Review by cnrd6812 -- Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks

[cnrd6812]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks" by Morton E Tavel, MD.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Arranged into three sections, (Tips, Tricks, and Myths), the book Health Tips, Tricks and Myths, written by Morton Tavel, MD, is a book of health information and advice written with the objective of helping readers navigate the labyrinth of health scams and bad information that prevents many people from making healthier life choices. Though its various typos and formatting errors suggest it is in about the middle stages of editing, it nevertheless reads like a compendium of reasonable advice from the perspective of a career physician with years of book learning and experience. This is both its weakness and its strength.

As someone who occasionally reads general information and advice books on a variety of topics, one of the first things I look for when scanning the pages and deciding whether to buy is whether the author sounds like he or she knows what they are talking about. In this test, I can say that Dr. Tavel succeeds without any reservations. Though my copy of the book still appeared to be in about the middle stages of editing, he comes across as simultaneously no-nonsense and scholarly in his presentation of each topic, and I feel that readers who are looking for a simple “this is the answer to your question” type of book will probably appreciate this aspect of Dr. Tavel’s advice. Thus, I can say that he basically succeeds in the mission that he sets for himself in the introduction and achieves a useful guide to common health concerns in the process, which, strictly speaking, makes this book technically good.

But notice those qualifiers. While reading, I frequently got the feeling that Dr. Tavel focused his energies so much on trying to recreate the educated counseling environment of a doctor’s office, that he simply forgets that he’s writing a book. To clarify: when the average person spends money on the education and wisdom of a medical professional, they are essentially buying a service, in the same way that someone who takes their car in for maintenance is buying a service, which is to say that they are less interested in the knowledge the professional has to offer them than the practical results of that knowledge. A doctor consultation is less about “use your many years of education to illuminate the problematic nature of the American diet for me,” and more about “tell me how I avoid having diabetes and heart disease.”

In essence, the latter service is a form of counseling, but the former, which this book undertakes, is argument. Not argument in the popular sense, where people are calling each other names and shouting, but in the rhetorical academic sense, where one assumes the task of trying to convince an audience of some reasoned position. This requires strategy. It is not enough merely to give your audience a digested conclusion and call it a day, they must be lured into a conversation and made to drop their intellectual defenses so that they can then be lead towards your position. By contrast, Dr. Tavel seems to write with the assumption that the reader is already prepared to accept his positions as fact by virtue of the fact that he or she has purchased the book, and therefore he can deliver his wisdom to them as if it were gospel.

To offer what I felt was the most glaring example, in chapter 56 he deals with the topic of dietary supplements, which, at its core is pretty solid advice, but along with that advice he also ventures the assertion that most of the potential harm of dietary supplements could be reduced with a bigger and stronger FDA, empowered with thoroughly thought out regulatory laws. The reason I feel this chapter is the most glaring example is because he inadvertently wanders into a logical contradiction. He argues first that the basic problem is that existing law prevents the FDA from using its regulatory powers effectively against supplement manufacturers, but then on page 240 he offers this bit of information:

In 1994, after much political debate, The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994 classified “dietary supplements” as “anything” that supplements the diet—a nebulous concept indeed. This act actually worsened the situation by increasing the amount of misinformation that can be directly transmitted to prospective customers.

In other words, the solution to the problem of dietary supplements is a bigger FDA with more regulations, but the last time the government enhanced the FDA, the regulatory act turned out be harmfully vague to the extent that the FDA was incapable of acting as intended! To be fair to Dr. Tavel, I, like most readers, come to this text with my own personal bias, in this case in favor of smaller government and less regulation, so I am bound to be somewhat less hospitable to his argument than many of his readers might be. Though this also points to the problem I’m describing: because Dr. Tavel views his arguments as wisdom, he fails to see how they are really political arguments, and because of this, he fails to structure them as persuasive political arguments, which leaves him exposed to apparent flaws in his thinking.

Had this been the only example of such a failure, it might not have damaged the presentation of the information on offer so much, but as it happens, advocacy for increased government regulation related to health concerns is a recurring theme of this book, to the extent that it could be said to have a political subtext. Which is all the more reason why the author should have focused on structuring his advice around a solid rhetorical strategy. Speaking personally, I have no problem engaging ideas with which I disagree, but poorly presented ideas cause me to question the credibility of their author, which is unfortunate given that this book is driven primarily by its author’s credibility.

Nor is this problem limited to political bias. For example, in chapter 2, “Eat a Good Breakfast: Was Mother Right or Wrong?” he frames the discussion around a very traditional middle-class image of the mother as housewife and caretaker of her children, necessarily evoking images of classic sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver and Happy Days. In the context of a doctor’s office, this tactic would likely come across as familiar and safe; the doctor as icon of tried and true traditional wisdom using an image lifted directly from traditional Americana so as to make himself less clinical. But in the context of an argument about whether one should take time to eat breakfast, this tactic firmly aligns his advice with a narrowly specific type of white middle class experience, one that conjures up potentially uncomfortable associations with class division and the history of racial prejudice. Ironically, the position he assumes seems like it would be least popular with the health conscious and college educated twenty and thirty-somethings who would be most likely to identify with his political leanings, in particular those with a feminist background. This seems especially harmful to his project when one considers that this is only the second chapter, at a stage of the text when the average reader would still be scanning pages deciding whether or not to buy, and the real tragedy is that this faux pas could easily have been averted by simply thinking of his project in tactical rather than medical terms.

Despite having said all that, however, I still stand by my initial claim that this is basically a good book, at least in the sense that it fulfills its initial promise to the reader, and the fact that it is still in the editing process leaves some hope that possibly Dr. Tavel might revise what he has written with respect to sound rhetorical strategy. As it is, however, I find myself informed by this book, but not convinced by it. Probably the most important advice I could offer to Dr. Tavel is the following: “snake oil” doesn’t persist in American society because of bad medicine, but because of good salesmanship. It is marketed by people who don’t bother with real medical knowledge because they know they can push sales with their superior knowledge of people, and that even a terrible product will sell like hotcakes with the right presentation. When bad salesmen challenge good salesmen, they usually lose, even if they have the superior product. Taking all these things into account, I rate this book at 2 out of 4 stars; If I could, I would give it two and a half out of four the quality of the information on offer, but between two and three, I lean towards two on account of the rhetorical errors already discussed, as well as the incomplete editing.

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Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks
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Like cnrd6812's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Jeremie Mondejar]

Nice review, I also reviewed this book. I found it helpful and give me tips on my diet. Although ,there are some instances that I disagree. Thanks for that.

[Donatelloo]

I guess it's time to take health seriously and read this novel