Too Much of a Good Thing

How Four Key Survival Traits Are Now Killing Us

By: Lee Goldman

Narrated by: Dan Woren

The dean of Columbia University's medical school explains why our bodies are out of sync with today's environment and how we can correct this to save our health.

Over the past 200 years, human life expectancy has approximately doubled. Yet we face soaring worldwide rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, mental illness, heart disease, and stroke. In his fascinating new book, Dr. Lee Goldman presents a radical explanation: The key protective traits that once ensured our species' survival are now the leading global causes of illness and death. Our capacity to store food, for example, lures us into overeating, and a clotting system designed to protect us from bleeding to death now directly contributes to heart attacks and strokes.

A deeply compelling narrative that puts a new spin on evolutionary biology, Too Much of a Good Thing also provides a roadmap for getting back in sync with the modern world.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2015 Lee Goldman (P)2015 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"In this highly original and profound book, Lee Goldman describes how the same physical traits that evolved to ensure our survival are now working against us. For anyone interested in their own and their family's well-being, Too Much of a Good Thing is a must read!" (Eric Kandle, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; university professor, Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University; author of The Age of Insight and In Search of Memory)

"This book, written from a deeply expert yet broad medical viewpoint, sets current medical challenges into their larger contexts of our human history and biological pre-history, to provide a crisply related and refreshingly clear-eyed perspective on much that ails us these days. And throughout the book, I also enjoyed the fascinating snippets on topics ranging from platelets to percentages of paleolithic food components to polyandry to presidential obesity." (Elizabeth Blackburn, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)

"A fascinating look at the health problems that plague us, illuminating why they happen and what to do about them." (Jerome Groopman, MD, and Pamela Hartzband, MD, Harvard Medical School, authors of Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What Is Right for You)

Great "awareness"

Any additional comments?

For a layman like me, this book was a "hard read" at times, but in fairness, it was a wonderful education on the human animal.

NOT a good thing

Ridiculous and obvious oversight of science. Author assumes science and drugs will treat obesity, high blood pressure and such in the future and states it will be the only answer. Maybe a drug company paid to have this silly book written!