'Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer' #nonfiction

Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Something about Barbara Ehrenreich's prose makes me gobble these books down like a snack-sized bag of potato chips.

This book can stand alone, or it could be thought of as a follow-up to her book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Reaching back into her training as a cellular biologist, Ehrenreich touches on the "wellness" industry in the U.S., as opposed to the health care system. She mentions Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop, but the point of this book is not to take down the "wellness" industry, no matter how woo-woo some of its propositions may be.

Rather, it is to examine the ways in which human beings trick ourselves into thinking our actions can have an effect on how long we'll live and how healthy we'll be in old age. The book focuses on Americans, not because Americans are necessarily more deluded and unhealthy than other peoples, but more to narrow the scope of her investigation. Ehrenreich systematically debunks the things we think we know about healthy aging, such as the necessity of taking calcium supplements to build stronger bodies to ward off osteoporosis. She looks at the way we medicalize aging when some "symptoms" of aging may be an inevitable part of being human.

Death is also discussed in this book. I learned that among the many tiny creatures that may feast on me after I die, there may be butterflies. I find this oddly comforting; I don't think I'll mind being food for butterflies. It also reminds me of an old line from The Simpsons: "Nobody ever suspects the butterfly."

By David Shankbone - David Shankbone (own work), CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1615963

I checked out this book from my local library using the Libby app and was not obligated to review it in any way.

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