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Name: Effortless Healing: 9 Simple Ways to Sidestep Illness, Shed Excess Weight, and Help Your Body Fix Itself: Mercola, Dr. Joseph, Perlmutter M.D., David: 9781101902899: Amazon.com: Books
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Effortless Healing: 9 Simple Ways to Sidestep Illness, Shed Excess Weight, and Help Your Body Fix Itself Paperback – September 27, 2016

by Dr. Joseph Mercola (Author), David Perlmutter M.D. (Foreword)

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Let your body do the work...

Do you have to tell your leg to heal from a scrape? Your lungs to take in air? Your body that it’s hungry? No. Your body does these things automatically, effortlessly. Vibrant health is your birthright and within your grasp; you just have to step out of the way. In Effortless Healing, online health pioneer, natural medicine advocate, and bestselling author Dr. Joseph Mercola reveals the nine simple secrets to a healthier, thinner you. The results are amazing and the steps can be as easy to implement as:

• Throwing ice cubes in your water to make it more “structured”
• Skipping breakfast, as it could be making you fat
• Eating up to 75 percent of your calories each day in fat for optimal health, reduction of heart disease, and cancer prevention
• Avoiding certain meat and fish, but enjoying butter
• Eating sauerkraut (and other fermented foods) to improve your immune system and your mood
• Walking barefoot outside to decrease system-wide inflammation (and because it just feels great)
• Enjoying a laugh: it’s as good for your blood vessels as fifteen minutes of exercise

Effortless Healing is the distillation of decades of Dr. Mercola’s experience and cutting-edge medical knowledge. With his wisdom and that of your body, you can optimize your health, your weight, and your life…effortlessly.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Effortless Healing will cause a simple revolution in your health. I have been a fan of Dr. Mercola’s work for many years and this book is the synthesis of his wisdom; it will help anyone feel better quickly.”
--Daniel G. Amen, MD, author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life and The Daniel Plan

“Dr. Mercola has been one of the leading teachers of health for a quarter century, and with this book he has done an admirable job of succinctly summarizing and making accessible to all, decades of accumulated knowledge. Those fortunate enough to read it will likely be rewarded with many extra years of health and life.”
--Ron Rosedale, MD, founder of Dr.Rosedale.com

“If you want to improve your health, embrace the simple but elegant recommendations of Dr. Mercola. He is consistently ahead of the rest of the medical community, and his approach is solid and based on state-of-the-art scientific evidence.”
--Richard Johnson, M.D., Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado, author of The Fat Switch

“Effortless Healing is a very worthwhile read not only for the public but also for healthcare practitioners, who need to be teaching their patients the importance of following the advice in this book. These pages contain foundational truths that are well-researched and have already been proven effective in patients by Dr. Mercola, by me, and by other practitioners. If people, especially those in the United States, would act upon the simple, do-able recommendations in this book, I predict that the incidence of obesity and most chronic diseases would drop dramatically. Read Effortless Healing and then apply its wisdom in your life so that you also can experience vitality and longevity!”
--W. Lee Cowden, MD, MD(H), Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board, Academy of Comprehensive Integrative Medicine

“Dr. Mercola is a national, and indeed international, leader in the natural health and organic movements. His new book, Effortless Healing is essential reading for all health conscious and concerned Americans, giving us the information and inspiration we need to heal ourselves and revitalize public health.”
--Ronnie Cummins, Founder and Director, Organic Consumers Association

"A true visionary who champions freedom of thought, Dr. Mercola has empowered millions of people around the world to take control of their health with common sense advice. He makes it easy to understand why healing and staying well is something everyone can do safely, effectively, and naturally by simply making more conscious choices."
–Barbara Loe Fisher, Co-founder & President, National Vaccine Information Center

“Dr. Mercola’s latest book, Effortless Healing, will greatly expand the general public’s awareness about some of the latest concepts and challenges facing our food choices and our health. He shares one bit of valuable medical information after another and then expands it, and discusses how these suggestions can be more readily implemented and effortlessly expanded to improve the health of all Americans.”
--Doris J. Rapp, MD, environmental medical specialist and pediatric allergist

“In his latest book Effortless Healing, the father of modern nutrition provides a hands-on, easy-to-implement, and yes, effortless guide that empowers you to overcome disease and take charge of your health. Whether you want to lose fat fast, turn back the clock, or simply eat more vegetables, this book provides a comprehensive arsenal of tools to reach your goals, maintain optimal health, and become your very best self.”
--JJ Virgin, New York Times bestselling author of The Virgin Diet and The Sugar Impact Diet

