4 out of 4 stars
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Health Tips, Myths and Tricks, by Morton E Tavel, MD, is a nonfiction book with about 260 pages. The author is a physician specialist in internal medicine and cardiovascular diseases. This book is based on health issues. The author divides medicine into two types. There is science based medicine (evidence based medicine) and alternative medicine which consists of unproven remedies.
This book has 62 chapters. Each chapter discusses a different topic. The author ends some chapters with conclusions. The topics mainly discuss tips for good health, myths that mislead people and tricks used to promote fake health products. The author is very detailed as he breaks down these main topics to cover different ailments and health conditions, such as cancer and hypertension.
I find some of the advice from this author rather obvious, for example, he recommends dieting to lose body weight. I will admit that some of his advice is contrary to what seems obvious, for example, he discourages stretching before engaging in vigorous exercise. He gives reasons for this as proof. I do not agree with the author when he says that alternative medicine does not yield results. Has the author interviewed all the people who have taken alternative medicine? There are people who have taken alternative medicine and it actually worked for them. The author therefore, should not generalize his statement. I agree with him though, when he says that alternative medicine can have side effects that can lead to other diseases. I think that even scientific (conventional) medicine can have similar effect.
Even though I did not understand some medical terms used in this book, I did not find it boring. I still understood the concept, and enjoyed reading on. I enjoyed reading this book particularly because I realized that all along, I had believed in myths, thinking that they were facts. I liked the conclusions made at the end of some chapters because they would make it easy for a reader to have a recap of what they had read in that particular chapter. I also liked the fact that the author used research results as evidence for his statements. What I did not like about this book was the biased opinion of the author who blatantly dismissed alternative medicine.
The advice I found useful in this book was that we should not always believe what we read on labels because there could be omission of a dangerous substance present. Another useful advice was that we should use diet to avoid, manage and cure illness. I agree with this statement because by dieting, we are sure of using safe and natural substances for prevention, management and cure of health conditions.
This book, though professionally edited, has minor formatting errors. There is a canceled word which I believe is supposed to be deleted. This did not deter me from reading on. The book is well written with good grammar. I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars. I cannot give it a lower rating because I enjoyed reading it, and there are no grammatical errors, making the book easy to understand. There is research evidence for what the author is putting across to the reader regarding scientific medicine.
I recommend this book to anyone who would like to know more about health issues. Those who do not believe in any form of treatment because of their religious beliefs, or by choice, might not enjoy reading it.
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Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks
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