Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt

Art Cure
by Daisy Fancourt

ISBN-13: 9781250364531
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Celadon Books
Released: February 3, 2026

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
From cradle to grave, engaging in the arts has remarkable effects on our health and well-being. Music supports the architectural development of children’s brains. Artistic hobbies help our brains to stay resilient against dementia. Dance and magic tricks build new neural pathways for people with brain injuries. Arts and music act just like drugs to decrease depression, stress, and pain, reducing our dependence on medication. Going to live music events, museums, exhibitions, and the theater decreases our risk of future loneliness and frailty. Engaging in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body, even helping us to live longer.

This isn’t sensationalism, it’s the results of decades of studies gathering data from neuroimaging, molecular biomarkers, wearable sensors, cognitive assessments, and electronic health records. From professor Daisy Fancourt, an award-winning scientist and science communicator and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health, this book will fundamentally change the way you value and engage with the arts in your daily life and give you the tools to optimize how, when, and what arts you engage in to achieve your health goals.


My Review:
Art Cure is about how doing art can help a person's health. The author has personally researched how arts can impact our health, from studies to see if more frequent arts engagement leads to better health outcomes over the years to specific experiments done to see how calming music can help in hospitals and similar ideas. She also included experiments done by others that show the impact that viewing or doing various arts (reading, dancing, making or listening to music, visiting the theater, etc.) can have on health outcomes. She gave examples, from singing to a premature baby to help the baby stay calm and thrive to teaching magic tricks as a way to make physical therapy fun for kids.

The author summarized how the various studies were set up and the results but also usually gave an example of a specific person to show how the principle has worked out in someone's actual, real life. She didn't get deep into the science except to explain just how much we could really conclude from the various studies. She ended each chapter by suggesting various ways we could practically use the information in that chapter: how long do we do an activity, how frequently, and what sort of arts might have the desired effect. I had no trouble following the author's points and found the information both interesting and something that I could easily act upon. Overall, I'd recommend this interesting book.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy by Ari Whitten, MS

The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy: Revised and Updated
by Ari Whitten, MS

ISBN-13: 9780593736555
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Rodale Books
Released: January 13, 2026

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
REVISED AND UPDATED SECOND EDITION • Harness the power of red light therapy to achieve younger-looking skin, accelerate healing, boost energy levels, support fat loss, amplify the benefits of exercise, and more! This comprehensive guide is updated with the latest research and insights from leading scientists.

Light has the power to heal your body and optimize your health. There are over six thousand peer-reviewed scientific studies showing the proven health benefits of red and near-infrared light therapy, also known as photobiomodulation (the science of using light to modulate biology). In The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy, Ari Whitten, MS, cuts through all of the confusion around this complex topic. He explores the science behind this therapy and reveals how to harness its power to improve your health, your body, and your life.

The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy provides critical information on how to achieve the best results—determining the proper dose for every type of treatment, avoiding common mistakes that can undermine your results, and identifying devices that are worth buying while steering clear of those that are underpowered, overpriced, or ineffective.


My Review:
The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy explains the science behind using red and infrared light for a wide variety of health benefits and how to select a device suited to your end purpose (more surface-level, skin benefits or deeper, like helping joints or muscles). I've previously read the first edition of this book, and this second edition included a lot more information, especially up-to-date, detailed information on the latest scientific research. These sections get technical. However, the book is designed so you can jump over sections that don't interest you. This also means that a lot of information was repeated (in more detail in some places and less detail in others). I ended up skimming sections that got repetitive. Overall, though, this is a good resource if you're interested in using red light therapy, especially in optimizing your red light therapy results. The author didn't specifically recommend very many devices in the book as he felt the market was changing so quickly. He provided a link to go to for the latest recommendations.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.