How to make smart health choices

It surprised me no end that NCBI has now hopped on the ebook/online book bandwagon and is offering free books online.  This one, in particular, is a good idea -- however, the people who could benefit from it most are probably going to fall out of the chair from boredom after trying to read it.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK63638/

And that's a real problem.  The well educated can follow their logic and make a lot of use of their information (particularly interesting was their evaluation of research on diets and evaluating which one might be best) but the average person who has been trained by media to read in sound bytes and to "turn off" or "turn away" after the 300 word limit or so. 

And here we reach one the threads of my dissertation -- the information is out there and the "information rich" can find it.  The "information poor" can't access it directly (for example, some of the people I've worked with who have poor reading skills and poor memory retention.  The book is a real gem for "information source points" which can summarize and present it to the information poor.

The graphic at the beginning of Chapter 5 is one that really should be printed out and kept by everyone, asking critical questions such as "what will happen if I wait and watch?" and "How do the benefits and harms weigh up for me?" and "do I have enough information to make a choice" are listed as suggested steps in the process towards making a decision.  Scenarios and anecdotes in each section make this a thought-provoking read.

Recommended.