About the Author

Dr. Joseph Mercola is a passionate advocate of natural medicine, a wellness champion, and a visionary who has implemented much-needed changes to our current health care system. As a physician for twenty-five years, he treated thousands of patients at his wellness center outside of Chicago, and in 1997 he created the natural health website Mercola.com. A New York Times bestselling author, he has also appeared on national news media such as CNN, Fox News, ABC News, Today, CBS's Washington Unplugged, and The Dr. Oz Show.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

What Effortless Healing Is, and Why You Need It

If you have opened this book because you are challenged with a chronic health condition, excess weight, or a general malaise, I’m not surprised. Statistically speaking, you are much more likely to be some level of sick than you are to be well.

You might question how we could still be so far from understanding health and curing diseases. After all, the forty years we’ve spent fighting the War on Cancer has resulted in $500 billion in expenditures, yet the death rate has changed little.1 Medical science in general could be implicated: cancer researcher Glenn Begley attempted to replicate fifty-three “landmark studies”— conducted by top labs and published in major medical journals—and could only reproduce six.2 That’s an 89 percent failure rate.

Obesity rates are at an all-time high and rising—the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being poll, which has been monitoring body mass index (BMI) since 2008, found that in 2013 the number of obese Americans rose a full percentage point, after being basically flat for five years.3 For the first time in human history, this generation will live a shorter time than their parents4—and this is despite spending an estimated $2.9 trillion in 2013 on health care in the U.S. alone.5 How is that for progress?

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that by 2050, one in three U.S. adults will have diabetes.6 One in eight people aged 65 and over currently has Alzheimer’s,7 and that number is expected to rise to one in four within the next twenty years.

In its 2014 World Cancer Report, the World Health Organization reported a looming “human disaster” in the rising cancer rates—from 14 million new diagnoses reported in 2012 to an estimated 22 million annual diagnoses twenty years from now8—an increase of 57 percent. That means within two decades, 13 million people will die from cancer each year.

Asthma, hay fever, eczema, food allergies, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and other autoimmune diseases are all on the rise. According to some estimates, allergies and diseases of the immune system have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled in the last few decades, with some studies indicating that more than half of the U.S. population has at least one clinically diagnosable allergy.9 At an alarming rate, some people’s immune systems are overreacting to substances that should be harmless, leading to allergies; others’ immune systems are malfunctioning and attacking parts of their own body—the very definition of autoimmune disease.

If you seek relief from any of these conditions from your doctor, you are likely to leave his office with at least one prescription—and more likely, multiple—for pharmaceuticals. You may be shocked to learn that nearly 70 percent of all Americans are taking at least one prescription drug for a chronic or other medical condition, with antibiotics, antidepressants, and opioids topping the list.10

One in four senior citizens takes 10 to 19 pills a day.11 But over the course of a year, the average adult age 18 to 65 years old in the United States fills about a dozen prescriptions—unless they are over 65, and then that number goes up to more than 30 a year.12 In the pediatric population, one out of every five children takes at least one prescription drug every month, about 10 percent of them use two or more, and 1 percent use five or more drugs per month.13

These statistics, which are the latest available but still five to ten years old, are disturbing enough. But what is most shocking is that an average senior citizen who has been diagnosed with just five chronic conditions (osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and COPD) will be taking a minimum of 12 different drugs every day, just to “treat” these conditions.14

If you consider that someone on hypertension drugs is most likely also to be on a statin to reduce cholesterol, this would bring it to 13 prescription drugs taken every day. But if you add in drugs prescribed for other chronic conditions commonly associated with old age, such as GERD, angina, depression/mental illness, insomnia, sleep apnea, hot flashes, kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and congestive heart failure,15 that person could easily be taking as many as two dozen or more drugs a day! Since statistics show that three out of four older Americans have multiple chronic health conditions,16 these numbers are not unrealistic.

