This is an excellent book which makes the link between colonialism, social and economic power, lifestyle and life experiences, the stress response, chronic inflammation and chronic illness in an accessible and readable way. Individual personal stories bring the chapters to life. Written by a doctor and an economist it goes through the different bodily systems in turn, explaining how depression, diabetes and heart attacks link through inflammation, to people's status in society and how they are treated, as well as to the health choices they make.
It is written from the US point of view so some of the examples and comments on society are not directly applicable to the UK situation, for example Salmon as a vital part of the nutrition of indigenous people.
I would have liked some more reflection on how we address the issues raised, but perhaps that is in their next book.
Overall I think this book is an important contribution to debates on health, wholeness, colonialism and racism.

I agree with so much of what is said in this book. Yes, it#s very USA centric, but there again there are a lot of Americans in all different ways and means of life and largely in climate too. I'd have liked more explanation of the science.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher I read a free advance review copy of the book. This review is voluntary, honest and my own opinion.

I actually enjoyed this and such an informative book looking holistically at healthcare and the bias behind it. I have read similar scientific journal articles on this and this book was also well sourced. I will say I have done biomedical science at university so I understood this on another level. I only didn’t give it 5 stars as a few conspiracies were mentioned and I always worry this will give others more chance to source this book in a way it shouldn’t be

Interesting ideas but poorly executed. The science was somewhat lacking too – I would have expected footnotes, links to studies, theories as to why certain studies disagreed etc. And unfortunately the book sketches over inconvenient details when they don’t fit the narrative. What’s so frustrating is that broadly, I agree: the human body remembers pain, we internalise trauma, it can and does express itself as disease of illness much later on. However, the root causes for a lot of the issues here which are somewhat shallowly explored and lacking in nuance, are poverty, culture and mindset. There is absolutely a picture to be drawn from this set of dots, but it’s not the picture we’re given in this book. And aside from confirmation bias, I feel it leans into a political attitude of divisiveness which will harm everyone ultimately. Give me this with better research and an open minded exploration of all the data, and link it to how we can and should be lifting everyone up not pulling everyone above a certain income level down and I’ll be on board.

I was very much looking forward to reading this book. However sadly when I downloaded it onto my kindle, there was an issue that omitted certain letter combinations (in particular, ‘fi’ and ‘fl’.) This made it very difficult to read, especially when talking about ‘inflammation’, or the environmental and physiological impact of ‘fire’ and ‘flood’. I did try to persevere but found that it significantly impacted my ability to read the book effectively. As a result, I only managed to read the first few chapters.

Despite this, though, what I read of the book was extremely interesting. It was a fascinating insight into the knock-on effects of colonialism, not only on our health but on the environment. It was refreshing to have the belief affirmed that humans live within a finely balanced ecosystem (albeit, one that is being destroyed by humans). Everything seems to stem back to how the minority in power treat the environment and the people in it.

It was also incredibly interesting to read about the sociocultural impacts on health problems, particularly in relation to the coronavirus pandemic.

Overall, I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to finish this - and will probably buy a copy so I can finish it properly. Highly recommended!

Our world and its energies can be the cause and affect of dis ease in the body causing medical conditions to affect us deeply.

Learning to not take this stress into the body will free it from the discomfort of the worlds situations.

(Twitter)
If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about with ‘Inflamed’ by @DrRupaMarya @_RajPatel you need to get yourself a copy. Only finished the introduction and I can tell it’s gonna be a night reading session ahead.
@AllenLaneBooks
@PenguinUKBooks

I'm going to reread this when it's been edited more thoroughly. I think they subject matter is deeply fascinating but the omission of word parts and list layout make sit too hard to read to get any impact or understanding.

I’m not sure what to make of this book. I understand that ARC editions are sometimes not finalised, but I found this very difficult to read because of the errors and omissions. Fl has been omitted from every word, so it breaks the flow when you have to guess what’s written. It also seems to sweep from one radical idea to another in a breath. I have no problem with the radical ideas, but they’re unlinked and at times, it’s more like reading a political diatribe against colonialism.

The decimation of indigenous people by, in the main, invading Europeans, is abhorrent and has shaped a world driven by greed, political and financial. I have sympathy with the basic premise being put forward by the authors. We have lost touch with nature, there is little holistic approach to medicine and ‘illness’ is designed and treated by Big Pharma. However, this book fails to make that argument in any cohesive way and comes across too often as a jumble of thoughts and ideas. It’s all there, possibly, but not in the right order to make this accessible fir the Kay reader with an interest. I wanted to like and learn from this book, but I’m struggling to read it and I’ll tackle it but by but over some weeks. I don’t think it’s ready to be published as it stands.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

After the first page used 'inamed', 'inammation' and 'inammatory', it was clear that checking hadn't occurred. This remained throughout and tarred any meaningful read.

As someone who worked in a pharmacy and in mental health I've always found medications really interesting.

Really informative and insightful

As a medical person myself I was fascinated to read this book and learn from the authors. However, I couldn't make head nor tail of it. Badly written and edited, heavily biased to the USA medical system it really made no sense at all. Numerous spelling errors and grammatical errors. Parts of words missing. Bizarre comparisons.
Half the book is made up of a reference list
It's impossible to read and understand . I'm sure there are valid points in there somewhere I just couldn't find any!

For some reason when I downloaded this book to kindle and started reading it yesterday the wording was not correct. Misspellings and letters missed out of words etc. I read first few chapters by guessing what a few of the words should of been. But quarter of way through had to give up due to this problem with spelling. Not sure if others had this problem? This was such a shame as I really wanted to read this book as I find the subject matter fascinating. My score does not reflect the spelling/grammar errors.

A highly-relevant and we’ll-researched read, especially the excellent chapter on OB-GYN and the sexism that is baked-in to the medical industry historically and which persists today.