Books by J. Wayne Saul MD

I publish my books under the name J. Wayne Saul MD. Most of them grew out of the same place: the exam room, right after someone hears a diagnosis for the first time. That moment tends to go by fast. The visit ends, the paperwork gets printed, and the questions show up later, usually in the car or at the kitchen table that night. The books are my attempt to be useful in those hours after the appointment.

One of them is something else entirely. Swarm 700 is fiction, a techno-thriller, and it exists because I like telling stories as much as I like explaining things. You will find both kinds of writing on this page.

The Your New Diagnosis series

The Your New Diagnosis books are short patient guides. Each one is written for a person who has just been told they have a specific condition and wants a plain-language starting point. They are not textbooks, and they are not meant to replace the conversation with your own doctor. They are meant to make that conversation better.

When I sit down with someone who was just diagnosed, the questions tend to fall into a few familiar groups. What does this number actually mean? Is this dangerous right now, or is it a long-term risk? What will my treatment probably look like? What can I do at home, starting this week? What should I ask at my next visit? The series is organized around helping a reader think through questions like those, one condition at a time.

There are four books in the series so far:

• Your New Diagnosis: Cholesterol, for readers who just got a lipid panel back with numbers that worried their doctor.
• Your New Diagnosis: Hypertension, for people who were told their blood pressure is high and want to understand what that means for daily life.
• Your New Diagnosis: Diabetes, for readers facing a new diabetes diagnosis and a lot of new vocabulary at once.
• Your New Diagnosis: Coronary Artery Disease, for people who have learned that the arteries supplying their heart are narrowed or diseased.

Each guide is short on purpose. I would rather give you something you can finish in an evening and come back to when you need it.

Heart Strong

Heart Strong is about heart health more broadly. Where the Your New Diagnosis books each start from a single condition, Heart Strong is written for readers who want to think about their heart over the long run: people with risk factors, people with a family history that worries them, and people who simply want to take better care of themselves before something goes wrong.

It sits comfortably next to the free material on this site. If you have been reading about starting a gentle walking program after a new diagnosis or about cholesterol and blood pressure, Heart Strong is the longer, more connected version of that conversation.

Swarm 700

Swarm 700 is a techno-thriller. It is fiction, and it is a different side of me as a writer. I have always been drawn to stories about technology that gets out ahead of the people who built it, and about ordinary people who have to make hard choices quickly. If that is your kind of book, it may be worth a look. I have written a bit about the process in a behind-the-scenes post on Swarm 700, and the fiction section collects my other writing about story and craft.

Fiction and medicine are not as far apart as they look. Both ask you to pay close attention to people under pressure.

How the books fit with the free articles

Almost everything on this site is free. The health, diet, and fitness articles are written to stand on their own, and you do not need to buy anything to get real value from them. The books go further. They gather the ideas in one place, in an order that makes sense to read straight through, and they give each topic more room than a single article can.

A reasonable way to use both: start with the free articles on the health hub to get your bearings. If you find yourself wanting the whole picture for your condition in one place, that is what the matching guide is for.

One thing I want to be clear about. None of my books, and nothing on this site, is a substitute for your own doctor. Your doctor knows your history, your medications, and your test results. My goal is to help you walk into that next appointment with better questions and walk out understanding more of the answers. If you ever have chest pain, trouble breathing, sudden weakness, or other symptoms that feel like an emergency, call 911 rather than reaching for a book.

Where to find them

All of these books are available on Kindle. Each has its own page below with a short description and a link to Amazon. You can also see everything in one place on my Amazon author page for J. Wayne Saul MD, which is the easiest place to check for new titles as the series grows.

If you are curious why a physician makes time to write patient guides at all, I wrote about that in why I write medical books for patients.