Review of Health Tips, Myths and Tricks

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If you are interested in debunking some of the myths and claims of health gurus that have not been backed up by science, then you might like to read this book.

You can read the review I wrote for the Online Book Club here:

https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=199804

You can find the book on Amazon here if you wish to purchase it or find out more:

The book was well written and the writer is certainly not ignorant of issues of healthcare since he is a retired physician.

He did open my eyes and made me think more about how to know if something is proven or not.

He gives evidence, or signs, that something is not truly tested or scientific and says how wording often gives it away.

Some things perhaps we should question ourselves.  How can snake oil that may kill people, cure others?

He encourages the reader to be careful about believing every claim that something is a cure when it's not fully tried or tested.

However, the main thing that I found in disagreement with the author were his claims that only things tested through standard methods of science are true.

While testing things are important, we know that not everything that scientists test are necessarily correct.  There are issues with how tests are carried out, sampling sizes, biases and other variables.

For this reason, scientists can re-do tests and find different answers, find different results in general, or reach different conclusions.

Such an approach is not infallible

On the other hand, if enough people have found that something benefits them is that not enough evidence that it will most likely benefit others?

In the past, people did use the method of trial and error and they tested things in this way.

For this reason, there are recordings of peoples such as Hippocrates and Galen who had good medical knowledge, yet they did not follow the modern scientific methods.

It was based on tradition and knowledge passed down

Isn't this still knowledge?

Isn't the experience that they have with using certain treatments in the end tested, although not in a laboratory?

So I think the idea of something not being tested is too narrow.

Also, so long as a product does not promise a cure and does no harm then people should have the right to choose and try things themselves.

Therefore, this book did seem to be against any natural or unconventional method of treatmsng, which had politely been called "quackery."

Therefore, the book is an enlightening read but probably will lead and to decide, are they with the conventional method of medicine or the alternative and natural method?

The author does not seem to hold that you can be both.