A persuasive, informative, and well-structured guide to deciphering health care advice.
In this manual, a physician delivers facts and research to puncture scams, myths, and trends that have more to do with consumerism than wellness.
Tavel (Hell in the Heavens, 2013) embarks on a journey through some of the most common and widely discussed “cures,” tips, and tricks in the world of health care, weight loss, fitness, and nutrition to help readers distinguish between fact and fiction. Organized by subject matter, the book’s chapters make it easy for audiences to refer to the work as a resource for a variety of topics without having to sit down and read it straight through. Tavel presents three lucid sections: Tips, Myths, and Tricks. The Tips part examines such issues as the benefits of eating breakfast every morning. The Myths portion discusses health regimens that may have little effect on a person’s wellness, including a gluten-free diet. The Tricks section deals with such trends as using professional actors and athletes to endorse controversial drugs like Cymbalta and Crestor and various health products and “systems” (for example, alkaline ionizers for water). One of the most compelling chapters discusses detoxifiers—the common practice of using juice systems, liquid diets, and special products that promise to flush the body of “poisons.” Tavel explains the body’s natural processes of toxin flushing, encouraging readers not to embrace plans endorsed by “experts” and doctors that are little more than crash diets. Overall, the book is extremely successful in busting myths that heavily drain readers’ wallets and spark false hopes concerning weight loss and disease prevention. The volume directly takes issue with alternative medicines and chiropractic remedies that pit patients against physicians. Tavel emphasizes that many consumers fall victim to alternative medicines, shunning traditional science, because of the placebo effect and false correlations between these treatments and the natural subsiding of ailments. The author makes a strong case for mainstream medicine in a conversational and methodical way.
A persuasive, informative, and well-structured guide to deciphering health care advice.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 241
Publisher: Brighton Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
