An Illustrated Guide to Personal Health

Health issues are an inescapable part of life—but by preparing for them, you can fend them off longer and handle them better when they do arise.

Offering eye-opening insight in a surprisingly lighthearted way, An Illustrated Guide to Personal Health teaches you how to manage your own health rather than depend on doctors and medicine—which often only narrowly addresses your overall well-being.

Skirting the typical fitness and dietary solutions, this guide provides forty common-sense practices you can incorporate into your regular routine to improve your resilience, reduce your stress, and ensure you will live healthier and happier for many years to come. With unexpected chapter titles like “Give Your Fork a Rest,” “Let Kids Play in the Dirt,” and “Don’t Take Multivitamins,” this self-help manual sets itself apart from the typical tips most health books offer, while still supporting its collection of timeless and innovative directives with citations from the medical field.

Health, wellness, and happiness go hand in hand—and only you can form the habits that will ensure you experience all three. Start learning how to improve your life today.

In a world full of “miracle” cures, misleading pseudoscience and rampant health hucksterism this book is a little gem of simple wisdom and sound science, written in a language that is welcoming and entertaining. Even after more than 2 decades in the health field I learned some things I did not know; and I will never use the hot air dryers in the bathrooms again! Jon Robison PhD, MS. - Co-author of: The Spirit and Science of Holistic Health and How To Build a Thriving Culture at Work.

Since I met Tom Emerick in the early 1980s in Cleveland, he has always innovatively combined an acute focus on what's best for patients and on costs. When I first met him, he was innovating by contracting with selected hospitals and implementing what came to be known as PPOs. His list of innovations in health care benefits at Walmart and elsewhere is very long. But to understand Tom, you also need to read what some employees wrote him: "Thank you for saving my husband's life." "Thank you for finding the right treatment for my daughter." "Our family will never forget you." Charles Weller, Esq. Principal, Patient Value LLC

Tom is a genuine expert on population health. The book he and I coauthored, Cracking Health Costs, was aimed at benefit, hospital, and insurance executives. Tom’s new book, An Illustrated Guide to Managing Your Health, takes many of the same principles we wrote about in Cracking Health Costs and converts them into a very readable digest for consumers. An Illustrated Guide to Managing Your Health provides a helpful guide to what you can to do keep yourself healthy. Tom describes how doctors are good at treating illnesses, but only you can really control your own wellbeing and healthiness...and no wellness vendor can help you do that. An Illustrated Guide to Managing Your Health is an excellent read. Al Lewis is a population health expert, author of “Why Nobody Believes the Numbers: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction in Population Health Management” and “Surviving Workplace Wellness…: With Your Dignity, Finances and (Major) Organs Intact. “