How Not to Die (怎样才能不死, 死なない方法, 죽지 않는 법)

First off, how to find a good book at the library or bookstore: follow the recommendations by the staff there (either librarians or book staff). If you ever go into a bookstore or library, what do you see the employees there doing? Reading. Or scrolling the internet or on their phones, more common nowadays, but the old school librarians will still do what they're known for: actually read books. And then they put it on the "Recommended" shelf for patrons to read, and that's how I've stumbled to some of the best books I've ever read. Recently my local library is doing a vegan week, and the book "How Not to Die" caught my eye. Catchy title, but also the words were written in a leafy substance, something green like kale or some other salad ingredient, maybe arugula or iceberg lettuce. Its basic thesis is that eating plants instead of processed foods will increase your life expectancy and improve your health, making some rather outlandish statements like "Plant-based diets are the nutritional equivalent of quitting smoking." That implies that my diet without plants has been the equivalent of a smoking habit, so I'm not completely sold on that premise, but it does bring up some great points about arteriosclerosis, hardening of the arteries. That is definitely something that happens and causes heart attacks and other heart disease. The book goes on to talk about ischemic strokes (scary) and a whole murderers' row of diseases like brain diseases, infections, high blood pressure, diabetes, and it taught me the word "iatrogenic" meaning disease caused by medical examination and treatment, which hadn't occured to me is a thing that medical help can cause more harm than good, but just look at 200 years of "bloodletting" patients with leeches and you'll know it was very prevalent earlier in human history, maybe less so nowadays but still exists. So I don't think just eating plants and switching to an all-plants diet is going to solve everything, but the book at least outlies the thesis for which areas it might help. I have a lot invested in how not to die, and it stems from not wanting family members to die, especially when they're old. We focus so much on just getting through they day during our whole lives that we don't have time to really live our lives, and there are tons of industries that will market to you about how to live your best life through vacations, spa treatments, buying new exotic cars, buying new exotic rings, etc. Much fewer companies sell us on how to prevent death. There's no money in it! How does a company take credit for preventing you from dying and make a profit off of it? Humans including myself assume living is just standard, and if I survive it's because of my will to live, not because of any particular company's help or even doctors. No one gets rich off of telling people to "eat healthy," they just get brushed aside as being nosy and the attitude of "I do what I want." I think I've at least figured out some ways not to die: 1.) Don't drink will driving. Super dangerous and one of the most common ways to die. 2.) Mental health- suicide. I've done well enough to keep a positive outlook, but this is also genetic. 3.) Don't fall asleep at the wheel or be otherwise distracted. This can happen anytime, anywhere. I knew a narcoleptic at my old job who openly admitted he would go through times of driving on the highway and later have no memory of actually driving. Super scary, MJ and I just drove by a car accident where we could see flames in the sky caused by the car fire from miles away. 4.) Don't pick a fight with random strangers. There are now Youtube videos that "prank" people in rough neighborhoods to get a reaction to them and pick a fight until the very end, when the Youtuber tells the stranger it's a Youtube video. There are some desperate people out in the world, just avoid at all costs. 5.) Don't do drugs. The fentanyl and opioid epidemcs are very real, and I know people who know people who died from doing drugs and then not waking up. 6.) Eating the right food/ not drinking excessive alcohol, etc. We do all this work during the day to make enough money to get by, stay out of trouble, but then when it comes to food, we casually just eat food that could slowly kill us, without even thinking about it. I did this at least for the first 30 years of my life, people joke about eating this junk food will take off a day from the end of my life, but that might be closer to the truth than I gave the joke credit. Arteriosclerosis is a gradual process, and you don't feel too bad about it as the plaque and other gunk builds up, but once it's clogged to a certain point a heart attack could just come, that's why men over the age of 30 suddenly become more at risk of heart attacks, cuz they've had 30 years to build up all that junk. Our bodies are like old ripped up pair of jeans that we own, with holes and irreparable damage to it that can still be worn, but barely. Except our bodies can't be replaced with a new pair of jeans, we only get one for our whole life. Now can we actually go back and sew those holes back together? I'm not sure, but "How Not to Die" argues that we can......through a plant based diet.