Book Review "The Stress Paradox" by Dr. Sharon Bergquist

What? The Stress Paradox: Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier reframes stress as a vital catalyst for resilience and longevity. Dr Sharon Bergquist explores how targeted, intermittent stressors - such as exercise, fasting, thermal exposure, phytochemical-rich foods, and cognitive challenges - can trigger hormesis, activating cellular repair and anti-ageing pathways. The book blends evolutionary biology, clinical evidence and actionable protocols to optimise healthspan. Study citations are included in an appendix - rather than tagged in the copy itself.

Who? Dr Sharon Horesh Bergquist is a Harvard-trained physician and associate professor at Emory. With over 25 years of experience in lifestyle medicine, she has led clinical trials funded by the NIH and other agencies, serves in Emory’s Executive Health and has earned more than 40 patient‑care awards.

Why? In an age of comfort, modern lifestyles shy away from the very stressors our ancestors relied on to stay healthy. Bergquist argues that brief, controlled exposures to stress activate our body’s four core defence systems - resist, repair, recycle, recharge - supporting metabolic, cognitive and immune health.

So… The book includes practical protocols - workouts, activities, recipes, recovery strategies - so you can integrate hormetic stress safely into daily life.

See Dr Bergquist in interview...

The Stress Paradox is available online.

Stay Healthy,

Alastair

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Resources

Bergquist SH, Wang D, Smith AK, Roberts DL, Moore MA. Hormetic association between perceived stress and human epigenetic aging based on resilience capacity. Biogerontology. 2022 Oct;23(5):615-627. doi: 10.1007/s10522-022-09985-8. Epub 2022 Aug 12. PMID: 35960459.

What is health literacy? CDC website

Magnus JR, Peresetsky AA. A Statistical Explanation of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 25;13:840180. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840180. PMID: 35401341; PMCID: PMC8992690.

Huang LY, Lin YP, Glass GF Jr, Chan EY. Health literacy and patient activation among adults with chronic diseases in Singapore: A cross-sectional study. Nurs Open. 2021 Sep;8(5):2857-2865. doi: 10.1002/nop2.873. Epub 2021 May 4. PMID: 33942559; PMCID: PMC8363362.

Liu C, Wang D, Liu C, Jiang J, Wang X, Chen H, Ju X, Zhang X. What is the meaning of health literacy? A systematic review and qualitative synthesis. Fam Med Community Health. 2020 May;8(2):e000351. doi: 10.1136/fmch-2020-000351. PMID: 32414834; PMCID: PMC7239702.