Category Archives: Health, mind and body books

Delia Smith: ‘The world is in chaos… but together we have such power’

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At 80, Britain’s queen of cookery has written a surprising new book about spirituality that was turned down by six publishers. She talks about meditation, MasterChef and her beloved Norwich FC

Why is it so exciting – and so nerve-racking – to be meeting Delia Smith? Down the years, I’ve interviewed a lot of famous and important people (and three prime ministers), and yet I can’t remember any of them having induced this combination of extreme eagerness and mortal fear. Is it because when I was a teenager, she was one of the very few truly successful women then in public life? I suppose it must be. It’s no exaggeration to say that she was up there with the Queen, Mrs Thatcher and Madonna – and just like them, her word was The Law. For my 21st birthday, my parents gave me a cheque and a copy of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course, and for all that I was still in my radical feminist stage, I hardly batted an eyelid. Simone de Beauvoir was all very well, but did she have any advice on roasting times or how to make sure your yorkshire puddings rise? No, she did not.

Anyway, one result of this desperate, anxious state was that I stupidly decided to bake a cake for her – my God, even to write such words – and when I arrive at her cottage, the conservatory of which I recognise from the TV shows she once presented there, the very first thing I do is hand it over. “It’s a bit … flat,” I say, mournfully (for those who are interested, it’s Nigella’s ordinarily easy-peasy cardamon and marzipan loaf). But it seems that I’m worrying unnecessarily. Delia looks completely delighted by my foil-wrapped house brick, cradling it in her arms as if it was a newborn baby. “You used good ingredients,” she says, kindly. “It will still taste nice.” Cooking isn’t about perfection, she tells me; it’s about achievability. “I once went to a Women’s Institute thing, and I remember thinking: I’m not at all sure my jam would pass muster here.”

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The big idea: is it time to stop talking about ‘nature versus nurture’?

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The latest science shows that genes and environment are ​too deeply entwined to pit them against one another

When you hear people conversing in an unfamiliar language, why is it that you can’t even tell where one word ends and the next begins? If you are a native English speaker, why is it so challenging to get your mouth around a French or Hebrew “r”, which originates lower in the throat, or the “r” in Spanish or Italian, which is trilled on the tip of the tongue? Your ability to hear and make sounds, and to understand their meaning as language, is wired into your brain. How you acquire that wiring illuminates an age-old debate about human nature.

In the first few months of your life, your infant brain is bathed in all kinds of information from the world around you, through your senses. This sense data causes changes in your brain as your neurons fire in various patterns. Some collections of neurons fire together frequently, strengthening or tuning their connections and aiding learning. Others are used less and are pruned away, making room for more useful ones to form. This process of tuning and pruning is called plasticity, and it happens throughout your life, but enormously in the first few years.

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Miss the office? Michael Schur – master of the workplace sitcom – on why we should relish our return

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As we slowly rediscover a world of bad wifi and slow lifts, the US Office writer and creator of Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine explains why he can’t wait to get back

One of the first things we knew back in early 2020 was that we wouldn’t be going to work for a while. We thought that we would take a quick break – a week, maybe – and then reassess. So we cleaned out our cubicles and desks, and grabbed a few snacks from the kitchen (and toilet paper from the bathroom). One week became two, which became a month, which became a series of question marks spanning endlessly into the future, as the Zooms and FaceTimes and home office conversions gradually made the very idea of spending our workdays with other people seem like a quaint memory. Like childhood birthday parties, or answering machines, or properly functioning democracy.

Some of us might never go back. Every so often we will hear about companies reassessing their relationship to the office, which has been proved unnecessary or at least outdated.

‘In 1987,’ photographer Steven Ahlgren says, ‘when I was bored and unfulfilled, working as a banker in Minneapolis, I began taking frequent trips to look at a painting by Edward Hopper, Office at Night. What first drew me was its setting, which I related to each and every workday at the bank. But what kept pulling me back was its ambiguous narrative – who were these two people, what was their relationship, and why was the woman looking at that piece of paper on the floor?’

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The big idea: is it time to stop worrying about stress?

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Our beliefs about difficult feelings may do more damage than the feelings themselves

In the late 19th-century America, a somewhat bizarre form of abstinence emerged. The vice was not alcohol but anxiety. Citizens of New York began to attend regular “Don’t Worry Clubs” in which they encouraged each other to look on the bright side of life. Their founder, Theodore Seward, argued that Americans were “slaves to the worrying habit”, which was the “enemy which destroys happiness”. It needed to be “attacked” with “resolute and persevering effort”.

By the early 20th century, the psychologist William James described how people had developed a kind of “religion of healthy-mindedness” with the aim of turning the mind away from all negative thoughts and feelings.

