Bob Arnot

A delightful book. A solid book. A useful book. Highly recommended.

His target audience is those with Osteoarthritis, which he calls Wear and Tear. This book is also for those who don't yet have symptoms.

I appreciated that he clearly evaluates what has been proven to work. This is not just some clinical philosophy, but based on his own experience of needing to do something to stop the pain.

He describes the pro and con of a host of medications, but the book makes it very clear that increasing range of motion, and using that range of motion is much more likely to be effective in reducing or eliminating pain.

I liked his Yoga section, but kind of skimmed over it because I have been doing yoga for years. My motivation for starting yoga was to reduce/eliminate the occurrence of training injuries from running. It works. Perhaps he said it best:

"Yoga is making a major comeback. Although it may seem the latest fad, it's a medicinal art thousands of years old that can have remarkable effects on real patients with real diseases." (Page 160)

This is one of the few "health" books that I didn't have any reservations about. So, why not 5 stars? Because 5 stars means I want to reread it. I'm already doing yoga and because of this book I started taking glucosamine. It is a solid book that I recommend.… (mehr)

Finally! I'd been looking for something that would give me the skinny on how to drink coffee for maximum health benefits. I'd found a few hints via some obscure studies in online journals, but not much else. With this book, there's finally a work with an emphasis on drinking coffee not just for taste (though to be sure he covers that as well), but also for maximizing health, longevity, and athletic performance. Anyone who enjoys coffee, or thinks they might like to start, and cares about their health or exercises regularly should definitely get a copy of this. Cutting-edge research makes it well worth the read.… (mehr)

As with many such books, this book is likely to reach mainly those who are already interested in the subject. Your average oaf-off-the-street is likely to pass it by in favor of the latest schlock (if s/he is even reading at all instead of watching Fox News). However, for anyone interested in planning and preparing themselves for possible disasters, this is a pretty comprehensive work. It's for the beginner--someone who is beginning to understand how fragile our interconnected world is and wants to do something about it--rather than for the serious survivalist. This is a book about sensible things that just about anyone should do to prepare for a major disaster.

Broken into three main sections (Before Disaster Strikes, During an Emergency, and After the Crisis, all conveniently tabbed) and including a DVD, this book covers determining what sorts of disasters are likely to strike your area, planning what to do about them, and executing those plans. It does not deal in scare stories--no zombies, or even barbarian gangs rampaging through a post-societal-collapse America--but in the kind of disasters that happen all the time: fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, pandemics, etc.

You can't prepare for everything, but any preparedness is better than none. Dr. Arnot shows you where to start and how to proceed.

I do have two smallish quibbles: first, the author does seem to focus a bit much on one particular provider of preparedness supplies: I'm sure Captain Dave is a fine upstanding individual who sells quality products, but I'd have liked the good doctor to have given a few pointers on other resources in the included DVD.

Second, a lot of the resources listed take time and money, and some people are strapped for one or the other, or both. A bit more discussion of how to ramp up from nothing to being ready to hunker down for a couple of months or evacuate safely and effectively would have been good. I admit I read the book a couple of weeks ago, so I may be misremembering some of the details, and i still recommend it strongly.

Unfortunately, the associated site, yoursurvival.com has been saying "This website is temporarily unavailable. Please check back later. Unfortunately there were no suitable nodes available to serve this request." for weeks now. I hope it's not permanent, as the book promises some very useful features.… (mehr)

The next book, The Breast Cancer Prevention Diet: The Powerful Foods, Supplements, and Drugs That Can Save Your Life, was written by a medical journalist whose wife has a high risk of developing breast cancer, thanks to her family medical history. It was a very accessible book, with very specific recommendations in terms of diet and supplements and their potential benefits and risks. It is organized in terms of interrupting the breast cancer pathway through the 'estrogen effect': block estrogen receptors, reduce 'bad,' 'strong,' and 'chemical' estrogens and increase 'good' estrogens (change fats, avoid pesticides), reduce estrogen production (low-fat diet, lower body fat), reduce the free estrogen in circulation (increase fiber), and otherwise interfere with the estrogen effect and cancer initiation and growth (lower insulin levels, alcohol intake, glucose load, and oxidative load). The book references a great many studies, but few specific citations are provided, making it more difficult for the reader to follow-up. The dietary suggestions are the sort that we hear all the time for general health or cardiac health or to avoid colon cancer or to reduce the risk of diabetes (I could go on): more fiber, more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, more fish, less processed foods, less red meat, less simple sugars and trans fats. And the epitomes are the Mediterranean diet and the Asian diet, which he focuses on in the final chapters. He also provides specific recommendations for young girls to reduce their lifetime risk, cancer survivors to minimize the risk of recurrence, and women with either high or low levels of estrogen. All of the information is specific, detailed, easy to digest, and repeated in various ways.

I'd like to pass the book along to my sister-in-law, since my niece qualifies as being at risk. Once again, I don't know how this compares to other similar books. However, I think it is helpful, since, once again, oncologists are not so good at answering dietary questions and most nutritionists are not necessarily informed about the specifics of certain cancers. Patients can't do much about many of the potential risk factors involved in cancer, particularly environmental causes--there's a reason for the term cancer clusters (also see 'Clan of the One-Breasted Women' by Terry Tempest Williams, specifically discussing breast cancer incidence in her family)--at least with respect to their own situations, but patients do have control over diet and exercise and personal stress and coping, and I believe these can play a tremendous role in health and medical outcomes. So this book is an encouragement to make the effort to improve diet.… (mehr)