But these “cures” come at a high cost—their side effects and even life-threatening adverse reactions can have a seriously detrimental impact on your health. After all, adverse reactions to prescription drugs were responsible for more than 2.3 million emergency room visits in the United States in 2011, up 84 percent from 1.3 million visits in 2005.17 The FDA, an agency that doesn’t protect us as it should, nonetheless cites that over 98,000 people died from adverse drug reactions in 2011—the sixth most common cause of death in 2011, according to the CDC.18 There were over 573,000 incidents of adverse drug reactions with “serious” consequences—defined as hospitalization, life-threatening complications, disability, or other harmful outcomes.19

If you find yourself in the hospital, look out. Studies from the Institute of Medicine in 1999 showed that at least 44,000 people— and possibly as many as 98,000—die every year as a result of medical errors made in hospitals.20 Ten years later, the Office of the Inspector General increased that number to 180,000 every year in Medicare patients alone.21 And in 2013 a study in the Journal of Patient Safety suggested that the number could actually be as high as 440,000.22 With so many dying just from the drugs they’re using to “heal” every year, there’s a good chance you personally know someone who suffered this unfortunate and unnecessary fate.

It’s clear from these trends and the data that an ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure. My intention in sharing the simple strategies within this book is to keep you and your family out of harm’s way, so these mistakes never happen to you.

The Odds Are Stacked Against You

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon not understanding it! —Upton Sinclair

Why has it become so dangerous to seek help from the medical industry?

The best place to start is by looking at that nearly $3 trillion number I wrote about earlier. Pharmaceutical companies view your symptoms and see dollar signs. They spend billions every year advertising to you on TV and magazines to help their drugs find their way into your body.

There’s the $5 billion they spend on direct-to-consumer marketing, of course. You’ve seen the ads showing silver-haired men grabbing their spouses with a knowing look in their eye, or the woman with a little black rain cloud over her head (a symbol of depression) that magically transforms into a rainbow after she takes a pill. Their oversimplified presentations—complete with long lists of side effects—have people feeling they know all there is to know about a drug, so they march in to their doctors’ offices expecting a prescription. Even with the threat of numerous possible side effects, the lure of being able to simply take a pill and have a troublesome symptom magically “disappear” is just too alluring for many people to resist.

But if you don’t buy what they’re selling in their commercials, they spend another $16 billion every year to market to physicians so they’ll use drugs as a primary solution to most of the health problems people have. Many people are completely unaware of the many ways in which they are being manipulated into taking dangerous and oftentimes completely unnecessary drugs.

Time to Lift the Veil . . .

Exposing pharmaceutical dangers can be quite hazardous in and of itself, as documents uncovered during a class-action lawsuit filed against Merck revealed disturbing plans to neutralize, destroy, and discredit doctors who warned about the dangers of Vioxx.

As reported on CBSNews.com, one e-mail from a Merck executive said about a doctor who disliked prescribing Vioxx: “We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live. . . .”

It’s quite clear that both doctors and the public at large are being manipulated for the sake of corporate profits. The pharmaceutical industry is not really in the business of promoting health; instead it makes money off disease. And when one market begins to dwindle, it simply creates a new one, by inventing yet another disease, usually by “upgrading” a common symptom to disease status. Need convincing? Keep reading. As CNN reported, in order to market its antidepressant Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline hired a PR firm to create a “public awareness campaign” about an “underdiagnosed” disease.

The disease? Social anxiety disorder . . . previously known as shyness.

You may have seen this campaign firsthand; ads stating “Imagine being allergic to people” were distributed widely, celebrities gave interviews to the press, and psychiatrists gave lectures on this new disease in the top twenty-five media markets. As a result, mentions of social anxiety in the press rose from about 50 to more than 1 billion in just two years. Social anxiety disorder became the “third most common mental illness” in the United States, and Paxil skyrocketed to the top of the charts as one of the most profitable and most prescribed drugs here. And that’s just one example among so very many, including the pushes to sell drugs that treat high cholesterol (statin drugs such as Lipitor and Crestor) and acid reflux—two conditions that are much more effectively treated with simple dietary changes.

Physicians, sometimes unwittingly, also play a major role in the massive pharmaceutical deception perpetrated on the public, but their manipulations are often more obscure. Drug reps often give “gifts” to persuade doctors to prescribe the medications that they represent. These drug reps usually have no medical or scientific education. Instead, they’re armed with some incredibly potent persuasion techniques.

Although the medical industry has established rules that limit face-to-face interactions between drug reps and doctors, drug companies influence doctor choices in numerous other ways, including sponsoring medical conferences and sponsoring third-party websites intended to provide “nondenominational” information about new drugs.23 The method of indoctrination most difficult to detect is the “education” that doctors give to other doctors. A pharmaceutical company will pay individual doctors large fees to “educate” their colleagues about the benefits of a particular drug. Here, it’s very easy for the doctor receiving the material to forget that the doctor presenting it is working on the drug company’s behalf and not as an independent, well-educated, appropriate source of objective information.

