Disorder Resources
Start Here: the Body as an Energy and Systems Story
Sapolsky, R. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers (3rd ed.). Holt.
The finest accessible book on how chronic stress physiology corrodes the body, and on why so many modern diseases are diseases of a stress response that never switches off. Foundational for the whole section, and unusually rigorous for a popular work.
Wallace, D. C., and the field of mitochondrial medicine; popularly, Lane, N. (2005). Power, sex, suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life. Oxford University Press.
Where the existing list points to “mitochondria and the future of medicine,” this is the deeper, more rigorous treatment: Nick Lane on why the energy machinery of the cell sits at the centre of health, ageing, and disease. The serious grounding for the energy-and-entropy lens this section runs on.
Schrödinger, E. (1944). What is life? Cambridge University Press.
The short, foundational text behind the section’s spine: life as the maintenance of improbable order against entropy, by feeding on energy. Eighty years old and still clarifying.
Sickness, Healthspan, and Longevity
Attia, P. (2023). Outlive: The science and art of longevity. Harmony.
The most useful single popular synthesis on healthspan-versus-lifespan, metabolic health, ApoB, and prevention. Accessible and broadly sound, occasionally more confident than the evidence on specific protocols, but a strong orientation to the whole prevention mindset this section shares.
López-Otín, C., et al. (2023). Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe. Cell.
The consensus scientific catalogue of the mechanisms of ageing, the dry but authoritative reference behind the healthspan page. For readers who want the actual biology rather than a popular gloss.
Williams, R. J. (1956). Biochemical individuality.
A genuinely ahead-of-its-time classic arguing that people differ substantially in their biochemistry and nutritional needs, the intellectual root of personalised nutrition. Sound core insight; read as a historical foundation rather than current data, and resist stretching “individuality” into a justification for unproven bespoke protocols.
Metabolic Syndrome
Taylor, R. (2021). Life without diabetes. Short Books.
By the researcher behind the personal-fat-threshold work and the trials showing type 2 diabetes can be reversed; the rigorous, hopeful science of metabolic reversal from one of its leading investigators. The best evidence-grounded entry point to the metabolic page’s core.
Estruch, R., et al. (2018). PREDIMED: Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease with a Mediterranean diet. New England Journal of Medicine.
The landmark trial behind the strongest dietary-pattern evidence; worth knowing as the empirical anchor under the diet debates, which are otherwise long on opinion.
Autoimmunity
Müller, F., et al. (2024). CD19 CAR T-cell therapy in autoimmune disease. New England Journal of Medicine.
The case series behind the most exciting development in autoimmune medicine, the immune “reset” producing drug-free remission. For readers who want to see the frontier evidence first-hand rather than through a popular filter.
Hahn, J., et al. (2022). Vitamin D and omega-3 and incident autoimmune disease (VITAL). BMJ.
The randomised trial behind the rare hard-prevention claim in autoimmunity. The empirical basis for the vitamin D recommendation, as opposed to the supplement-industry version.
Neurodegenerative Disease
Ngandu, T., et al. (2015). The FINGER multidomain trial. The Lancet.
The single most important study for the individual: evidence that a combined lifestyle intervention preserves cognition. The empirical heart of the neurodegeneration page’s prevention message.
Livingston, G., et al. (2020). Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: Lancet Commission report.
The authoritative summary of the modifiable dementia risk factors, including the underappreciated ones (hearing loss, vascular health). The grounding for “much of the risk is movable.”
On the Maté Books in This Section
Maté, G. When the body says no (2003); In the realm of hungry ghosts (2008); Scattered minds (1999).
The mind and body are connected, chronic stress genuinely affects immune and hormonal function, and adversity and emotional life matter to health in ways mainstream medicine long neglected. Hungry Ghosts in particular is humane and valuable on addiction as a response to pain. But across these books runs a stronger thesis, that repressed emotion and a particular personality cause specific diseases (cancer, ALS, autoimmune conditions), and that thesis is not supported by the good evidence. It rests largely on small retrospective studies and selected case readings; the large prospective studies have generally failed to confirm a disease-causing “personality”; it reverses cause and effect (illness shapes emotional life, not only the reverse); and applied to grave diseases it risks blaming patients for their own illness.
Neuroplasticity and the Brain
Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself; and (2015) The brain’s way of healing.
Engaging, optimistic introductions to neuroplasticity, the principle that the brain can rewire and sometimes recover. Worth reading for the core idea; read the dramatic individual recoveries as illustrative possibilities rather than typical or guaranteed outcomes.
Sapolsky, R. (2017). Behave. Penguin.
A sweeping, rigorous account of human biology across every timescale; less a disease book than a model of holding genetic, physiological, and environmental levels together without collapsing into any one, which is exactly the systems thinking this section uses.
Amen, D. (1998). Change your brain, change your life.
Popular and motivating on lifestyle and the brain, but built around SPECT brain-scan diagnosis that mainstream neuroscience does not accept as validated for this purpose, and a clinic model that has drawn substantial criticism. Useful for general encouragement; treat the scan-based “brain typing” claims with scepticism.
The Gut-Brain and Microbiome
Anderson, S. C., Cryan, J. F., & Dinan, T. (2017). The psychobiotic revolution. National Geographic.
A solid, accessible tour of the gut-microbiome-health connection that runs through the autoimmune, metabolic, and neurodegenerative pages, written by genuine researchers and reasonably calibrated about how early some of the science still is.