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Dr Julie Smith: ‘Mental health is no different to physical health. No one is immune’

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The clinical psychologist has 3 million followers for her self-help TikToks and now her book is a bestseller. She talks about social media, the pandemic and the simple tools that really help

Dr Julie Smith, 37, is a clinical psychologist who has a private practice in Hampshire and has spent 10 years working for the NHS. In November 2019, she started making TikToks containing clear, engaging advice about various mental health issues. She has more than 3 million followers and in January published her first book, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?, which has spent four weeks at the top of bestseller lists.

There are a lot of self-help books published; why do you think yours has struck a chord?
I think people like the fact that it’s evidence-based. I’m a clinical psychologist, so the things I’ve put in there have been scrutinised with the latest research and they are things that are taught to people in therapy, depending on what they’re going to therapy for. They are also life skills that we can all use.

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Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen

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Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can

When he was nine years old, my godson Adam developed a brief but freakishly intense obsession with Elvis Presley. He took to singing Jailhouse Rock at the top of his voice with all the low crooning and pelvis-jiggling of the King himself. One day, as I tucked him in, he looked at me very earnestly and asked: “Johann, will you take me to Graceland one day?” Without really thinking, I agreed. I never gave it another thought, until everything had gone wrong.

Ten years later, Adam was lost. He had dropped out of school when he was 15, and he spent almost all his waking hours alternating blankly between screens – a blur of YouTube, WhatsApp and porn. (I’ve changed his name and some minor details to preserve his privacy.) He seemed to be whirring at the speed of Snapchat, and nothing still or serious could gain any traction in his mind. During the decade in which Adam had become a man, this fracturing seemed to be happening to many of us. Our ability to pay attention was cracking and breaking. I had just turned 40, and wherever my generation gathered, we would lament our lost capacity for concentration. I still read a lot of books, but with each year that passed, it felt more and more like running up a down escalator. Then one evening, as we lay on my sofa, each staring at our own ceaselessly shrieking screens, I looked at him and felt a low dread. “Adam,” I said softly, “let’s go to Graceland.” I reminded him of the promise I had made. I could see that the idea of breaking this numbing routine ignited something in him, but I told him there was one condition he had to stick to if we went. He had to switch his phone off during the day. He swore he would.

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Neuroscientist Karl Deisseroth: ‘Coronavirus has changed us all’

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The neuroscientist and psychiatrist explains Zoom fatigue - and why the conditions of the pandemic can induce an ‘altered state’

The coronavirus pandemic has been a disorienting kind of emergency. It is a generation-defining cataclysm, but for many of us the day-to-day reality has been lonely, even dull. It is a call to action, but the most useful thing most of us can do is stay at home. Covid-19 is a disease that attacks the lungs, but it has also worsened mental health while causing a drastic reduction in patients seeking care for depression, self-harm, eating disorders and anxiety. Whatever path the pandemic takes from here, says Karl Deisseroth, the pioneering American neuroscientist, psychiatrist, bioengineer and now author, “Coronavirus has affected us all and it has changed us all. There’s no doubt about that.”

Deisseroth, 49, is talking in the lush, squirrel-filled garden of his house in Palo Alto, northern California, where he has spent much of the pandemic looking after his four young children. But he has had much else on his mind. He has been finishing his book, Connections: A Story of Human Feeling, an investigation into the nature of human emotions. He has been meeting with psychiatric patients over Zoom as well as putting in night shifts as an emergency hospital psychiatrist. And he has fitted all of this around his day job, which is using tiny fibre-optic cables to fire lasers into the brains of mice that he has infected with cells from light-sensitive algae and then observing what happens, millisecond by millisecond, when he turns individual neurons on or off.

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‘We will have to choose our apocalypse’: the cost of freedom after the pandemic

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To remake society after the pandemic, we must swap Insta self‑improvement for something more radical, argues author Sam Byers

Across much of the west, March is a milestone both surreal and distressing: a full year of life in Covid-19’s shadow. Twelve months ago, we couldn’t imagine what we were about to experience; now we can’t process what we’ve endured.

This was a year of seemingly irresolvable contradictions. Our grief was collective, yet rituals of communal mourning were denied us. We hymned the “global effort” to produce a vaccine, then recoiled into vaccine nationalism the moment that effort bore fruit. Even as Zoom held us together, Covid denial and conspiracy theories in the family WhatsApp tore us apart.

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Tom Templeton: ‘I suspect doctors have realised how therapeutic it can be to write books’

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The former Observer writer and now GP talks about his new book, 34 Patients, and the challenges he has faced during the pandemic

How has life changed for you at the surgery during the pandemic?
The biggest change has been having to talk to patients on the phone rather than seeing them in person. We only see around three per day now in person.

Do you miss seeing people face to face?
Totally. It’s quite right that we do it the way we do but I love being with the patients and having that connection.

