Customer Reviews

YOU: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In short, just a very fun and informative book with several worthy goals. For one, it educates your average person in the inner workings of the human body. It does this quite entertainingly through frequent quizzes, trivia, facts, and interesting pictures- for instance the authors use a lot of elf cartoon. Corny, but fun.

Additionally, the book also gives one many helpful tips on how to keep their body running smoother and it is a pretty informative and amusing read that should enhance the well-being of many- especially middle-agers like me who want to learn more about how their bodies work so they can keep it running smoothly in the years to come. Aged readers may also be interested in Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff to keep the shoulder working well- 54% of people over the age of 60 have a torn rotator cuff.

Note: People who have read the first "You The Owner's Manual" will notice additional information on the liver and pancreas, as well as a new workout chapter.

What a fun and important book! Everyone with a body should have a copy.

When I first cracked it open I landed on page 234: Figure 8.1 The Male Dipstick (yes, that's how it's titled). At first glance the full-page illustration of the male reproductive organs appears to be from any science reference book, but then I look again. Mr. Peanut is drawn hanging onto a tubule inside the scrotum.

This kind of silliness permeates "You: The Owner's Manual." The humor and breezy tone makes it a surprisingly easy read.

The first two-thirds of the book covers everything in the human body, from the heart and brain to the lungs and liver. The last third focuses on ways to keep your body healthy. A 70-page chapter called the Owner's Manual Diet has more than 30 recipes, enough for a 10-day trial. The diet isn't so much about losing weight, but about "making you feel better, helping you live younger, and slowing the effects of aging." The following chapter, the Owner's Manual Workout, illustrates some simple exercises.

Throughout the book are fun "Factoids." Did you know that pound for pound, the tongue is the strongest muscle? Also scattered throughout are lots of little quizzes.

Under the dust jacket is a plain red cover.

Here's the chapter list:

1. Your Body, Your Home: Super Health
2. The Beat Goes On: Your Heart and Arteries
3. Do You Mind: Your Brain and Nervous System
4. Motion Control: Your Bones, Joints and Muscles
5. To a Lung and Healthy Life: Your Lungs
6. Gut Feelings: Your Digestive System
7. In Your Trunk: Your Liver and Pancreas
8. Sex Marks the Spot: Your Sexual Organs
9. Common Sense: Your Sensory Organs
10. Sick Sense: Your Immune System
11. This Gland is Your Gland: Your Hormones
12. Hell Cells: Cancer
13. The Owner's Manual Diet
14. The Owner's Manual Workout
15. FAQs

I'm having a very hard time with this book. I've started and stopped reading it about dozen times already in the past 2 weeks. My problem? There is a lot of good information in here (really!) but it gets lost in the constant barrage of sarcasm and jokes inserted by the authors to (apparently) make it "entertaining". For me, the sheer number of jokes starts out as annoying, and finally becomes so distracting that I usually have to put the book down after about 20 minutes.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about from page 176 under a heading of "Mouth":

"The food-consumption process starts right here--in your body's food processor. Though opera singers, politicians, and courtside fans are known mostly for what comes out of their mouths, what makes our mouths so special is how we handle what goes into them. For starters, consider you mouth to be like the guy who buckles you in on a Ferris wheel--it's there simply to prepare the food for the journey."

The paragraph then goes on to describe crocodile teeth and elephant teeth, but I'm so distracted with thoughts of "what do opera singers and Ferris wheels have to do with MY mouth?" that I'm no longer learning, I'm ruminating on low ratio of information-to-jokes in the text. (Out of the 7 sentences in that paragraph, I felt the relevant information could have been boiled down to 2.)

Like I said, the book has a LOT of good information. If you are someone who can filter out all of the "noise", you'll get a lot out of it. However, if you're like me, and find all the sidebars distracting, it's a grind.

There is a reason Dr. Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen write best-sellers--their books are excellent. You: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger, they outdo themselves. This edition has been carefully updated and expanded to teach the reader everything we need to know to keep our bodies healthy and young.

Specifically, the updated version includes a chapter on the liver, new recipes and a new workout. The book also includes a 100 FAQ's from their reader's inquiries.

The book resembles the Dummies in layout and tone and the authors write simply and, at times, with humor. Included are "Factoids" and the like.

The book begins with information on how to achieve superior health. There are chapters on the major organs and how they function, cancer, workouts and recipes.

There is an extensive index, a must for this type of book.The reference book is a must for every library.

By the author of the award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet.

Ordered the book and audio CD at the same time, but the book came in first. I started the book which I found to be a slow read. Then received the CD's (8 hours/7 disc). . . I love them!! I'm able to listen in the car and when I get home, I highlight in the book things that are important to me. This way I don't feel I have wasted time reading sections that don't pretain to me but I have listened to it all. The CD's are narrated by Dr's. Roizen and Oz. I highly recommend both versions.

I LOVE this book!!! Enough that I bought this "improved and expanded version" after having bought the original, and that is rare for me. It is written with a hint of humor and such a plain layman's language that EVERYONE can understand what is going on with their bodies, how they work, every organ in your body, what its job is, how to take care of it, how to protect it, improve its doing the job its meant to do, thus helping one to avoid many ills they could get, and thus less visits to the Dr. or how to better communicate with your Dr. to help them help you. Every home should have this book!!! I believe this is the only book of this kind and so complete for the ANY person. It definitely is NOT a boring read, but written in such a fun and interesting way everyone who wants to understand how their body works or is concerned about how to take care to feel better, would enjoy learning from this book. It has many drawings showing how your internal parts work . I HIGHLY Recommend it!!!

A little bit goofy, a refreshing sense of humour, but not a lot of in-depth information. Good for a teenager, perhaps--but not especially informative for a well-read adult.

When I ordered the book, I did not expect the extent and breadth of information that it contains....I have learned a lot from the information and would recommend it to anyone.

Overall, I learned a good bit of information. But that information is buried in nonsense jokes and weak writing. I feel it was geared at folks who don't read as a hobby. If that was the case, then this book would probably meander along well enough to keep the attention of a non-reader. But I found the style a distraction and found myself wishing they'd drop the want-to-be-your-friend act and just get to the info.

The diagrams were cutesy and wouldn't help much if you were studying for an anatomy exam, but understandable enough to the average person. I did enjoy the paragraphs in the margins with interesting trivia and facts.

This book is a good start if you slept through high school biology (like me) and need a refresher in how the body works. But don't expect anymore then that.

What this book managed to achieve is to lay out relatively dry and droll information in a way to make it interesting, minimally corny, and easy to understand and relate to. That is no easy.

You want to know how much I like this book? It is a pretty large, relatively heavy volume, and I tossed my mystery novels out of the bag and took it with me on a long flight business trip. It's interesting enough that I wanted to read it first. I am about 2/3 through now, but I still have 2 days of trip and a long flight left.

I am really impressed with this book. I've been looking to start making positive changes in my lifestyle to ensure that as I age I can delay health problems that come with it as long as possible. I never like hearing what I should be doing and instead want to understand and believe in something before making significant changes in my life.

Now, if I could just figure out how to convince my husband to read it. I guess I'll have to continue informing him of what I've learned.