You the Owners Manual -- How to Tune Our Irreplaceable Engines

"You The Owner's Manual" [Updated and expanded edition] by Michael C. Roizen M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz M.D. is biology, anatomy, and medicine for the lay person. If you watch Oprah, you will recognize Dr. Oz's name, because he is on Oprah's show Much as a car manual tells the owner how to keep the car running like new, Doctors Roizen and Oz wrote this book to show the reader how to take care of his body so it runs well. I have heard Dr. Oz say many times on Oprah that "the human body is a finely-tuned machine". And that is exactly the message in this book: that we have to take good care of our bodies, and also that all the organs work together to make our machine [body] work.

The wonderful thing about this "You The Owner's Manual" is that it is much more enjoyable to read than a car manual, and much more engaging than any other book about the human body. The authors write in simple language, yet I never felt they were talking down to me or "dumbing down" the information. The book is full of "mythbusters" which address popular fallacies and falsehoods. There are easy-to-follow and humorous drawings and cartoons, which help the reader better understand the functions of the human body without trivializing the facts, or downplaying the importance of what the authors are trying to convey.

The most important message I gleaned from reading "You The Owner's Manual": keeping the liver in good shape can help all the other organs and systems working optimally. I also took away from this book a greater understanding of how all the parts of the body work in concert, much like the way the instruments of an orchestra come together to play a symphony. If a car breaks down, you can trade it in for a newer one; you can't do that with your body. You are stuck with the body you have. When it ages, you can't trade it in for a younger model. We all have to take care of the bodies we have! When we neglect a machine, it costs us money; when we neglect our bodies, it costs us our lives. Another lesson learned from "You The Owner's Manual" is this: just as you need to put good fluids in your car, you have to put good foods into your body. Although we can do a lot of damage when we are young and foolish, it's never too late to turn bad habits into good ones. Because even though we can't turn back the clock, Drs. Oz and Roizen tell how to calculate "real age" vs. chronological age. If your real age is higher than your chronological age, it's time to follow the advice in "You The Owner's Manual"!