Optimizing Your Health: An Approachable Guide to Reducing Your Risk of Chronic Disease

by Emily Gold Mears

Overview

Curated from the most salient aspects of many volumes of research, this book offers several lifestyle modifications to help you achieve optimal health.

In Optimizing Your Health, Emily Gold Mears shares years of research and knowledge to help others understand how they can become their own health advocate, modify their lifestyle to reduce their risk of chronic disease, and take a proactive role in their own healthcare. Gold Mears features real life stories, clinical studies, the latest discoveries, and infographics to demonstrate what is hurting us and what can help us in our pursuit of a long, healthy life. This book curates a vast amount of health and wellness information and focuses on the most salient aspects. Gold Mears’s book is essential reading for those who are committed to reducing their risk of chronic disease, aging well, and feeling their best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781637582916
Publisher:	Post Hill Press
Publication date:	05/17/2022
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,062,187
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Emily Gold Mears was a practicing lawyer prior to moving into the area of research analysis in science and medicine. She is a citizen scientist, biohacker, and health and science advocate and activist. In addition to taking courses and doing extensive research, Gold Mears attended dozens of conferences in the area of science, health, and medicine. As a result of these experiences, she has been invited to participate in conferences, boards, and other endeavors—including a global conference in Rome, Italy on scientific thinking organized by a renowned think tank. Gold Mears was the only non-credentialed scientist among eighty-six international scientists to give a presentation. She spoke about how one can be engaged in learning about evidence based medical research and how individual advocacy is one important step toward overcoming subpar medical interventions. Her research is focused on the intersection of functional medicine and allopathic medicine and the critical requirement for all individuals to become their own health care advocate. She is actively involved in several nonprofit organizations, most of which are focused on health related research.

Table of Contents

Foreword 9

Introduction Why This Book: You Must Become Your Own Health Advocate 13

Chapter 1 Your Oral Microbiome: The First Line of Defense 21

Chapter 2 Your Gut Microbiome: Digest This 35

Chapter 3 Immunity and Inflammation: Get to Know Your Most Powerful Ally 50

Chapter 4 Stress: Your Body's Physical, Mental, or Emotional Reaction to Pressure 70

Chapter 5 Toxins: Deny These Insidious Invaders 83

Chapter 6 Sleep: Your Critical Appointment with the Sandman 107

Chapter 7 Nutrition: You Are What You Eat 121

Chapter 8 Movement: You Don't Need to Be an Endurance Athlete 150

Chapter 9 Respiratory Physiology: Also Known as Breathing 162

Chapter 10 Hormones: When These Decline, So Do You 176

Chapter 11 Cold Thermogenesis: Highly Unpleasant but Effective 198

Chapter 12 Light Optimization: Who Knew? 205

Chapter 13 Hydration: Essential for Optimal Functioning 215

Chapter 14 Fasting: Reset Your System 227

Chapter 15 Supplements: Micronutrients and Minerals to Optimize Your Cellular Health 239

Chapter 16 Genetics, Epigenetics, and Genomics: The Emerging Field Which Identifies One's Disease Risk 279

Chapter 17 Testing and Tracking: You Can't Fix What You Don't Measure 297

Chapter 18 Clinical Studies: It Is Best to Rely upon Evidence-Based Science and Medicine 316

Chapter 19 Resources 325

Endnotes 343

Acknowledgments 367

Editorial Reviews

Emily Gold Mears offers the public an extraordinary gift. The current pandemic has reminded us all in graphic and compelling ways that we have ultimate responsibility for our own health. For best outcomes with our medical professional partners, we must nonetheless navigate enormous amounts of information from seemingly infinite origins, often contradictory and confusing. As a citizen scientist and unbiased advocate for responsible, effective, evidenced-based healthcare, Ms. Gold Mears provides a framework for us to make the most well-informed medical decisions. She translates primary source cutting-edge clinical research into clear protocols for action. As a psychiatrist focusing on epigenetics and brain health, I hope every patient with whom I consult will utilize this excellent comprehensive resource. They would be able to engage in more meaningful dialogue and ask better questions to the desired end of truly optimizing their health and well-being. I further hope the public more generally will do the same, ultimately elevating the common good.

Ronnie S. Stangler

In this lucidly written book, Emily Gold Mears provides a roadmap for individuals to understand their own bodies and enact different behaviors and regimens to achieve good health and wellness. She does not use jargon or patronize the reader but rather explains concepts clearly and succinctly while pointing to additional resources, including clinical trials and reputable research studies. The penultimate chapter on using to evidence to understand science and medicine is especially helpful in elucidating the potential as well as limitations of different types of clinical investigation. If only all people were as proactive, data-driven, rigorous, and scientifically curious as Gold Mears! With this book, she gives readers an opportunity to be so and to work (it definitely takes work, as she shows!) toward greater health.

Aaron F. Mertz

Emily Gold Mears has written a truly approachable guide that seeks to make sense out of the torrent of sometime contradictory novel information that is emerging around age-old topics like diet, exercise, and sleep while exploring cutting-edge research and its health implications in areas like the genome and the microbiome. Throughout, she brings a distinctive voice filled with curiosity and humility, leavened by personal stories that humanize the science she is summarizing and that illuminate the fundamental human desire to help us all live longer, healthier, and happier lives.

Robert C. Green