Books for Patients
Books can be a fabulous way to deepen your knowledge about your health. Reading is a great way to stay up to date because new research is coming out all the time.
Hormone Intelligence
This new book by Dr. Avia Romm, one of my favorite women’s health experts, offers insights about how to use our hormonal symptoms to guide us toward changes we need to make in our lifestyles. Her message is empowering and a rallying cry towards pursuing your hormone balance as a form of feminism. She offers a beautiful overview of what healthy hormonal cycles look like at different stages of life and a toolbox to help with symptoms that occur when things get out of balance. She also offers detailed condition specific protocols including for conditions like PCOS, endometriosis, and peri-menopausal symptoms.
Woman code
Author and holistic health coach, and one of my personal heroes, Alisa Vitti, wrote Women Code in order to encourage other women to heal their hormonal imbalances. It contains a helpful guide to changing diet and lifestyle to treat common hormone imbalances in women. Vitti herself suffered from symptoms of polycystic ovaries, and became determined to turn her life around in a way that addressed the root cause of her disease. In the process of healing herself, she learned how lifestyle changes can make a big impact. In the book she shares her personal experiences and empowers women to take control of their health. I recommend this book for women experiencing symptoms related to PCOS, infertility, and PMS or any woman who wants to gain a better understanding about how to improve their cycles.
Glucose Revolution
This book gives you a detailed action plan to understand the symptoms of blood sugar dysregulation and how to get your blood sugar in balance using those symptoms as clues. Dysregulated blood sugar can cause us to gain weight inappropriately, impact fertility; feel tired and hungry all the time, have skin breakouts, develop wrinkles, and even cause anxiety and low mood. Over time, too much glucose contributes to chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome, cancer, dementia and heart disease. In this book the approachable scientist and researcher Jessie Inchauspé gives practical lifestyle tips about how, when and what to eat to keep blood sugar levels optimal and still enjoy food.
the Microbiome solution
Dr. Robynne Chutkan, a mother and gastroenterologist, learned first hand about the importance of microbiome health. Through her patients with unexplained debilitating digestive symptoms she realized the traditional western medical workup often left her patients feeling hopeless and without answers. Throughout the book Dr. Chutkan explains how some of our modern health problems stem from the disruption of a healthy balance of gut bacteria. She delves into the factors that are contributing to our unhealthy guts and then provides options to restore the system's function and alleviate the suffering of chronic digestive distress. I recommend this book to many of my patents expressing a host of problems connected to antibiotic overuse and our modern lifestyle's negative impact on a healthy mircobiome.
The autoimmune solution
Chances are you or someone you know has been diagnosed with some type of autoimmune condition. Some experts say that we are currently experiencing an epidemic of autoimmunity. In autoimmune diseases your own immune system goes rogue and attacks integral parts of your body instead of foreign invaders. Autoimmune diseases are difficult to diagnose and have few treatment options in the western medical paradigm. Dr. Amy Myers, who is a leader in the functional medicine world, explores in depth the risk factors for developing autoimmune diseases and the lifestyle shifts that can prevent their occurrence and alleviate their symptoms. I recommend this books to patients with family history of autoimmune diseases and those who find themselves suffering unexplained symptoms on the autoimmune spectrum.
THE ADRENAL THYROID REVOLUTION
Dr. Aviva Romm is a women's health specialist and advocate who is one of my personal heroes. In this book she connects the dots form her exploration of women's health over the years to help patients understand the root cause of chronic fatigue, sluggish metabolism, and imbalanced hormones. her book outlines a program to heal, prevent and reverse these symptoms. Dr. Romm describes a phenomenon she calls Survival Overdrive Syndrome, SOS, which happens as a result of the body being overloaded by stressors. She then explains how SOS affects your thyroid and adrenal system creating problems with sleep, weight, mood, energy, hormones, and more. She then outlines some strategies for getting your life back.
HASHIMOTO'S THYROIDITIS: LIFESTYLE INTERVENTIONS FOR FINDING AND TREATING THE ROOT CAUSE
Hasimoto's thyroid disease is an extremely common condition that affects many of my patients and has become one of my areas of expertise. In this facsinating book Isabella Wentz explains her own journey understanding the root causes of this disease. After having years of symptoms and being told nothing was wrong she finally was diagnosed and offered medication treatment. However, she was told there was nothing else she could do to improve the symptoms not alleviated by medication. Her detailed book explores the science behind lifestyle approaches to healing thyroid disease through nontraditional treatment options including natural thyroid hormone and supplements.
HASHIMOTO'S COOKBOOK AND ACTION PLAN: 31 DAYS TO ELIMINATE TOXINS AND RESTORE THYROID HEALTH THROUGH DIET
This cookbook both outlines the symptoms of Hasimoto's and describes how certain foods may act as triggers worsening the condition. Karen Frazier has been living with Hasimoto's for most of her life and very quickly realized how hard it was figure out meals that avoided these triggers many of which were staples of the American diet. She provides a whole month's worth of grocery lists and over 125 recipes designed to help with Hashimoto's symptoms.
This is a very interesting book about the importance of lowering uric acid levels not just to prevent painful attacks of gout (the inflammatory condition of the joint) but to lower risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia. I heard Dr. Pealmutter speak at an integrative medicine conference and was blown away by the science and importance of this marker that is considered nothing more than a nuisance to most western trained doctors.
A great book about natural pregnancy supportive wisdom by my favorite Aviva Romm of course!
The Menopause Brain
This is an excellent book leading neuroscientist and women’s brain health specialist, Dr. Mosconi looking at the very real brain related symptoms and supportive lifestyle strategies to improve them and a deep dive into the new science of what is now called menopausal hormone therapy including the timing hypothesis and why the type and delivery of the hormones is crucial.
The XX Brain
This important book breaks with the narrow focus on women's health called "bikini medicine," which assumes that women are essentially men with breasts and ovaries. Given women are far more likely than men to suffer from anxiety, depression, migraines, strokes and Alzheimer's disease, this book provides a crucial roadmap to how to prevent and reverse neuroinflammation that is connected to developing these conditions and more. She includes dietary guidance, strategies to reduce stress, and useful tips for restorative sleep. She also discusses something that I am so concerned about in my practice: the perils of environmental toxins and the disturbance of our microbiome as risks to our health.