A guidebook with a handy reference section that – for once – doesn’t tell you what to do to stay healthy, but rather what you don’t need to do.
We take antibiotics when we have a cold, get an operation for a slipped disk, regularly go for checkups to keep cancer at bay. We do a lot to get or stay well, running to the doctor or pharmacy. But is this the right approach? No – often doing nothing is better. But once you find yourself sitting in the doctor’s office, it’s hard to turn back. Something must be done. After all, who wants to blame themselves for having acted a little too late or not at all? Yet medicine is full of unnecessary, expensive and even harmful interventions. As a result, a lot of patients are given a diagnosis that has nothing to do with their symptoms. Or an unnecessary or even harmful treatment. And some healthy individuals leave the doctor’s office sick. Even though many of them didn’t even need to be there in the first place.
The authors have experienced excessive proactiveness as doctors in the hospital and also see it regularly in their day-to-day lives. In this book, drawing on many case studies and current research, they explain why it is often worth it not to do anything and instead practice “watchful waiting”.
