The Body: A Guide for Occupants - THE SUNDAY TIMES NO.1 BESTSELLER

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Classic, wry, gleeful Bryson... richly interesting... an entertaining and absolutely fact-rammed book. If it sells hundreds of thousands of copies, like the last one, it will be no bad thing.' Sunday Times Fruit growers use antibiotics to combat bacterial infections in their crops, sometimes even of produce marked “organic.” This means we humans are unwittingly eating antibiotics, rendering them ineffective when we need them for a real disease/infection. Bryson's deadpan wit existed side by side with some very gross descriptions of past medical research. So beware if you're squeamish or planning to eat. Bryson mentioned many scientists in the context of Nobel prize winners, both the worthy and the slighted, those robbed by unscrupulous bosses or by ignorant skepticism. Many of these stories were quite old, but they made me realize that our medical advances have been relatively recent, within the past 60 years or so. If the book has any takeaway, it is that lifestyle is important. Exercises is tremendously beneficial; and inactivity is likewise lethal. A good diet makes a big difference, too, as does avoiding obviously harmful activities like smoking and excessive drinking. Our bad habits in the United States are partially why we lag behind other developed nations in life expectancy. As Bryson also points out, our health system is not particularly good, either, despite the enormous costs involved (several times the prices in other countries). Indeed, the American health system is not only lagging behind other countries, but is actively creating problems. The most obvious example of this is the opioid epidemic, which is largely caused by overprescribing pain medication. And the reason that these medications are only overprescribed in America, it seems, is the unsavory relationship between doctors and drug companies. It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book..where Byrson really shines is in his imaginative glosses on the facts he has collected. Daily Telegraph

All the richness of life is created inside your head. What you see is not what is but what your brain tells you it is, and that's not the same thing at all. The most fascinating chapter to me was about the brain. Humans can truly be idiosyncratic as we don't all see or smell the world the same way. How can we when our individual collection of odorant receptors will lead to differing experiences of smell. And then because of the distance between our optic nerves and brains, the brain forecasts 1/5th of a second in advance. ... photons of light have no color, sound waves no sound, olfactory molecules no odors. ... William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, FRS was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He settled in England in 1977, and worked in journalism until he became a full time writer. He lived for many years with his English wife and four children in North Yorkshire. He and his family then moved to New Hampshire in America for a few years, but they have now returned to live in the UK.

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Bryson takes us on anatomical tour of the body, system by system, dropping sexy names like Pacinian corpuscles and Islets of Langerhans along the way while also giving a bit of history of medicine and medical discoveries (Typhoid Mary and discovery of antibiotics and insulin are a must, and my sheer horror at finally learning why “lithotomy” position which I’ve blissfully said countless times is actually called that, and not to forget Phineas Gage and his frontal lobe injury and the absolute horror of lobotomies and the sheer idiocy of bleeding people to cure all ailments 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️) and ultimately arrives at dangers of over-caloried sedentary lifestyle unsuited for the bodies evolved for hunter-gatherer needs, overtreated for often little to no benefit. In the second or so since you started this sentence, your body has made a million red blood cells." (and used a dozen muscles just to read these words)

If you like Bryson's previous books, you should like this one. It's pop science, and more fun than it is ground-breaking, but as long as you're not planning to use it as your handbook for experimental surgery, then I see nothing wrong with that. Do I recommend reading this? Absolutely. Everyone ought to have a primer on themselves. The benefit here is much more than meets the eye, though. So many new discoveries and outright debunking of myths have made it in this text. Recent ones, too. You come away from this thinking that a lot of people are basically bastards. I won’t spoil the stories, but the person who took credit for Streptomycin fits this category particularly nicely.

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don't smoke or do drugs and drink alcohol moderately As with so much in life, getting the balances right is delicate business. Bryson employs his usual wry and laconic style and applies it to the human body. This isn’t a medical text book, but it is detailed and covers pretty much what you would expect. Bryson does cover the history and development of medicines, surgery and approaches to the body. He also uncovers some of the lesser known pioneers of medicine, those history has forgotten. Bryson tells their stories and uncovers their foibles in an entertaining way. But as the title suggests, outright occupancy usually comes with a rental charge. The bill always comes due.