The Cortisol Connection: Why Stress Makes You Fat and Ruins Your Health And What You Can Do About It

For three months I have been trying to recover from a period of extreme stress, ending up in the typical exhausted-but-can't sleep conundrum. I have been reading a number of books on natural remedies and nutrition which have been helpful. I didn't turn to pharmaceuticals because I want to heal, not replace the substances I'm missing.This book, along with James Wilson's "Adrenal Fatigue," have been great resources for understanding the physiology behind my woes. Based on these books I've built a list of supplements and am slowly making progress, beginning with reducing sources of stress as much as possible.In Shawn Talbott's book, the sections on the HSD enzyme were key to one of my conditions -- not being able to lose weight even with calorie restriction. The writing style is friendly and approachable, considering the density of the material. There is a lot of information to digest, and I continue to refer to various sections.

Everything you need to know about CORTISOL, our stress hormone, that drives so many issues when it’s elevated. I highly recommend.

A rich collection of studies preformed on the endocrine system makes this book a fountain of knowledge. I felt, however that the little insight that came from this was played over and over again and it seemed to me that the book had been edited for search engine optimization. Sadly, this made it much longer than it needed to be. At times, it felt like I was reading the same sentence for the hundredth time as if I would forget after the first ten.Overall however, I think the book was very helpful and enlightening! So, despite my frustration with the repetitiveness, I'd highly recommend it.

Great book!

I've been trying to lose weight for a while, and after plateuing, this helped me become a lot more aware about how stress and cortisol affect my body negatively and why I was doing wasn't the optimum. This book is easy, slightly redundant but it helped me remember things longer.I loved how I could literally find anything to eat where ever I go, it's smart, not strict. It taught me that it's all about the portions and proportions, and generally being more physically active.Thanks to this book, I've lost 6% of body fat in 2 months only, and I'm still losing weight and sustaining when I'm not eating super clean months later.

Stress is bad for you. We all knew that, but Shawn Talbott explains some of the biochemistry of stress in layman's terms. After reading The Cortisol Connection, you will know WHY chronic stress is bad and what it's likely to do to you.Much of this has been covered better in other books about stress, such as Robert Sapolsky's Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. What's new about Cortisol Connection is the strong evidence that stress makes you gain weight. It puts on fat and makes your cells resistant to insulin, which puts you at risk for diabetes.I'm very interested in this, because I'm currently researching a new book called The Politics of Diabetes. (I should also admit that Hunter House, publisher of Cortisol Connection, also published my first book, The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health When You Have a Chronic Illness.) I found Talbott's work helpful.What I did not find, though, was many good ideas for what to DO about stress. He mentions stress reduction and exercise, but he seems to believe these are not realistic goals for most of us in our fast-paced society. Nearly all his recommendations are for food supplements - vitamins, herbs, minerals, amino acids - over 50 in all. And he really doesn't prioritize among them. I still have no idea where to start with these supplements, which ones have strong supporting evidence and which don't.I also found his reference list really aggravating. I like to check references, both to learn more and to confirm that the author is playing straight with the facts. Talbott combines all the references for the first five chapters (six pages of references) into one long list, without numbers. So there's no way to tell which reference goes with which paragraph or claim in the book. The supplements actually have many more references than the information on stress does.So if you are inclined to seek health through supplements, this may be the stress book for you. If you don't like investigating supplement claims and prowling around health food stores, you can still get some good information about stress here, but that's about it.David Spero RN, author of The Art of Getting Well, Maximizing Health When You Have a Chronic Illness. [...]

So helpful. Has really changed my approach to life and health

This book is an extremely helpful book, written in terms the average person can understand. As someone who is afflicted with a number of serious diseases brought on almost entirely due to living with chronic stress, this book has helped me understand the importance of doing what is necessary to eliminate stress at every chance possible.I've already been referring this book to people I care about the most.

le livre est utilisé, je n'ai pas acheté d'occasion.

Although this book is filled with great information, it wouldn’t matter if you started reading it from the middle chapter. The first 7 chapters just repeat themselves over and over again. I’m more of a “get to the point” kind of reader. You could seriously get the exact same amount of information if you skipped half the pages and read the conclusion of each chapter. You would save yourself hours of repetitive reading. Once you get to chapter 8, it’s better.

Great resource to take control over ones health and wellness. Highly recommended for people struggling to understand fat loss, as well as trainers looking to improve results with clients.

This is a genuine and thoroughly researched book (with top notch scientific research projects to back up its claims). So many of these type of 'medical books' are lightweights – this one is a notable exception.If you suspect that cortisol levels may be an issue in your case, this book provides countless solutions to improve your health. I found it to be very valuable and will follow several of its advice for the rest of my life. If I could I could rate it with more stars than 5 stars, I would!

日本で知られていない、副腎についての知識が、かなり入っていて、非常に勉強になりました。