Customer Reviews

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

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4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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~!

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!

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.....

I have read all of Dr. Domar's books and loved them all, but this is my favorite. I have never followed all of the latest health fads. However, even so, I have always had, in the back of my mind, a little nagging voice saying things like "you never drink your 8 glasses of water each day!" or "you should be exercising one hour each day rather than 30 minutes if you want the most benefit." This book is a great antidote to those concerns. Every time I start questioning whether I have adequately followed some popular health rule, I think of this book and realize that I am "pretty healthy" and am living pretty well. It's freeing. A great read.

If you're getting sick of all the hardcore "rules" of what-you-must-do-now-if-not-sooner to be healthy, this this book will provide some welcome relief. Susan Love and Alice Domar share a refreshing dose of reality which gives us permission to end the maddening pursuit of being Perfectly Healthy (as if!) and enjoy being "Pretty Healthy." Exploring the six essential components of health (sleep, stress, prevention, exercise, nutrition, and relationships), the authors show how "to enjoy each of life's chapters and to do what we _realistically_ can to stay healthy." A fun, informative, and much-needed read, _Live a Little_ provides the prescription for achieving a realistic (vs. obsessive) healthy lifestyle.

I agree that being "pretty healthy " is probably good enough, but I really didn't care for all the personal narratives.
I really didn't learn much from this attempt to engage people concerned with health issues...a waste of time and money.
I expected more from Dr. Love.

I wanted to like LIVE A LITTLE by Susan M. Love M.D. and Alice D.Domar Ph.D in part because it sports a chocolate covered strawberry on the cover. And the subtitle is "Breaking the Rules Won't Break Your Health." I've found Love to be helpful on menopause and an authority on breast cancer, but frankly these authors didn't enlighten me on happiness. The premise of the book-that you don't have to have perfect habits to be healthy enough-might relieve some readers of guilt. But I found it to be too much of a rehashing on the general, oft repeated, health advice for women, just with the addition of a moderate tone.
Particularly unappetizing is the approach towards sex. Each chapter has little quizzes (something I'm generally a fan of) but the most positive statement begins "My sex drive has changed over the years" which is hardly what I'd call live a little. So too the guidelines for medical testing seem overly pro-test-with yearly mammagrams suggested just at the time when these guidelines have been revised down.
Sometimes I wish I'd majored in the history of science in college. I love the way rational belief wars with culture and personal experience. I love that we're motivated by things we just assume are real-really real-and not just temporary cultural assumptions. Health is one of those things, particularly for women, and for women as consumers of health. Is our health really our responsibility, as we're told in article after article, or are our woes part of a public health demographic? At least LIVE A LITTLE doesn't believe we can live forever by jogging and drinking bottled water. The book does debunk the myth that we need to drink eight glasses of water a day. (As well as the belief that we need eight hours of sleep) In fact, it does take a reasonable approach to health information. It just doesn't go far enough beyond the strawberry.
My reviews can also be found on the literary blog Miriasm's Well ([...])

Written by a shrink and a surgeon, Live a Little offers no nonsense, straightforward approach to living a "Pretty Healthy" life. From what to eat to how much exercise we should be getting, this book offers solid insight on how to avoid the media hype that threatens to overwhelm us with fear and inertia. The best parts were those regarding preventative care and how the medical field thrives on more and more unnecessary diagnostic testing. Also intriguing are the major flaws present in all research studies which the book so aptly points out. There are no surprises here. The underlying message seems to be, know thyself, mind and body and start taking responsibility for your own good health. In the meantime, don't forget how to live and enjoy life. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

The authors share their insights into how their lives work. For example, how Susan Love fits exercise into her life - early in the day, still not her favorite activity, but great delight when she has finished it for the day. It has helped me to appreciate the importance of exercise for good health, something I grapple with (mentally) on a daily basis, with infrequent participation! The book is an easy read, not as philosophical as I expected -- more practical information.

I loved this book! It's easy to read. But the doctors include good research about what is most likely to make us healthy. And they remind their readers to Live a Little! We all need to take this advice to heart.