Listen free for 30 days

  • Hype

  • A Doctor's Guide to Medical Myths, Exaggerated Claims, and Bad Advice - How to Tell What's Real and What's Not
  • Written by: Nina Shapiro MD, Kristin Loberg
  • Narrated by: Nina Shapiro
  • Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
  • 1.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Hype cover art

Hype

Written by: Nina Shapiro MD, Kristin Loberg
Narrated by: Nina Shapiro
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $31.97

Buy Now for $31.97

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018

An engaging and informative look at the real science behind our most common beliefs and assumptions in the health sphere

There is a lot of misinformation thrown around these days, especially online. Headlines tell us to do this, not that - all in the name of living longer, better, thinner, younger.

In Hype, Dr. Nina Shapiro distinguishes between the falsehoods and the evidence-backed truth. In her work at Harvard and UCLA, with more than twenty years of experience in both clinical and academic medicine, she helps patients make important health decisions everyday. She’s bringing those lessons to life here with a blend of science and personal stories to discuss her dramatic new definition of “a healthy life.”

Hype covers everything from exercise to supplements, diets to detoxes, alternative medicine to vaccines, and medical testing to media coverage. Shapiro tackles popular misconceptions such as toxic sugar and the importance of drinking eight glasses of water a day. She provides simple solutions anyone can implement, such as worrying less about buying products labeled organic or natural, and more about skipping vaccines, buying into weight-loss fads, and thinking you can treat cancer through diet alone.

This book is as much for single individuals in the prime of their lives as it is for parents with young children and the elderly. Hype provides answers to many of our most pressing questions, such as:

  • Are online doctor ratings valuable, and what conditions can you diagnose online?
  • What’s the link between snoring and ADHD?
  • What do “Doctor Recommended” and “Clinically Proven” mean?
  • Do “superfoods” really exist?
  • Which vitamins can increase your risk for cancer?
  • Do vaccines introduce toxins into the body?
  • What’s the best antiaging trick of the day that’s not hype?
  • Can logging 10,000 steps a day really have an impact on your health?

Never has there been a greater need for this reassuring and scientifically backed reality check.

©2018 Nina Shapiro (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

What listeners say about Hype

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 1 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 1 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

A Book Full of Myths

I wasn't impressed with this one. I appreciate the goal, and I like how Dr. Shapiro is rational and evidence-based, but I don't think she does a good job of explaining the information or reaching the correct conclusions.

For instance, near the beginning of the book, she lists how we're most likely to die in each decade of our lives. In the first few decades, the leading cause of death is accidents. Her conclusion, then, is to worry most about avoiding accidents, less about other aspects of our health. But most people don't die young, and if we aren't managing other aspects of our health, we risk running into more problems in our later decades. It's almost like saying, "You don't need savings when you're working. You only need them when you retire. So worry about your savings when you're seventy!"

Some of this book seems incorrect, too. At one point, the author claims that people with a genetic predisposition for heart disease can be just as healthy as everyone else if they live a healthy lifestyle. That's a nice message to hear. I wish it were true. I have a genetic predisposition for heart disease—familial hypercholesterolemia. I meet all the requirements for exercise (strength training + cardio), I maintain a healthy body-fat percentage (11%), a healthy amount of muscle mass, and I eat a healthy diet. In fact, my heart specialist told me that I've done the best job of managing the condition that he's ever seen. But no matter what I do, I still lack the gene required to regulate and remove cholesterol from my blood. I still have double the risk of suffering from a heart attack.

Dr. Shapiro also says that obesity isn't unhealthy, then goes on to talk about how visceral fat is unhealthy. That doesn't make any sense. Obese people have more visceral fat. If visceral fat is unhealthy, you'd think that obesity would worsen health. Plus, in another chapter, she explains how being overweight can cause a variety of cancers. What's going on here?

In another section, she says there's no such thing as "muscle food." Her reasoning is that our bodies don't magically add the amino acids we eat to our muscle tissue. But, uh, yeah, our bodies can indeed use the amino acids we eat to build muscle. In fact, eating a meal that's rich in protein will cause a few hours of increased muscle-protein synthesis. And diets rich in protein (which break down into amino acids) really do help people build more muscle. This is true with or without exercise, though obviously exercise helps, and resistance training (such as lifting weights) helps most of all.

Finally, she argues that sugar is the cause of obesity, not fat. This argument is flawed because it assumes that obesity is caused by a single macronutrient. In reality, if people eat more calories than they burn, they'll gain weight. Both sugar and fat contain calories. So does protein. So does alcohol. You can gain weight by eating too much of any of those sources of energy. Most people don't gain weight by eating macronutrients in isolation, though. Think of foods like chocolate, cake, chips, and donuts—foods that contain a mix of both fat and sugar. Those are the foods that tend to be the easiest to overeat.

Plus, seafood contains fat. Fruits contain sugar. Most people don't get fat by eating seafood and fruits. So it's not the macronutrients that are the problem. It's the fact that people burn fewer calories in their sedentary lifestyles, eat processed foods that taste great and aren't very filling, have an abundance of food readily available to them, enjoy snacking while watching TV, and so on. The reason people eat too much isn't so simple. The problem isn't just "sugar."

Maybe the medical information in this book is great. I have no idea. That's not my area of expertise. But when it comes to diet and exercise, this is the sort of information that confuses people, making it harder for them to get and stay healthy.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!