagers, teachers, prison and parole officers, judges, juries, doctors, menopausal women, fading Don Juans, and everyone else I have neglected to list. She explains science to non-scientists in a clear, amusing, non-condescending, and utterly riveting way. The book deserves a central role in all debates about nature versus nurture. The penultimate sentence asserts “Hormones rule your internal world." The addition of the word “internal” saves the book from a depressingly deterministic fate: Vivienne Parry is a brilliant science writer. Buy this book or, if your hormones dictate, steal it. If you avoid being caught for shoplifting it may save you from a life of crime.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too light, too many claims, too little to back it up,
By
This review is from: The Truth About Hormones: An Up-to-the-minute, Highly Entertaining Guide to Those Mysteriously Powerful Things, Hormones (Paperback)
I was disappointed in this book. I was hoping for a book that would actually explain how hormones affect us, in the sense of having an in depth lay person understandable discussion of how hormones do the work they do. How do specific hormones affect the neurons in our brains.
Instead what I got was this book that asks me to take everything by faith. It is no way to write a science book for literate people. It has loads and loads of claims with few or no explanations backing them up. The claims about how different hormones affect our minds, or our immune systems are unsubstantiated - note that I don't say they are wrong; the author just does not explain the mechanisms of how they do what the book claims they do, leaving the reader in a difficult position of either accepting the claims at face value or not at all. Basically, the book is on par with Cosmopolitan on the level of discussion. If that's the level you're comfortable with, go ahead. It's probably more right about things than Cosmo - but if it isn't you won't be able to know it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
'A fair bit about some hormones, for women' would be closer,
This review is from: The Truth About Hormones: An Up-to-the-minute, Highly Entertaining Guide to Those Mysteriously Powerful Things, Hormones (Paperback)
Having thought I ought to know more about hormones, for some time, on reading some of the reviews of this book, I was looking forward to a serious educational experience. However, what this basically is, is quite an extensive review of the hormones that affect the woman's cycle and reproduction, and not very much about any of the others, and very little for anyone expecting a blow by blow account of the functions of the full range of hormones in both male and female at all stages in their lives.
As I had already read 'Having Faith' by Sandra Steingraber, I had - without having realised it at the time - a much more readable and eloquent account of most of the material covered by Ms Parry in 'The Truth', as Steingraber puts it all in context by taking us through all the intricate play of hormones, environment, and nature as she describes, beautifully, the stages of development up to the birth of her own daughter. Whilst Parry thus does not give us the whole truth,we are looking for, she does however, take pains to expose some of the myths and quackery surrounding the 'hormones industry'. However, anyone who has more than a passing interest will be aware of this already. So: readable, but not really hugely informative enough to live up to its title. Anyone wanting to know much more about the way hormones actually work would be more informed by starting with Wikipedia and following the links for each hormone. For once I was actually more impressesd by the 'people who bought this also bought' option - on the function and significance of mitochondria - than by the volume I had actually sought out.
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