Why? a book review

by Pearson Oldmitz

Why? The Question that Could Save Your Life

Robert Brown, DDS

TriMark Press, 2014, 159pp

SO MANY THINGS come to mind. Why is what passes for television news so frustratingly awful? Why is winter so long?  That’s not the kind of reflection Robert Brown has in mind in this slender, read-in-one sitting book. Instead, he writes as a man who has had his own problems with the U.S. medical industry, and now encourages others to follow his lead and ask: why?  Why that medicine? Why that treatment?

Mostly, Brown’s thesis revolves around the very old, yet new again argument that we should eat more wisely and ask more questions of our medical caregivers.  His formula is simple to describe:  some foods cause inflammation, and inflammation causes disease. Eliminate the food and inflammation and you control and perhaps even cure the disease. He lists wheat, gluten, diary and other possible allergens, and includes an easy, no equipment needed, self-administered test for food allergies that I’ve never found in any other nutrition book.

What is interesting about this book,  in a market crammed with nutrition advice books, is what Brown’s book doesn’t do:  there isn’t a single recipe, no ten day or four week plan, no busy work and list keeping to distract the reader. What he does include are a few frightening examples of how medicine-as-big-and-profitable-business may be working against us, not for us.

If you buy Brown’s argument (and this reader does), the book gives enough information for you to begin to work on your own health plan. In that, this book is not really a self-help book, but more of a convincing essay that we need to be more active in our own health care and take responsibility for what goes down our own gullets…and to ask more questions. Always a good thing.

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Pearson Oldmitz is a short story writer and blogger. Friend him on FaceBook  https://www.facebook.com/pearson.oldmitz

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