Best Health & Wellness Books

A science journalist investigates the health implications of how we breathe — and finds that most people are doing it wrong, with significant consequences for their health.

A neuroscientist reveals the life-transforming power of sleep. Walker shows why sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body — and the catastrophic consequences of neglecting it.

A Stanford psychiatrist explains how the flood of dopamine-triggering pleasures in modern society creates compulsive behaviour — and how to reset the pleasure-pain balance.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of cancer — its origins, treatments, and future — told through the stories of patients, scientists, and physicians across centuries.

In the late 1960s, Sacks treated a group of patients who had been encephalitic 'sleeping sickness' survivors since the 1920s. He administered the new drug L-DOPA and watched them awaken — often dramatically — after decades of stasis. Then, as the drug's effects became erratic, he watched them struggle.

A Harvard geneticist argues that aging is a disease — one that can be treated — and shares the cutting-edge research on sirtuins, NAD+, and the information theory of aging.

A journalist investigates the real causes of depression and anxiety — and finds they have far more to do with how we live than with brain chemistry.

Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman traces six million years of human evolution to explain how the bodies we inhabit were shaped for a world that no longer exists, and why the mismatch between our evolved biology and modern life is the root cause of many of today's most common chronic diseases. The book is both a natural history of the human body and a provocative argument for rethinking how we treat it.

A history of the cell — from its discovery in the 17th century through the present era of cellular medicine — that is simultaneously a meditation on what it means to be a body made of cells, and a tour of the frontier of medicine where cells are being engineered to cure cancer, repair organs, and rewrite genetic destiny.

The memoir of Navy SEAL and ultramarathon runner David Goggins — from a traumatic childhood and an overweight, unfulfilled existence to becoming one of the world's elite endurance athletes.

Surgeon Atul Gawande examines how medicine has failed dying patients by prioritizing survival over quality of life, and what better approaches to aging and end-of-life care look like.

A physician examines the scientific evidence for which foods can prevent and reverse the fifteen leading causes of premature death in America.

British infectious disease doctor Chris van Tulleken investigates the health effects of ultra-processed food and what the science says about why it's so difficult to stop eating it.

Max Lugavere presents the research on diet and brain health, identifying ten foods that improve cognitive function and protect against dementia and cognitive decline.

Biochemist Jessie Inchauspé explains the science of blood sugar spikes and provides ten practical hacks for flattening glucose curves without giving up the foods you love.

Stanford-trained surgeon Casey Means argues that mitochondrial dysfunction is the root cause of most chronic disease and presents a comprehensive lifestyle framework for optimizing metabolic health.

Roxane Gay writes about her body — fat, surveilled, weaponized against her — and the sexual violence that shaped her relationship with it, with unflinching honesty and structural precision.

Journalist Michael Easter spends 33 days hunting in the Alaskan wilderness while investigating the science of why modern comfort is making us physically and mentally worse, and what embracing discomfort can do for our lives.

Tim Ferriss applies his 80/20 optimisation philosophy to the human body — covering fat loss, muscle gain, sleep, sex, and extreme athletic performance with self-experimental data.

Dr. Steven Gundry argues that longevity depends primarily on gut microbiome health, and provides a comprehensive protocol for living vigorously into old age.

A journalist goes in search of the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico's Copper Canyons, legendary for their ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. What he discovers turns everything he thinks he knows about running — and human nature — upside down.