As I mentioned in the introduction, I was one of their paid shills in the mid-1980s and so have firsthand experience on how it works. The company would pay my travel expenses and give me checks for as much as $5,000 for speaking. That may not seem like much to some people now, but thirty years ago for someone just graduating school with loads of debt, it was a major sum. It is a magnificent system, too, as you may feel that you are doing good and being paid to share your hard-earned knowledge, when the reality is that you are merely feeding the researchers’ studies bought and paid for by the drug companies so they can sell more drugs.

And then there’s the insidious drug industry–sponsored “education” that takes place in medical schools across the United States. For example, out of Harvard’s 8,900 professors and lecturers, 1,600 admit that they or a family member have ties to drug companies that could bias their teaching or research.24 In one year alone, the pharmaceutical industry contributed more than $11.5 million to Harvard for “research and continuing education classes.” 25

This goes on in virtually every medical institution in the United States and is a massively effective way to indoctrinate budding physicians. By influencing the recognized thought leaders of medicine, drug companies can outrageously influence the entire profession—this, combined with the previously discussed marketing efforts, and their political lobbying to change the laws to their advantage. As a patient, you don’t have to fall victim to these tactics. You can learn to see right through the propaganda and stop being deceived by drug company lies and deceptions.

Chances are your doctor, even if he or she has good intentions and a desire to heal, not harm, has fallen prey to pharmaceutical marketing tactics. Most doctors simply do not have the time to research each drug, and they rely heavily on information from their pharmaceutical reps and from other “experts,” that is, doctors who are receiving significant fees to talk about drug treatments.

One of my main goals in sharing this information is to keep you out of the doctor’s office for anything other than preventive screenings and out of the hospital for anything but acute traumas. (Our medical system can be spectacularly effective in these instances.)

You absolutely can take control of your health. It doesn’t have to be in anyone’s hands but your own.

How Did We Get So Sick in the First Place?

The twenty-first century has brought about tremendous progress in technology, transforming culture, the way we communicate, and even the way we think. It’s an exciting, paradigm-shifting time in history. But it’s also a time fraught with lurking dangers.

Developments in technology have impacted our food supply, introducing genetically modified crops, processed foods that offer little or no nutritive value, pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables, and an overreliance on a handful of crops due to government farming policies. On top of these factors, today much of our food is pasteurized, irradiated, fumigated, and sterilized to the point that bacteria—even the good kind, which we rely on for our very existence (more on this in Healing Principle 6)—can no longer survive.

Ironically, the very advances that represent all that is modern in the world—hand sanitizers, treated water, factory farming—have created their own set of diseases. For example, triclosan—an antibacterial chemical used in many soaps and hand sanitizers—has been shown to kill human cells,26 and even the FDA admits it acts as an endocrine disruptor in animals.27 When combined with chlorinated water, it produces chloroform28—a probable carcinogen according to the EPA.29

Scientists are now connecting the sudden increase in neurological disorders and autoimmune disease, and the steadily inclining rates of obesity, with these changes to our food supply and the greater changes in our environment. Although plenty of research is being done searching for “cures,” a pernicious force is working just as hard to perpetuate the very conditions that are making so many people ill: greed.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harmony; Reprint edition (September 27, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1101902892
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101902899
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.17 x 0.7 x 8.01 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #437,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #256 in Ketogenic Diet (Books)
- #1,348 in Healing
- #2,068 in Weight Loss Diets (Books)

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Joseph Mercola

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Dr. Mercola is a board certified family physician that has treated 25,000 patients from around the world. He encourages and educates people about safe and inexpensive nutritional, lifestyle and exercise options to radically reduce their risk of dying prematurely from dangerous drugs and surgeries. He is also the founder of Mercola.com which has been the most visited natural health site on the internet for the last ten years with over 15 million unique visitors every month.

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Daniel Pardi

This book provides very useful information on a subject that is near and dear ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2015

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This book provides very useful information on a subject that is near and dear to my heart: how to live more healthfully, and naturally, in today's world. I am fully in alignment with with the idea that lifestyle strategies should almost always be employed first and proactively to live better and ward off avoidable, chronic disease. While a take a more charitable view of mainstream medicine than Dr. Mercola, A book like this is very needed and useful, and I think it's the perfect book for the right audience.

This book is not intended to be an in-depth treatise on each subject contained within it. Rather, the book does a nice job surfacing key points and key connections without bogging the reader down with information overload, and then provides practical tips on how to follow up on this action. Additionally, throughout the book, resource links are provided for more information on the topic.

