I’ve been looking forward to sharing Dr Chatterjee’s books with you all as he’s not only a UK doctor but he also combines both conventional and lifestyle medicine in the way that I aim to in my thyroid advocacy work too!
The book I’m reviewing today is The Stress Solution: The 4 Steps To Reset Your Body, Mind, Relationships & purpose.
I may reference back to this book and what I’ve learnt from it throughout my blog posts.
The Stress Solution takes us on a journey of understanding how stress impacts every aspect of our lives, from relationships to work and physical and mental health.
By using Dr. Chatterjee’s guidance in this book, we can learn to identify where our daily stressors are coming from and how to manage them better so as to promote better overall health. Where does this tie in with thyroid disease? Well, stress can make thyroid conditions and symptoms worse, as well as impacting adrenal function and cortisol levels which are often a crucial part of a thyroid patient’s puzzle.
Chronic stress can not only trigger thyroid conditions such as hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism, it also worsens symptoms of fatigue, anxiety and depression. When cortisol levels are consistently high, the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis is activated, and Dr. Chatterjee covers the impacts of this in the introduction of his book.
Adrenal dysfunction in the form of high cortisol is a big piece of many thyroid patient’s health journeys. When my cortisol levels were high all day long, I felt terrible, yet I blamed ongoing fatigue, digestive issues and trouble sleeping on my thyroid condition as I hadn’t yet unearthed the adrenal dysfunction.
So, using the information contained in The Stress Solution can be hugely helpful in combating adrenal dysfunction and slotting into place another piece of our thyroid health puzzle.
Some suggestions and areas Dr. Chatterjee covers include: practising gratitude, scheduling our time more effectively, meditation, dietary adjustments, reducing smartphone usage, joining weekly classes (such as yoga), the right amount of exercise (too much can make things worse!), improving your sleep (and fighting insomnia), raising melatonin levels, reducing alcohol intake, spending more time outdoors and decluttering your life.
They aren’t groundbreaking but they are presented in a non-patronising manner, which does no harm to remind us about the simple steps we can take to lower our stress levels and feel more content everyday.
Other interesting areas covered in this book which link back to thyroid advocacy include tips for increasing libido (which can be affected by thyroid conditions), the gut-brain axis (good gut health is so important for thyroid patients), irritable bowel syndrome, probiotics, signs of over exercising, good diet and more. Everything he touches on are areas I also cover in my thyroid work, too, since living well with thyroid disease is all about looking at our health holistically.
Therefore, it’s a great, complimentary book to your collection. Though not thyroid-specific, most things contained will help you to live better with thyroid disease. I was nodding along as I read chapter and chapter and felt pleased that the same messages I put out are being reiterated by another UK source too. A doctor combining both traditional / mainstream medicine with these lifestyle recommendations is hugely helpful!
Overall, I found this book to be a really useful read.
You can get a copy of this book from Amazon here.
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