Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

"The Great American Health Hoax" by Raymond Francis made me understand that health is not gained with medicines but by avoiding toxins and eating nutricious foods.

http://raymondfrancisauthor.com/

It must be facebook

Nausea by Sartre. I used to really struggle with existential anxiety, and still do to some degree. That book took away much of that concern, it gave me a new way to think about meaning in life

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

Avoiding toxic doctors, too.

When young and before I knew better, I had two surgeries that should not have been done. Or, for one, not executed in the manner it was; and it was only necessary because of an unavoidable gap in insurance coverage.

Ha, when I remind myself, the other was necessary because of a string of failures initially culminating in an incompetent doctor and the PT he lauded. Then compounded a year later by a surgeon who'd rather operate than image and then was quite lackadaisical about recovery.

Beyond the topic of doctors, we have so much sugar in our diet, in good part because ADM needs to move corn products for profit. I imagine they've now cornered the market on beet sugar, as well, although I don't know. And the cane sugar growers who continue to lobby very effectively e.g. with the leverage of Florida state and its political influence.

"Modern medicine" is very limited in what it can actually, thoroughly fix. Staying healthy is the bulwark, but with a lot of financially motivated people poking holes in this for their own benefit.