Since my expertise lies more with sleep than with some of the other subjects in the book, I will base my book review of the book entirely on the sleep chapter, which contains very sound, very helpful advice. To kick off the chapter, the discussion between lack and sleep and ill health is broached, including the connection between sleep loss and a weakened immune system, metabolic disturbances, as well as putative functions of sleep, like the removal of products of nerve cell function - like amyloid proteins - that if accumulate, could become problematic, inhibiting neuron function and contributing to a variety of age-related cognitive conditions.

Importantly, Dr. Mercola speaks to the often-overlooked connection between sleep and 24-hr light exposure. Why is light exposure important for sleep? Because light is the main synchronizer of your 24 hour biological clock, otherwise known as circadian rhythms. These rhythms are critical for proper biological functioning throughout cells, tissues, organ systems and behaviors in the body. This is an important issues to address because, for example, it's been estimated that we spend almost 90% of our time indoors in the modern world. Our brain receives a light signal that very different than what it received during the course of human evolution. Not only are we not getting enough light exposure during the day, but we’re getting too much light at night, and Dr. Mercola gives strategies on how to address this in the book.
Later in the chapter, Dr. Macola talks about various food and supplement strategies to augment the sound sleep habits he outlines. And in a world where it is difficult to always implement sound lifestyle strategies even when you know what to do, there are times where additional support, whether through self tracking, meditation, tea, body temperature control, and supplements, can all potentially be useful to the right person in the right situation. Therefore, it’s good to know about these strategies should you find yourself in a situation where you need more help getting a good night sleep. Having said that, if these lifestyle strategies does not fully remedy an ongoing sleep issue, I recommend you seek medical advice to evaluate if a sleep study is right for you.

Overall, the book provides a very nice template about how to live more naturally in today's world. I think it's extremely important that information like this reaches far and wide as as so much human suffering and burdensome medical costs can be addressed by living in a more natural manner. This book provides many useful strategies on how to do this, and is well-worth your time to read it.

9 people found this helpful

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Gr8ful Lady

You Need This Book!

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book is a must-read for everyone. I've seen some of the "nay-sayer" comments, but it was clear that they never made it past early chapters. Dr. Mercola gives - yes gives - you the keys to health for you and your family. Many of the foods/products that have been shilled as healthy and good for you simply are not. Dr. Mercola answers so many whys as to different diseases and maladies that have grown to epidemic proportions in recent years and how you don't have to be a victim and even how to come back from some pretty debilitating illnesses.

I am so excited to be able to "take control" of my health in a meaningful way. I will be providing copies of this book to family members and friends who seek natural means toward great health.

I highly recommend his book - it's far more than "common sense." You will be blown away by the incredible information that is yours for the reading. I have it on kindle and audible, but purchased the hard copy to be able to reference items more quickly and refer to (what will become) my highlights.

THANK YOU, DR. MERCOLA!!!

25 people found this helpful

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Joe from Georgia

Great book, with one flaw

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2015

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This is a fine book with one exception—his dislike for grains, pasta, bread and potatoes. Most of the world's population has lived on grains since there's been a world population, and a huge portion of it still does today. Bread was known for millennia as the "staff of life." The French eat tons of it (and invented rich desserts to boot), yet you'll be hard-pressed to find one who is obese. Me hearty Irish ancestors, of course, lived for generations on a diet of potatoes and soda bread. If the pasta and bread Dr. Mercola refers to is the supermarket variety, then I agree it's awful. Fortunately, we live close enough to a Whole Foods Market to buy our bread from there. It's natural, delicious, filling, and healthy. I don't know where Dr. Mercola gets his ideas about grains and potatoes, but the actual experience of millions of people over thousands of years proves him wrong.
Apart from that, however, this is a valuable book. The routines he recommends are not totally effortless, but they're as effortless as any worthwhile endeavor can be. He presents a way to dramatically improve health that fits into the busy schedule of most Americans. His idea of concentrating your food intake into a lesser time frame is worth the price of the book all by itself. It's a far more painless and reliable way to control weight than trying to follow a calorie-counting diet.
Good book. Many great ideas, and generally lives up to its title. Works well in practice, at least for me, even with my high intake of bread and potatoes. Highly recommended.

10 people found this helpful

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Confetti

Truly effortless!

