Live a Little!: Breaking the Rules Won't Break Your Health [Hardcover]

Susan M. Love (Author), Alice D. Domar Ph.D. (Author), Leigh Ann Hirschman (Author), Nancy L. Snyderman M.D. (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2009

Later to bed, munching some fries, makes a girl pretty healthy and wise. . . .

Yes, it’s true—more or less. Why? Women do need to eat healthier, exercise, get adequate sleep, and take preventive health care seriously, yet it’s equally important for them to relax. Relax, take a breather, and give up trying to follow the narrowly prescribed health “rules” that are constant sources of unhealthy stress and guilt.

In Live a Little!, women finally get a long-overdue dose of realism about what’s truly healthy and what’s mostly hype. Susan Love and Alice Domar take on the health police, whose edicts make us feel terrible when we don’t get eight hours of sleep or eat the maximum daily serving of veggies. Most important, they remind us of a forgotten truth: Perfect health is not achievable.

Breaking down the prevailing health “musts” in six areas—sleep, stress, preventive care, exercise, nutrition, and personal relationships—these doctors, with a little help from the other experts of BeWell, cut to the heart of these topics and give us realistic guidelines for living a healthy enough life, one that also includes laughter, relaxation, and a commonsense attitude about being pretty healthy.

To learn more health truths and whittle down your overblown expectations of yourself, open this book. Using science combined with these experts’ surprisingly refreshing opinions, Live a Little! shows you how to be healthy without driving yourself crazy!

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* If a surgeon (Love) and a psychologist (Alice Domar) specializing in women’s health can be intimidated by all the do’s and don’ts that are said to be gospel in the women’s-health bible-according-to-popular-media, what about the rest of us? Take note, and do not be frightened off by the first paragraph of the first chapter of this highly approachable little resource—there is hope. Love, Domar, and company insist there is not only a safe, sensible middle ground that is a lot bigger than we have been led to believe but there is a lot of information that can just be chucked right out the window, because many studies that prove this or that may be made up of whole cloth. It isn’t uncommon, they say, for corporations with vested interests in something to fund a study that endorses their products and then send out press releases to starved-for-content media people. With that in mind, Love and Domar debunk some prevalent health myths that the general public has swallowed for years. On subjects ranging from sleep to stress, they offer quizzes as guides to determine where one places on a healthy lifestyle continuum. The extra value in this value-added tome arises from the reasoned and reasonable methods proposed for maintaining a healthy life that a person might also actually enjoy. --Donna Chavez

Review

"If a surgeon (Love) and a psychologist (Domar) specializing in women’s health can be intimidated by all the do’s and don’ts that are said to be gospel in the women’s health bible-according-to-popular-media, what about the rest of us? Love, Domar, and company insist there is not only a safe, sensible middle ground that is a lot bigger than we have been lead to believe, but there is a lot of information that can just be chucked right out the window, because many studies that “prove” this or that may be made up of whole cloth. The extra value in this value-added tome arises from the reasoned and reasonable methods proposed for maintaining a healthy life that a person might also actually enjoy."--*STARRED* Booklist

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Crown Archetype (December 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307409422
• ISBN-13: 978-0307409423
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #816,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Such a breath of fresh air~!, January 1, 2010

By 

Jane Brockman "Diaph" (Santa Monica, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Live a Little!: Breaking the Rules Won't Break Your Health (Hardcover)

Finally, we are advised to use our common sense (as the authors say, no else lives in your body), live with moderation, and live a lot! (Despite the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and much of the medical profession.)

Honest and sometimes very funny. What? Maybe we don't need annual physicals? What? A frank discussion of mammograms and CT scans? What? We may not need 8 hrs. of sleep? What? We should look to who has funded the study before swallowing it hook, line and sinker?

Sleeping, eating ('beyond blueberries), exercise, relationships and more. If, as the authors say, Pretty Healthy is a worthy goal (and more than that may not increase our longevity), chances are, many more of us can achieve it.

Happy 2010~!

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't match promise of the title, January 10, 2010

By 

Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Live a Little!: Breaking the Rules Won't Break Your Health (Hardcover)

When a prominent health provider attaches her name to a book, people pay attention. The title of the book and the promises on the cover were intriguing. I was hoping to find a corrective to the medical party line.

If you never read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal health sections, much of this book may come as a revelation. But nearly everything seemed familiar - a rehash of what you can read online or in the top quality news media. The recommended guidelines on testing and exams are probably what you'd get from most mainstream medical sources.

The closest the authors come to challenging the establishment is when they refer to a woman who was told she would have to delay a test. The woman camped out in the doctor's office, prepared to stay all day. She got the test in an hour.

The other problems with the book come from trying to make complex information more accessible to the public. For instance, in evaluating medical studies, we are advised that a study with 100 people probably should be taken more seriously than a study that followed 5 people. That's usually true, but we need to be warned that huge studies with hundreds of thousands of people can report significant correlations that happen by chance. Many studies purporting to show the effect of drugs fit this model.

As an avid exerciser, I was confused by the authors' distinction between fitness and exercise. How do you get fit and stay fit if you don't exercise? Sure, some exercise happens naturally through gardening or housework, but that's still exercise. The section on weight includes a little quiz that might be suitable for Glamour Magazine; apparently the authors believe that an aversion to weighing oneself is somehow associated with eating junk food and living an unhealthy life.

The least helpful parts of the book come when the authors venture away from medicine and into lifestyle. For example: Not enough friends? Hook up with friends you've lost and consider joining a church, they say. These suggestions are irresponsible and, in my opinion, offensive. Some friendships naturally die as people move in new directions and outgrow each other. Clinging to outdated friendships can be toxic to your mental health. Joining a church is fine if you actually support the church's values and fit into their group. But being disconnected is a much more complex phenomenon that can't always be solved by simplistic advice to "just join something."

But the worst part of the book is that it's just not especially helpful and doesn't live up to its promise. I much prefer the books by Christiane Northrup, also a board-certified MD but one who dares to question the system. To take just one example, she doesn't give cute little quizzes on weight; she comes right out and questions the need to get on a scale in a doctor's office. Right on!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful....Reassuring, December 31, 2009

By 

bookcrazy (Southern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live a Little!: Breaking the Rules Won't Break Your Health (Hardcover)

An excellent book for the worrywart. Trusted women's physicians give the honest truth about all the health "hype" and guilt plaguing women. It was such a RELIEF to read the commentaries and advise. For ladies who are sick and tired of counting every calorie, minute of exercise, hour of sleep, and constantly scheduling every "diagnostic" medical test under the sun (and then worrying sick about results)...this is the book.

I'm giving this as gifts.....