About book The End Of Illness. David B. Agus With Kristin Loberg (2012)
Too many words wasted to say things that can be said with few. Even after all those wasted words, the book does not offer much clarity on anything really. Vitamins, statins and aspirin take up a lot of space in the book. Dr Agus favours the last two. Certainly the title is too strong for what the book actually offers. He also delves a lot into history, which is all good to know but I'm not sure how that will help a lay reader put an end to his or her illness. I have a background in medicine, so I was OK with all the technical terms being used in book but I don't think it will be an easy read for someone who is not. It is informative but there are better books that give you the same information [probably more] in a more lucid way. Since it is written by an oncologist, the book also involves a lot about cancer, how it happens and how it is treated. The 2 stars are only for the chapters where he stresses about the importance of early testing to prevent diseases. And why it's important to inform your doctor about every symptom/sign you notice without judging whether it is worth telling him or not. Boy, do I have some strong opinions on this book.What a disappointing read! With a title like this and an introduction that promises to turn everything you've ever read/known/heard about health upside down, I was expecting to be blown away by new, potentially controversial information about what causes illness. I found very little of the sort. I'll start with the good, though: Agus sets forth a few intriguing frontiers of modern medicine that I wasn't aware of--for example, he does a good job outlining the field of proteomics, the study of proteins, which are dynamic and constantly changing, unlike DNA, which is static. Certainly, the possibilities contained in the future of this field are exciting ones, and Agus' passion for and faith in the future of drug therapies, proteomics and genetics is palpable throughout the book. On pg. 259, he writes, "The marriage of technology and medicine will be one of history's most fruitful unions."I respect his message of empowering individuals to be more proactive in their own healthcare, to work more collaboratively with their physicians, to become educated and stay skeptical of the many conflicting studies and inflammatory headlines surrounding what's supposedly good or bad for our health. He does a good job pointing out how skewed and inconclusive these studies often are, and how the media can quickly twist a poorly designed study or experiment into "facts" about what's healthy.However, after alerting his readers to the danger of falling prey to this sort of information, Agus spends most of the book spouting out his own versions of it. He discusses the difference between causation and correlation, then repeatedly cites studies or hypotheses that may well be purely correlative, but encourages the reader to then accept his ideas as truth. He uses growing BMI rates as a sign of how unhealthy our society is becoming; I wouldn't disagree that our society is becoming unhealthier overall, but I think BMI is a poor barometer with which to measure it. Because muscle weighs more than fat, and BMI does not take body composition (fat vs. muscle) into consideration, it's one of the poorest measurements of "health" ... and that's assuming that being overweight CAUSES disease, rather than just being CORRELATED to it.He makes several rather radical claims throughout the book--exercising for more than an hour per day is detrimental to your health; everyone over the age of 40 should be on statins (e.g. cholesterol-lowering drugs like Lipitor or Crestor)--without including any actual information or studies to prove, let alone even support, this information. He spends the majority of the book discussing how different doctors and research scientists have arrived at polar opposite conclusions on similar subjects (e.g. is Vitamin E supplementation a good idea?) and every other paragraph concludes with, "This is too complex for us to really understand ... " yet he heralds technology and further studies/experimentation as the solution to everything. I found this a little confusing, given how many examples he provides of the billions of dollars being thrown into studies/experimentation that have done nothing so far but yield conflicting results (often made murky by profitable interests). He encourages everyone to kneel at the almighty altar of genetics testing, while admitting he founded a genetics testing company. Good on him for the transparency, but it certainly didn't foster my 100% trust in the benevolence of his recommendations. I will admit that I approached his book with a bias against genetic testing, but was willing to listen to "the other side" and be convinced of its merits; I consider myself an open-minded person who appreciates a good debate that challenges my understanding of the world; I have allowed my mind to be changed by many arguments made for cases I originally did not agree with, or understand. However, the most compelling argument he seemed to muster for genetic testing (at least, at this point in time) is, "If you knew that your personal risk for having a heart attack in your life was 90 percent, you'd probably do everything you could to treat your heart well." True ... but I don't need a genetics test to tell me to treat my body the best I possibly can; I'm already motivated to do that, because I feel better in my day-to-day life when I treat my body well. On page 79, he quotes the statistic that 73% of breast cancer is genetic, 27% is environmental. Where does he come up with this number, which contradicts every other study or estimate I've ever read on the subject? He credits his source as Navigenics, his own genetics testing company. Hmm ... then he writes that obesity is 67% genetic and 33% environment. Again, where does these numbers come from? Especially in a case like obesity which IS so clearly related to diet, does that 67% genetic stat take into account that our eating habits (environmental) are most heavily influenced by the families we were raised in? Seems to be this would be a very difficult statistic to put a number on, given the causation/correlation and nature/nurture debates, yet Agus presents these percentages in a pie-chart form he expects his readers to take at face value.He criticizes vitamin supplementation because it's deriving nutrients from artificial sources, then says one of the major reasons that we don't need to supplement with vitamin D, for example, is because most milk, juices and cereals are already fortified with it. As far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), vitamin D does not occur "naturally" in milk, juices or cereals; vitamin fortification in processed foods is just as artificial as taking a pill. Although I'm not really a proponent of vitamin supplements, his reasoning against them didn't quite ring true for me.On page 185-187, he criticizes blending and juicing fruits, because he says that doing so creates oxidation and causes foods to "degrade into chemicals we don't yet understand the effects of." I was curious how blending a fruit would chemically transform it any differently than chopping it up with a knife on a cutting board, or chewing it thoroughly in our mouths before swallowing it, which no doubt would also "create oxidation" ... but Agus did not address this. Instead, he concludes the section with, "I hope you're not in a semi-panic and thinking about what this means for other kitchen staples such as food processors, blenders ... Remember what I said in this beginning of this book: a lot of of my musings are merely exercises in thought." I'm sorry, but what a ridiculous cop-out for a doctor to make in a book that spends so much energy encouraging readers to be more discerning when they read that something is inherently good or bad for their health! Yet, at the end of the chapter, he includes the following "Health Rule: Don't trust anything that comes out of a blender, juicer or glass jar." What kind of a rule is that, if it's based on nothing more than his own personal, untested "exercise in thought"?Personally, much of what Agus wrote just didn't resonate with me, especially when he makes sweeping claims about all of humanity. He writes, "We fail to eat well most of the time unless the fear of ill health and the desire to lose weight are great enough to make us choose quinoa over country-fried steak." Hmm. I don't appreciate being told that my food choices are either fear-based or vanity-based; perhaps I simply like the taste of quinoa better than country-fried steak. Perhaps I like the energy I feel after eating a plant-based meal more than I do the lethargy I feel after eating greasy animal products. He doesn't seem to take this into account, and just assumes that the only thing that will incentivize everyday people to make healthy decisions is the fear that a genetic predisposition to a particular disease might inflict.I don't doubt the sincerity of Agus and his mission to reduce disease rates in our nation. But I felt that this book read primarily like a rambling textbook advertisement for his genetics company than the revolutionary read its title seemed to promise.
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Important insight with practical down to earth tools for better health
—maxwell3094
This book is worth the two weeks it will take to read.
—rach94
