There’s no shortage of information out there regarding how to take care of your health – some of it conflicting, some of it fear-mongering, much of it very confusing. This is an ongoing challenge for patients and I empathize with the anxiety this can provoke.
Here are two books I read recently that I’d love to hand out to everyone who comes into my office:
If you watched the documentary Supersize Me back in the day, you’ll probably remember Marion Nestle. Nestle is a longtime academic, nutritionist and public health advocate. This book is about how to make informed nutrition choices amid the onslaught of savvy and often manipulative marketing we’re all exposed to and the financial interests of corporations. I learned a great deal of new information from this book (did you know that the U.S. food supply provides roughly 4,000 calories per person per day?!?). Encouraging people to eat more vegetables and drink more water is not particularly sexy and exciting, nor is it very lucrative for big corporations in our country. This is one of many reasons why our food and nutrition landscape is so difficult to navigate. Good nutrition that involves cooking and consuming whole, unprocessed foods at home is a cornerstone of health that both Western and Eastern medicine wholeheartedly agree on. If you’re wanting to cut through much of the marketing and social media noise around nutrition, I can’t recommend this book enough.
This is a compassionate and thoughtful book on the complicated topic of diagnosis and over-treatment in medicine. It’s looks at how a preoccupation with medical labels and diagnosis may be harming more than helping. This is a sensitive topic especially when many patients are experiencing ambiguous, confusing symptoms and attempting to receive care as well as clear answers from our for-profit, labyrinthine, oftentimes dismissive medical system. Receiving a diagnosis is both a science and an art, taking time and careful consideration, as Dr. O’Sullivan discusses in the book. I get concerned for patients self-diagnosing, pathologizing normal human experiences, and receiving a consequential diagnosis from another alternative health provider based on testing and criteria that is unclear to myself and the patient. This is a challenging topic and I highly recommend this book.
