Physiology and Biochemistry

[supangoi]

Hey, can anyone reccomend any books for physiology and biochemistry please?

I've heard that Guyton and Hall is really good for physiology or is appleton and lange any good?

[Arch_Angel]

On my course (which is Genetics at the moment) the Holy grail of biochemistry is a book called "Biochemistry" (inventive eh) by a fella named lubert Stryer.

However it have very few references to medicine in it (it's a science book, not a medicine book), so I guess you might wanna think about what you want before you shell out the £45 quid for it.

But if you want pure biochem, I doubt you'll get anything better.

Nik

[dambunny]

Originally Posted by supangoi

Hey, can anyone reccomend any books for physiology and biochemistry please?

I've heard that Guyton and Hall is really good for physiology or is appleton and lange any good?

Looks like you've found right directions! Guyton and Hall is really good for physiology, for biochemistry iI prefer Harper's.

[InnerRage]

yea guyton and hall is the best but it's toooooooooooooooooo big u can't read it before the exams

[chrischanx]

Physiology-human physiology the basis of medicine 3rd by Gillian Pocock
:it's well organised physiology book and the content is enough for medical students k...it gets small summary box in each section unlike other books which summarize at the end of each chapter.It also get quite a lot of "clincal box".

BioChemistry-Lippincotts Illustrated Reviews Biochemistry
easy to read and clinical oriented

[Simon]

sherwood (from cells to systems) is good for physio; it's not entirely medically related but is aimed at american undergrads who are planning on a health-related career. v.well illustrated and readable.
we used campbell and farrell for biochemistry. still not very medically related, but plenty of detail yet still readable. there are plenty of 'biochemistry for medics' txtbooks out there too; in retrospect i probably would have gone for one of them.

[Aimless]

What books you should use depends on your teachers, on your syllabus, on your exam... but mostly on your own style

I found Guyton to be way too wordy and poorly focused, although it was great for resp.-circ.

Boron is like a physiology Bible, but it can be a total bitch to study from, because it is so incredibly detailed and in-depth. It is, however, very pedagogical, and I like the pictures!

My personal favourite so far has been Ganong's "Review of Medical Physiology". It's incredibly clear and concise, well-structured, pedagogical, gives a good overview of most things... it does sometimes presuppose some experience with studying physiology, but I don't see that as a problem. I think it's better that it focuses on the important physiological stuff and explains that clearly. After all, no matter what book you pick, you'll be reading other texts to get a better picture

Ganong also has a pretty nice section on neuro and muscles!

Another book I've had some experience with is Mader's "Understanding Human Anatomy and Physiology". It's a nice, friendly book, and could probably be a good choice for many physiology courses... but I don't think it stands too well on its own.

Finally on physiology, you might wanna check out Kaplan's physiology stuff (for USMLE step 1) when the time comes to revise

Re. biochem, we've mostly used the aptly named "Medical Biochemistry" by Baynes and Dominiczak. It's all right, but I've found most medical biochem books to be very similar in terms of awesomeness (possibly because biochem isn't really my thing).

good luck!

[Juicy Fruit]

I've found Boron to be helpful as it has nice size chapters and thus allowing you to target the material that you are interested in.

[Prolific]

Originally Posted by Arch_Angel

On my course (which is Genetics at the moment) the Holy grail of biochemistry is a book called "Biochemistry" (inventive eh) by a fella named lubert Stryer.

I also use Berg/Stryers 'Biochemistry', i agree its the bible of biochem. As text books go its very straightforward to follow (seriously, scientists need to learn how to write cohesively).

I use Germann and Stanfields 'Human physiology' which is okay, but i get the feeling its more orientated towards scientists than medics since the anatomical detail seems a bit thin and theres a fair bit of biochem in it for a physiology book. Well written though and not a struggle to follow.

[Pammy]

I am not a big fan of Stryer...It really lacks detail. It does not provide that much background on experimental techniques, and is too descriptive for me - I appreciate biochemistry books which go a bit deeper, e.g. provide reaction mechanisms for the reactions in the metabolic pathways, a lot more protein structures (rather than diagrams with blue circles and green squares) and some history on how we actually got to know what we know. I also think that it's not very well structured, it seems to jump around quite a bit.
My personal favourite is Voet & Voet.

Ultimately it really depends what level you want...For my 1st year medicine undergrad students (to whom I teach biochem and some physiology) I recommend Elliott & Elliott or the easy version of Voet & Voet for a short intro, and for physiology I find "Human Physiology" by Stuart Ira Fox a quite simple intro...

Pammy