The book provides a comprehensive, easily accessible source of information to aid practitioners with the education of their patients and to help them to take increasing responsibility for improving and maintaining their own health. The book is supported by a Website providing free access to patient education materials. These include the patient handouts referred to in the text. The handouts available on the website are indicated in the text by the icon W. All the handouts are stored in a format which ensures that they can be printed out easily. The book is divided into four main parts: part 1 addresses the issues of self-care and individuals' responsibilities for managing their own health safely and sensibly; part 2 looks at developing good habits and introduces protocols to help individuals to establish a healthy lifestyle; part 3 deals with cahnging risky behaviours and looks particularly at protocols for dealing with drug and alcohol abuse, smoking and stress; and part 4 is concerned with managing individual lifestyles to reduce the risk of life-threatening diseases such as stroke, heart attack, osteoporosis, cancer, obesity and diabetes.