One Disease: Redox Imbalance: How stress becomes disease (The Redox Health Series)

This is such an important book. At the moment we have a disease system rather than a health system. We seek medical help when something has gone wrong. Wouldn’t it be great if doctors could not just treat disease, but prevent it and optimise health! I love the sections reimagining the doctor patient relationship and how the conversation might go. It would be great if this book were on the reading list for every medical student. It’s well researched, and provides a new paradigm for healthcare that treats everyone as an individual and benefits the patient as a whole by getting to the root cause rather than treating the symptoms. Have you ever wondered why so few people are in great health and how you can take more responsibility for your own health? If you are interested in the research, then this book is for you.

👍

This little book gives meaning to all the current buzz words: redox, antioxidants, root cause, stress, etc. It’s loaded with practical knowledge that can empower us to gain resilience and prevent disease. The author has done the research for us on reduction and oxidation, (redox) from its first mention about 20 years ago to the present. He mentions a whopping 250,000 articles on PubMed alone that refer to oxidation and redox! He quotes, “…redox imbalance is an insufficient but necessary cause in all disease. By extension, redox imbalance is a disease.” And, “Life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest,” Nobel prize-winning Hungarian biochemist, Albert Szent-Györgyi. One astounding, little thing that I can do for myself is check my NLR. “NLR is a biomarker of immune system activation/dysregulation”. He explains what the ratio of neutrophils to lymphocytes means. Chapter 7 is about "redox self-care and prevention through resilience". If I take the listed 12 resilience habits seriously, I WILL be healthier. I'll have more life and energy. First on his list is sleep, the “non-negotiable”. This positive habit needs to be my first goal. The book does a good job explaining its importance to mind and body.Chapter 8 leads us into treating our redox imbalances. I’m going to periodically re-read these two chapters as a reminder to where my focus needs to be. For me, if I can understand the “why” it helps to do the “how”. At my age I want to look better and I need to feel better. This book is written in an easy manner and geared to kindly motivate me. Definitely a keeper! Many thanks to the author.

Mike has written a fascinating book about a not-so novel concept, oxidative stress, that has apparently been "hiding in plain sight" in more than 250,000 articles in PubMed for at least 20 years. Mike is clear throughout the book that he is not a scientist but has been reading the research for years and is putting it out there for readers to discern. The research is substantial though, as has been Mike's study of it and citation throughout the book, and while there is plenty of chemistry and molecular biology in the chapters, he has made it very readable by repeating the main concepts as well as providing some helpful analogies and examples. His 400 word synopsis is helpful for those only interested in a summary, yet will intrigue the reader to want to learn more. His list of "Big" questions and considerations if the dominant paradigm for western medicine were to embrace these concepts is provocative and gives the reader a glimpse of what health and healthcare could look like in the future.. particularly in the area of screenings that may be possible for early detection and treatment of this singular root cause of disease- redox imbalance, as Mike posits from the research. The sections on how one can build resilience to oxidative stress are detailed and helpful and I appreciated his emphasis on nutrition and exercise among other things. This will be a book I will return to again as there was SO much information to retain on the first pass. Mike's presentation of the research represents a novel approach to understanding and treating disease and deserves thoughtful consideration for clinical practice.. beyond functional medicine.

In his book, Michael refers to precision medicine. I have come to know this as Functional, Integrative and Holistic Medicine. Functional Medicine doctors do just what he has written about. We spent a few months analyzing all my body fluids to find that my adrenal glands were functioning properly again. That my thyroid is still unstable. That I am fighting detrimental fungi and have DNA variants that make me prone to Cardiac and Mitochondrial problems. The DNA report suggests several natural things that can help me avoid the heart problems that have plagued my family.He writes, "“Collectively, we have created an anti-health culture and a medical-industrial complex designed to monitor you as your high-stress, low-nutrient, high-toxicity lifestyle degrades your health and quality of life. Then that self-same system manages your chronic diseases as you acquire them, often from the prescribed medications’ side effects.” I never thought I would see these words written in a book about health care in the 20th - 21st century. You have written down my thoughts about conventional medicine as it stands today. Thank you Michael.

My husband has been looking for this book forever. Great stocking stuffer.