This was not what I was expecting at all. I thought this would be a work of non-fiction explaining the reasons behind inflammation – how naive of me. The word “inflamed” has been used in a metaphorical sense, as it’s is really an examination of social issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent Covid-19 pandemic.

I found this t be a dry and confusing read, and the tone somewhat hectoring. I felt I was being lectured and almost shouted at. I also felt a little cheated when I saw that almost half the book is given over to notes and an index!

Not a pleasant read, and one I eventually gave up on.

An interesting read.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me an early look at this book in exchange for an honest review.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Sorry for the delay in reviewing, thanks so much for letting me read this different and new to me type of genre read.
Its fascinating and enlightening in different ways. Good research too.

I've slogged through this book and I'm still digesting it.
It's got a lot of information, the author(s) are obviously knowledgable, but I've found it hard going. I'm not sure what I make of some of it either.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an option to review this book.

This is an absolutely fascinating and very important book about why black and ethnic minority groups suffer so much more in terms of health and disease, in comparison with whites. During Covid in particular, I had read that black and Asians were far more susceptible, but no media coverage explained the reasons behind this. This incredible book skilfully reveals the disturbing truth about generational trauma. Meticulously referenced and very thought provoking, I really think everyone needs to read this book. I have been telling so many people about it.
I only wish there were some solutions that would help to lower the number of people who succumb to both acute and chronic inflammatory conditions.
With grateful thanks to Netgalley for my copy.

I wanted to enjoy this book and get a lot from it. It is very heavy going, and despite perseverance I’ve only read 15% of it in 4 months. I will complete it eventually, but it’s going to take a lot more time. Part of my personal difficulty is that the kindle version has some formatting issues, which take some translation in reading.

It’s packed full of information and references/footnotes. The authors are clearly very well qualified and informed, and passionate about their subject. Unfortunately, this leads to it being rather overbearing at times, and rather too in depth for the more casual, non Medical background reader,

I will update my review on NetGalley and GoodReads as and when I finally complete it.

This fascinating exploration of health felt particularly relevant as the pandemic has brought health to the forefront of everyone’s daily life. Inflamed provides expert level data and analysis that laypeople can easily understand, and shows how medicine is impacted by sociology, politics, and economics. Enlightening and critical reading for everyone!

Wow. Just wow. What a spectacularly important and insightful read. It's bold and well-researched, and so, so needed for our time. Thank you so much to Marya and Patel for writing it, and also to the publishers for the ARC. Everyone needs to read this book!

The Covid pandemic and the shocking racial disparities in its impact. The surge in inflammatory illnesses such as gastrointestinal disorders and asthma. Mass uprisings around the world in response to systemic racism and violence. Rising numbers of climate refugees. Our bodies, societies, and planet are inflamed. Boldly original, Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human body--our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems.

As a nurse who has worked in Covid intensive care units, this book interested me. I didn’t warm to it easily at the beginning; I found the tone just a little too shouty and the arguments facile and one-sided. I enjoyed it more as I read on, though. It is at its best when the authors are in their own fields of expertise; I particularly liked the description of how the inflammatory response is orchestrated to deal with a cut to the skin.

The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

This was really difficult to read and I could not finish it, for no other reason than this was not my usual choice of book

My thanks to Penguin Press U.K. Allen Lane for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice’ by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel in exchange for an honest review.

Well, that was different. I had expected a work of medical nonfiction that would help me understand the nature of inflammation. There were some information pertaining to this subject though it seemed to be used more as a metaphor or jumping off point for its authors.

I expect that I should have read the fine print as ‘Inflamed’ seemed much more focused on a variety of political and social issues. There where certainly thought-provoking ideas throughout linked to subjects such as the evils of capitalism, racism, and colonialism within the modern and historical medical establishment.

Also, the sections about interconnectivity and our personal relationships to the land were undeniably of interest but it all just felt so jumbled as if they were trying to address every twenty-first century social injustice and then some. I kept wondering when we might get back to the subject of inflammation. Add to this, I found it at times rather preachy, repetitive, and USA-centric.

However, I am not a medical professional and I admit that a fair amount of the material went over my head. The book was quite academic with 45% of its nearly 500 page length dedicated to notes and an index.

Overall, not a good experience, though I expect that I was simply not part of its intended readership.

One of the core parts of my old day job was to train student politicians how to lobby and argue with the college and other external stakeholders. And basically there were two main lessons that were at the heart of it. The first was make sure they know what you are talking about - avoid jargon and neologisms that they might not understand .Even if you have explained it, the rule of word-play is also applicable - one neologism or bit of jargon (or one pun) per sentence. The second rule was keep it simple - but more importantly - if you have made your point : stop. One good argument is better than four good arguments and one bad one. Inflamed made me think of these rules, not least because while the subject of medicine was outside my professional expertise, the decolonising part of this book wasn't. And whilst concepts around decolonising all institutions tend to have a lot in common, there are other core aspects of decolonising medicine which are about examining the legacy of the scientific method, institutional and historical biases - before we consider what can be reinstated from traditional medicine and the overall harm done by an institutionally racist society,

But there's a reason why the publisher didn't put Decolonising Medicine on the cover of the book.