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2015

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I originally downloaded a sample of this book out of curiosity and ended up buying it (Kindle version). Applying the suggestions in this book have made bettering my health easy. In it, he writes to start one suggestion, let that happen for awhile, then add another suggestion and so on. I like that approach of just trying one and making it a habit instead of having nine new things to try to remember and incorporate. As a result of reading this book, I'm drinking more water and have added probiotics and organic greens powder to my morning routine. Although he doesn't push product (which I like), I ended up buying one bottle of his probiotics and one container of his organic greens powder just to see what it would do/how I would feel in a month's time and have been tracking it. I can already tell a difference-- more energy, more "awakeness," and my face looks less puffy around the jawline. I've also found myself drinking less Diet Coke because I just don't have the same cravings for it. I don't know if that's a true correlation; it's just my own experience. This is one book I've found that's a keeper in my Kindle library!

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Mr. Coles

Very easy to read to easy to implement

Reviewed in Germany on October 18, 2021

Verified Purchase

I found the book to be an easy read with simple to implement strategies to improved health. Each point is clearly laid out and fairly easy follow. In some cases it does make you think, I need to buy his other books to find out how to do this or that, but mostly the information is available online. Since reading I've bought multiple supplements, a sun-bed and another book.

Adam John Bigger

Very easy to read and understand with tons of great information

Reviewed in Canada on June 6, 2015

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This book will change your life. Very easy to read and understand with tons of great information. I have read many books on dieting, health and nutrition and this is by far my favourite. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to change their life for the better. After following Dr Mercolas guidelines for three weeks I lost 15 pounds and feel amazing!

14 people found this helpful

Dave F

Well written and overall quite useful

Reviewed in Italy on September 6, 2016

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Well written. Easy to grasp main points and to read through. Overall, I would say it is quite useful Thanks!

cani

Idées intéressantes mais parfois extrêmes ou peu adaptées

Reviewed in France on October 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

Très intéressant mais un peu trop exagéré, extrémiste dans ses préconisations, à certains niveaux, je pense. Le nombre de kilos de fruits et légumes à acheter et consommer chaque jour, le type d'exercice assez violent (peu adapté à une personne âgée ou souffrant de diverses problématiques physiques).

3 people found this helpful

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Lois Pallister

Can you afford not to buy this book and follow its advice?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2015

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I had already recently eliminated wheat from my diet and cut back heavily on rice and potatoes and I've been eating organically certified food since 1995. Since cutting out the wheat I have felt amazing. I am also taking a probiotic with proven effectiveness from a study carried out here in London, and am supplementing with Vit D and am in ketosis which means my body is burning fat for fuel rather than glucose from carbohydrates.
I have lost weight and have been able to stop all medication and have got my blood pressure down from being unbelievably high without the drugs to normal, despite my GP telling me that this would be impossible.

I have still learned much from this great book and I'm looking forward now to incorporating the Active Isolate Stretching to the rest based interval training that I already do but where I choose when to rest and how long for. Just ordered a book on AIS and there are some great videos on YouTube and I know how much I'm going to love doing this and how beneficial it will be.
I am also going to try to incorporate some barefoot walking in the park each day when it's warm enough to do so!

I was also grateful for the reminder to drink more water and to work on getting adequate sleep.
This book is very easy to read and contains great advice to aid us all in living a happy and healthy life.

None of this stuff is difficult.
It may cost a little more than if you don't take supplements and eat cheap non-organic junk food and being proactive by taking responsibility for your own health and well being will always take more time than if you take the 'victim' approach and don't bother to exercise at all and take the drugs dealt out by your GP which only treat symptoms rather than the underlying causes of your problems and also have horrendous side effects.

What Dr Mercola has done here is provide an easy way to incorporate some of the most important aspects of living a life that is rewarded with the greatest feeling you can get in the world, that of great health and well being and once you get used to the changes they really are effortless!

Is it worth the slight investment of time and money?
Well you must decide for yourself but for me it's a no-brainer!

Would I recommend this book to those who want to take responsibility for improving the quality of their life?
Yes. And to those who feel that doing so is too much of a big deal!
It isn't!

You will not be missing out on anything but gaining more than you can imagine and this book provides the perfect starting point to adopting a lifestyle that leads to health, vigour and happiness rather than sticking with one that leads to sickness, misery and depression.
I am a 52 year old foodie and am still loving the delicious home cooked food I eat each day and feel better now than I did when I was 30.
The best part of it all is I know that I will continue to enjoy my life for many years to come. Buy this book and join me :-)

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