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Tina Turner: ‘When I was in the zone, it was like I was flying’

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She was a rock’n’roll powerhouse who electrified audiences worldwide. As Tina Turner releases a guide to happiness, she talks to playwright V (formerly Eve Ensler) about how she found the strength to overcome illness, abuse and tragedy

The first time I experienced Tina Turner in the flesh, I was a 16-year-old hippy chick doused in patchouli oil. I didn’t just see and hear Ms Turner sing Proud Mary at the Fillmore East in New York City – I felt her in every cell of my teenage body. I was transfixed by the ecstasy of her thunderous hips and legs, the vibrating canopy of her shaking fringe, the irrefutable bidding of her sultry, raw voice.

She was female sexuality fully embodied and unleashed. She catalysed the same in me and in multitudes across the planet, selling more than 200m records in her lifetime. The queen of rock’n’roll seemed as much shaman as singer. I knew instinctively that she had suffered abuse and pain. We survivors have a kind of radar.

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Camilla Pang: ‘You have to acknowledge the hilarity of what it is to be human’

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Prize-winning author Camilla Pang talks about her autism and ADHD diagnoses and her desire to challenge myths about neurodiversity

This month Camilla Pang won the Royal Society book prize for her debut, Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships. She has a PhD in bioinformatics from UCL and works as a postdoctoral researcher. Dr Pang was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of eight and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at 26.

Why did you decide to write this book?
I inadvertently wrote the book in my PhD thesis on bioinformatics, and my supervisor, bless her, said this is great, but it doesn’t belong here. One of the things people on the autistic spectrum do is organise our world in a way that makes sense to us using objects and sequences. For me, those sequences involved looking at the fundamentals of matter, and what that meant in terms of science. Even if I was just kicking a pile of leaves, I would do it repetitively in order to find the laws about how things react, and how they can be predicted. So from kicking leaves to Post-it notes to eventually reading about science, I constructed a map to navigate the world. Over time, it became bigger and notebooks piled up, so I ended up with a piece of work that I thought might be useful to someone else. And that’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it? You want to connect with people.

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Jenni Murray: ‘I hate the diet industry. It’s caused me misery’

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The Woman’s Hour presenter has written a book about her lifelong struggle with her weight. She discusses fat-shaming, body positivity and what happened when she had bariatric surgery

A few years ago, Jenni Murray was out walking with her son and dogs when she saw a potential vision of her future. While she was strolling painfully around the park, stopping to rest at benches where she could, a woman not much larger than Murray passed them on a mobility scooter, her own dogs’ leads attached to the handlebars. If Murray – at 24 stone (152kg) – didn’t do something about her weight, her concerned son said, that might be her before long. How did she feel about herself at that point?

“Extremely obese,” she says. “I was not the fit, active person that I wanted to be. I just lumbered everywhere. I’d had breast cancer and a double hip replacement in my 50s, but it was the obesity that was going to kill me.” It was the final push Murray needed, after a lifetime of dieting, and a warning from her doctor that she was on the way to developing type 2 diabetes. “I thought, I’ve got to do something about it, I’m 64 and I’m not going to make it to 70.” She adds, triumph in her voice, “And I did make it to 70!” She reached the milestone birthday in May.

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Don’t panic: the best books to help us survive a crisis

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Joe Moran looks at books on how to keep calm in times of adversity - and take joy where we find it

The coronavirus has put life on hold. In this time of fractured human contact and fear of the unknown, we need to read authors who will embolden us for the hard season ahead, while also offering a calming sense of perspective.

Eula Biss’s book-length essay On Immunity does the trick. She begins with the story of Achilles, whose mother dipped him in the river Styx only to leave the vulnerable spot on his heel where she held him. The story’s moral, in Biss’s words, is that “immunity is a myth … and no mortal can ever be made invulnerable”. And yet she admits that she found this message hard to accept after the birth of her son in 2009 – especially when, shortly afterwards, the swine flu epidemic began. Biss explores how hard it is for even the most clear-eyed of us not to succumb to panic and dread.

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Fever dreams: did author Dean Koontz really predict coronavirus?

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From ‘Wuhan-400’, the deadly virus invented by Dean Koontz in 1981, to the plague unleashed in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, novelists have long been fascinated by pandemics

According to an online conspiracy theory, the American author Dean Koontz predicted the coronavirus outbreak in 1981. His novel The Eyes of Darkness made reference to a killer virus called “Wuhan-400” – eerily predicting the Chinese city where Covid-19 would emerge. But the similarities end there: Wuhan-400 is described as having a “kill‑rate” of 100%, developed in labs outside the city as the “perfect” biological weapon. An account with more similarities, also credited by some as predicting coronavirus, is found in the 2011 film Contagion, about a global pandemic that jumps from animals to humans and spreads arbitrarily around the globe.

But when it comes to our suffering, we want something more than arbitrariness. We want it to mean something. This is evident in our stories about illness and disease, from contemporary science fiction all the way back to Homer’s Iliad. Even malign actors are more reassuring than blind happenstance. Angry gods are better than no gods at all.

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