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

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.

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

this is the most exceptional book i have ever read for health care and understanding of how the body utilizes food etc. easy and fun to read.

You learn so much from this book its a must read get it for anyone you know. It has alot of things in here you should know about. Higly recommended!!

"How Well Do You Know Your Body?" begins this enlightening 544-page book. It continues with how blood is pumped throughout your body, how your brain works, how your body moves, how you breathe, how food is digested, how your immune system works, and how sexual and sensory organs work. This updated edition of the book includes the quiz along with a new chapter on the liver and pancreas, which describes the function and purpose of each. The authors also debunk popular myths about the body.

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

This book is both instructive and entertaining. It includes a large (70-page) chapter on diet, which has over 30 recipes. The diet really emphasizes keeping your body healthy and young. The book also has a 24-page chapter, "Owner's Manual Workout", which provides easy-to-do exercises. This is a great book that makes understanding the human body accessible to those without a degree in physiology. I also recommend [[ASIN:097974590X THE 3:00 PM SECRET: Live Slim and Strong, Live Your Dreams]] and The 2007 Second Expert Report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective..