Review: Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks: A Physician's Advice

HEALTH TIPS, MYTHS, AND TRICKS: A Physician's Advice by Morton E. Tavel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a basic health reference book with a twist. The author, Dr. Morton E. Tavel, MD has solid credentials, and an authoritative background as a practicing cardiologist as well as a medical school professor.

The book is arranged topically in short chapters within sections of tips, myths and tricks that discuss common questions that patients might want to ask of their physician. It is written in a readable conversational style as if he were speaking personally to the reader. Many of the topics addressed provide references to some scientific evidence, so that readers may follow up with further study if they desire to explore the issue further. The amount of scientific jargon however is minimal, and the answers are informative yet understandable.

There are 62 short chapters, and topics included are chosen from standard, common health concerns as well as controversies and hot-button issues. Some highlights are safe weight loss, trans fats and health, coffee, green tea, chocolate, foods to avoid, dangers of sodium, hypertension, red meat, fish, olive oil, red wine, the common cold, vaccines, second hand smoke, pain killers and sleep. Dr. Tavel addresses what he considers to be a number of myths, conspiracy theories, scams, irrational fears.

This could be a good general health reference book for the home library. It is useful for browsing, as opposed to using search engines to ask health questions because there is a large variety of information compiled here in one book.

I read the e-book version, and I do note some formatting issues. The e-book appears to have originally been formatted for the print edition and then converted to the e-book. without completely reformatting, which created some problems with navigation and visual appearance.

Another issue is large areas of blank white space within the chapters, which seem to be where the section/page breaks appeared in the original print version. This sloppy formatting detracts from the overall quality of the book in the e-book version. I have not seen the actual print version, so I don't know how it looks.

Beside these problems, there were some other editing and proofing errors, including run on sentences, poor syntax and errors such as advising the consumption of a quart of olive oil per week, which seems to be quite a large amount. I wondered why a chapter on polygraph tests was included.

All in all, I found this to be useful, informative book. While the content is good, due to the errors and formatting issues noted, I gave it a lower rating.


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Investigation Busts Sellers of Bogus Health Supplements

This just in-- New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman busted several large retail chains selling herbal supplements, including Target, GNC, Walgreens and Walmart. The vendors were ordered to immediately cease sales of bogus herbal supplements.

According to an investigation which was conducted recently by the  NY State Attorney General's office, many nutritional supplements contain cheap fillers such as houseplant and powdered rice.  Upon analysis, investigators found that many products not only were ineffective, but also potentially harmful.  Four out of five products were found to actually contain no herbal ingredients, but instead had worthless fillers including powdered rice, houseplants and asparagus.  The fraudulent products were labeled as Echinacea, Ginseng, St. John's wort, garlic, Ginkgo Biloga and Saw Palmetto.

Schneiderman said, "Mislabeling, contamination and false advertising are illegal." They also pose unacceptable risks to New York families-- especially those with allergies to hidden ingredients."

Nutritional supplements are not required to have FDA approval because they are classified as food, and thus meet less stringent requirements than pharmaceutical products must meet. The products are not required to meet F.D.A. standards because of a loophole in a 1994 law sponsored by Utah Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, who received campaign contributions from supplement manufacturers.

According to the New York Times, the  NY State Attorney General's office had purchased 78 bottles of the leading brands of supplements from a dozen Walmart, Target, Walgreens and GNC stores in New York state.  "Then the agency analyzed the products using DNA bar coding, a type of genetic fingerprinting that the agency has used to root out labeling fraud in the seafood industry… the tests found so many supplements with no DNA from the herbs on their labels but plenty of DNA from unlisted ingredients, said Marty Mack, and executive deputy attorney general in New York. “The absence of DNA does not explain the high percentage of contaminants found in these products,” he said. The burden is now with the industry to prove what is in these supplements.”

Of course these are national chain stores, so the problem products were not only distributed in New York, but nationally. According to Salon, a spokesman for Walgreens said that all of the products will be withdrawn from its stores.  GNC said they stood by the quality of their products, but would be cooperating with the investigation.

This incident reveals that consumers need to be careful about what nutritional products they buy. Unfortunately, since the products are unregulated, the consumer has to beware of cheap products which may not contain what is on the label.

There are companies which do voluntarily adhere to stricter standards of  manufacturing to produce nutritional supplements at pharmaceutical grade.  These companies have submitted their products to consumer-rating agencies such as NSF and consumerlab.com to verify that the bottles actually contain what is on the label.  They offer a potency guarantee that their products do contain the proper ingredients at the amount listed on their label.