This is an impeccably researched treatise with a central metaphor of Inflammation - when the body reacts, and sometimes over-reacts, to illness and stimulus. Marya and Patel see a parallel with the social response to injustice within society as a kind of inflammation, and while it is a neat metaphor, they do kind of beat it to death. But that's OK because on their journey around the body, and its various traumas and how they can be explained, or drawn back to historical trauma, they will repeat this and other similar metaphors until they seem to form part of the argument, rather than just a technique. And that's part of my problem with the book. I have no problem with the premise or indeed conclusions and the book is meticulously referenced. It is apparent to me that that healthcare outcomes differ between ethnicity due to inequalities baked into the system (poverty, poor housing, access to care), as well as explicit racism. That living somewhere globally where mega-farms use poisonous chemicals will effect you, but perhaps four to five generations on. Where Western medicine is built on shaky racist foundations that it hasn't got out of its system, and an inability to think holistically or treat traditional medicines with anything but contempt. But even I, a sympathetic fellow traveller, found its offhand references to traumatic "exposomes" as a given difficult to sqaure with also a sense of back to the land embracing of traditional medicine. And I think the problem is that the book is aimed sort of at me, but even more at healthcare sceptics, wellness gurus who dabble in yoga and ayahuasca (though they do give ayahuasca tourism a kicking in places). Your central argument is already great, you don't need to bolt on some of the shakier ones.

The other problem with the book, which is one they freely acknowledge and try to deal with in the last chapter, is what to do about it. And when the solution is nothing but a wholesale rethink of how healthcare fits into society, where only a fair society will produce fair healthcare and that's nothing short of revolution away, it can make it all feel a touch futile. Not least as the whole point of a holistic deep medicine approach literally cannot be done in a piecemeal fashion - its about the commons and a common approach. I thought Inflammed was a fascinating read, and a close read will almost certainly give you jumping off points for further reading and activism. But it was also a rather depressing one too, and one that I thought would have been a bit more powerful if shorter and punchier..

In a lot of ways this is a difficult book to review. Is it a self help guide to reducing inflammation? Is it a lesson in medicine? Is it a historical account of social ills and effects on indigenous people?

In truth it’s all of these things, which makes it a confusing read until you figure out the pattern of the narrative - the issue, context, history of how the issue affects society and people. Sadly there’s precious little in what you can practically do to relieve the inflammation we all seem to suffer from in varying degrees. Self help it is not. How to radically change the way society and the political systems function. to reduce societal inflammation is key here - but not aimed at the average person.

It’s a serious, deeply analytical commentary & incredibly well researched. It doesn’t flinch from telling brutal truths about direct links from how power brokers have created adverse social and health conditions to how they directly effect us as the unwashed populations of the world.

Again though sadly, few take-outs to apply to our lives. It did however, manage to reignite my sense of outrage as to what has become of our world - so, yes, at least it is an engaging read.

Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human body to show us how our environment, lifestyle, and those around us affect our health. Much of the advice we receive on improving our health focuses on the individual and makes passing reference or even ignores how entirety of our lives affects us. So many outside forces can lead to inflammation and illness within the body.

There were really interesting sections such as the fact that people who suffer systemic racism and/or sexism have worse health outcomes than those who don't, and the topics covered included the witchcraft trials, and the treatment of the Indigenous peoples of the USA, Canada, and Australia, and personal debt. I did feel at times, however, as if the book had a laser focus on certain topics which became a little repetitive to read.

Thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Penguin Press UK/Allen Lane, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

The title of this piqued my interest as I’ve read a little on the involvement of systemic inflammation in so many health conditions. I didn’t warm to it easily at the beginning; I found the tone just a little too shouty and the arguments facile and one-sided. I enjoyed it more as I read on, though. It is at its best when the authors are in their own fields of expertise; I particularly liked the description of how the inflammatory response is orchestrated to deal with a cut to the skin.
Inflamed is very much a book of its time: the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement are woven into the examples of how ‘trauma’s fingerprints last for generations’. It contains some good arguments and makes clear that poverty, poor housing, pollution and daily discrimination place a huge burden on the body, putting it under constant stress and ill-equipped to fight disease. Whatever the problems of NHS infrastructure and delivery, we should rejoice in it – the thought of living in a country where all healthcare is paid for, either at source or through insurance, is horrifying. The effects of debt on the cardiovascular system alone are striking.
As I read, I switched between admiring Rupa Marya and Raj Patel for the thoroughness of their argument and thinking that Inflamed is just a little too long; I think it would pack even more of a punch had it been brutally edited. Inflamed paints a grim picture of society’s ills but does offer some solutions for tackling them. To defeat the bad guy of colonial capitalism, prioritising community is key.

I really enjoyed this book, it was highly informative and interesting. However there were times I had to reread as it wasn’t always easy to absorb.

I am still reading the book as it seems to be full of information that is virtually impossible to absorb quickly particularly as the way that the information is presented is almost staccato, it just does not flow for me. Add to that the number of truncated words and the lack of spell-checking and the book has turned from something potentially enlightening to something far more confusing than the subjects should be.

Inflamed is an appropriate title for the book as the topics cover just about everything on this planet and demonstrates how much inflammation is present in everything that we touch and do. From the food we eat to the people we interact with through to the way that we (mis)treat our fragile environment.

If you have any interest at all in what we are all doing wrong, however well we feel we are treating the things around us, then this is a book that you must read once they find a proper proof reader/editor. I feel sure that the book will rate 4 Stars once all the nonsenses are sorted out.

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.