From cancer, the great enemy, to Covid, from psychopathologies to aesthetic medicine: Melania Rizzoli, doctor and politician, today Lombardy Region Councilor for Education with a passion for disclosure, returns to the bookstore with Health First of all (Baldini + Castoldi, 2020). A useful volume for both medical enthusiasts and anyone who feels the need for a little guide to daily health checks (without, of course, excluding medical advice).
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Rizzoli, who had to fight against a cancer, uses a double point of view: that of the doctor and that of those who have faced the disease. And therefore the first chapter is dedicated to the “enemy number one”, the tumor, with particular attention to the aspects that most depend on our control, namely the correct lifestyle and prevention.
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The author also reserves space for the field that pertains not only to medicine, but also to law, philosophy and bioethics, or that of the “thresholds” between life and death: coma, vegetative state, organ donation . The large part of the volume dedicated to the psychological sphere should also be noted, both under the sentimental-emotional aspect (Rizzoli investigates some aspects of love, or very common feelings such as envy or ingratitude) and under that of real and their psychopathologies, more or less severe (starting from hypochondria – a phenomenon that is increasing at least as much as the diagnostic and therapeutic tools have progressed in recent decades – up to dissociative amnesia). Space also for aesthetic medicine and cosmetics, without forgetting an in-depth study on sexuality.
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If it is true that the “stars” (not only those of music or entertainment, but famous people widely understood), at least since the seventies, have become incredibly close to us, of interest is a chapter dedicated to the events of health that involved some public figures, such as Nadia Toffa, Davide Astori, Sergio Marchionne or Angela Merkel.
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To close the volume, Covid-19. If cancer is the “enemy number one”, the coronavirus is the “unknown” one, which arrived in our lives in 2020. Here then we talk about its symptoms, epidemiological data, what is known about future tools to fight it, but also of its psychological and social implications. “We do not have antibodies against Covid-19, but we have against everything that disconcerts us, and to react to fear we must take note of the reality, good or bad it may be, in order not to develop inner suffering that weakens the immune system”, he writes Rizzoli.
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It is the right of the people to be informed about health problems, as it is a duty for the communicator to transmit, to make known in a documented way and with an accessible language, but at the same time technically correct. The goal is to make as many people “gain health” as possible, freeing the knowledge of the ivory towers of the academies and allowing people to acquire information to defend themselves, adopt balanced lifestyles, take prevention, act quickly and better. Health First of all. From cancer to hypochondria: manual for not getting sick fully succeeds in this mission.
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