Customer Reviews

Basic Medical Biochemistry (Books)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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This book shows how biochemistry courses can be made interesting and pertinent. I love the clinical symptoms and diagnoses boxes. Various biochemical processes are made relevant by linking them to symptoms and diagnoses. Remember in college when biochemistry was essentially a memorization exercise? Not so here. I am not a doctor or med student but I do have 24 hours of bio and take it from me this is a unique biochemistry text. The layout and design of the contents is very good. Well worth the price and deserving of shelf space in your library.

Some biochemistry books proceed to describe metabolic pathways with scant reference to the physiological context in which they occur and then fill the conceptual gap by including a chapter on regulation and integration of metabolism. Not this thoughtful and cleverly designed book. From the start the authors make it clear that they are going to tell us the story in terms of one crucial unifying concept: which pathways are activated or inactivated when we eat or when we fast?

With this approach the reader never loses sight of the big picture, ie, what's going on in the body at any particular time. And then, when we do reach the chapter on integration of metabolism, most of the work has already been done for us: the chapter then operates as a useful review of what we have already been told.

The book does not miss any opportunity to make us think in terms of the big picture, and furthermore, it is never afraid of saying something more than once if it needs to. Just one example to illustrate this point: Lipoprotein lipase. Action and properties of this enzyme are detailed in the context of digestion of chylomicrons (p 497), storage of TAGs in adipocytes (p 512), integration of metabolism (p 561) and the influence of insulin levels on gene expression of the enzyme (p 564).

The early introduction of the fed and starved states is also useful in other ways. The student perceives right away what the point is of learning those endless metabolic pathways and studies them with much more enthusiasm and not just thinking that biochemistry is but an unnecessary obstacle they have to overcome to get to the more clinical stuff (at least I'd like to think so!). Inspired by this book I have organized my course in that way and I am convinced that it is the best approach.

This book is different from its contemporaries in many ways. First of all is written in a clinical approach format which is very interesting for medical students. Most of the biochemistry textbooks are dry and vast and difficult to grasp the information needed for a medico.
But the Marks helps to learn to use biochemistry in the process of Clinical Problem Solving. With a lot of diagrams and clear text it is easy understand.
The Clinical Material is presented in the form of real patients.
It is a student friendly text with which you can learn biochemistry in a funny way of solving the clinical cases.
It can be used as a main textbook for self study.
I strongly recommend the Marks for all medical students.

I love this book on biochemistry simply because it was the easiest to read, with diagrams and pictures even dumb people like me can read (gg). I also found that it is very comprehensive also. Some of the other titles I've read on the subject (Lippincott, Harper's) did not go into the detail of this one. Another positive note is that this is a clinical book also; giving you case studies in each chapter to test your knowledge. I can't say enough about this book and even referred it to one of my friends. Although not required in Chiropractic College (Lippincott was), it should have been the standard.

I am a medical student and it is a very easy to understand textbook. Recommend to buy to keep in handy. It is updated with current research.

This books is great.If you want to leran biochemistry within a month,buy it.I think it is the best book.It is perfect for your exam.

Texts are not easily to follow. Diagrams and help notes scatters around pages which make readers confused. If you are preparing for Step 1, I recommend you study Lippincott Biochemistry, Board Review Series.