Tuesday 6 March 2012

Book Review - The Cure for Everything! by Timothy Caulfield

Teena picks up many books on health and wellness, which I'll flip through, maybe read a chapter and be done with it.

With a title like The Cure for Everything!, I had to give take a look to see what exactly it was about:

Health-law expert Timothy Caulfield exposes the special interests that twist good science about health and fitness to sell us services and products that mostly don’t work.

Want great abs? You won’t get them by using the latest Ab-Flex-Spinner-Thingy. Are you trying to lose ten pounds? Diet books are a waste of trees. Do you rely on healthcare practitioners — either mainstream or alternative — to provide the cure for what ails you? Then beware! Both Big Pharma and naturopathy are powerful twisting forces with products and services to sell.

Caulfield doesn’t just talk the talk. He signs up for circuit training with a Hollywood trainer who cultivates the abs of the stars. With his own Food Advisory Team (FAT) made up of specialists in nutrition and diet, he makes a lifestyle change that really works. (Mainly it involves eating less than he is used to eating. Much less.) And when he embarks on a holiday cruise, dreading motion sickness, he takes along both a homeopathic and pharmaceutical remedy—with surprising results. This is a light-hearted book with a serious theme. Caulfield demonstrates that the truth about being healthy is easy to find (but often hard to do).

Link
The book is a very interesting read. The first section, "Fitness: Smarter, Faster, Stronger", was the driest reading in the book, but the chapter I got the most out of. His research and review of training styles has me now doing High Intensity Interval Training.

In this chapter, he does try to discredit the value of stretching. He and other experts feel it is a waste of time and provides no value. I disagree completely with this view. For me, if I do not stretch, I do pull muscles, injure myself or create back pain. This, however, is the only part of the book I have an issue with.

The chapter on diet, was the most humorous and all very true. I like his statement that any fad diet will work as when you are on it, you are watching carefully what you eat. When the diet is done, though, the weight comes back. There is much revealing information in this chapter.

I found the section on genetics a little long but the chapter "Remedies: Big Pharma and the Colon Cleansers" gave me points to ponder.

The author, Timothy Caulfield, is a Canadian and is not afraid to throw in studies done by Canadian universities and councils. He also reveals many facts revealed in research done around the world. Mr Caufield is a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. He was the Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta from 1993 to 2011 and is now leading the Faculty of Law’s newly formed Health Law and Science Policy Group.

It is an excellent book on personal health and fitness.

5 comments:

Teena in Toronto said...

Sounds like a good book!

Victor G. Page said...

Authors who are not afraid to share their thoughts and studies concerning health problems are amazing. I know that they should really be careful in sharing their thoughts and opinion but that Canadian really blew me all those worries away from me. He is very much straightforward and that is what I really like about him.

Victoria Hartnett said...

"When the diet is done, though, the weight comes back." - True! I would love to read Timothy Caulfield's book because I'm fond of reading the kind of material that's straightforward and not afraid of disclosure. What's so special about it is that, it's all about health. Reading facts about the medicines that claim to cure certain illnesses sounds nice, specially if it reveals hidden truths about them.

Samuel Sheaffer said...

It's always good have some good books to read when it comes to following a healthy regimen. I'm doing a routine right now, which I've read to some health magazines and it does help me a lot.

Jack Gilbert said...

I agree with consulting to healthcare practitioners with precaution. Always check their background first before relying to prescriptions. There are many hospitals in the city that provide comprehensive health services. You may want to see reviews online also.