Special Report

You : The Owner’s Manual


Written by Mehmet Oz, Michael F. Roizen
Genre: Non-fiction
Published in March 2007
361 pages


Do you know your body structure and function well? Most ordinary people don’t know about it in detail, while others are unconcerned about it if they feel healthy. Moreover, some people think that diseases should only be treated by doctors, which is a big delusion. We need to destroy this prejudice to protect our body from diseases.

Since the ‘well-being’ trend emerged, many books and magazines related to health have been published. Also, in national TV programs, we can easily locate a lot of information related to health. Consequently, many ‘healthy’ foods are being recommended and introduced in our society. As a result, modern people are erudite on health information. However, only a few people can answer the question: “Are the things recommended as good foods really essential for our body?” This book explains how our body is composed, how each component interacts in our body, and how each part of our body performs its work. By understanding these processes, we can learn how our body gets diseases. Also, we can find specific important information relevant to ourselves.

The contents of this book are the heart and blood vessels, the brain and nervous system, bones, joints, muscles, lungs, digestive organs, reproductive organs, sensory organs, hormones, cancer, suitable diets for your own body, and essential information about health that everyone should know. Also, we can learn about the components of the body and specific notions easily because it explains concepts alongside interesting pictures.

After I read this book, I became interested in cancer and digestive organs. Nowadays, more and more people get cancer, and we have identified more kinds of cancer too. It explains about the birth of cancer cells, types of cancer, conquest cancer, strong nutrients to cancer, and so I was able to learn a lot about cancer. Particularly in the section about the birth of cancer cells, I was interested because it explained the process using cartoons. In the section on digestive organs, it explains about the throat, stomach, gall, rectum and intestines in detail. The part on ‘how to manage our stomach in daily life’ was very useful, and I realized that my daily eating habits are dangerous for my body.

Through this book, I discovered how complicated our body is and how we need to manage it for our long-term health. I think that we should not rely on doctor to cure our problems, and instead we have to understand our body and how to prevent problems from happening in the first place. Dr. Dean Ornish (adviser of President Clinton) said, “If you read this book, it’s like graduating from a respectable medical college.” In our life, nothing can be more important than our health, and so I highly recommend this book to protect our body from diseases.