Learn the right way to live
Did you know that meditation changes our brain?
The following list of books is filled with mind-blowing studies, facts, and history. Each of them will make you empowered to change your life for the better.
You’ll learn how to correct your oral and spinal posture, overcome creative blocks, and get on the path to a healthy mind and body.
Andrew Huberman is an American neuroscientist and professor at Stanford. His book recommendations hint at his field. Espousing topics like emotions, trauma, and health, each of them offers a unique insight into humankind.
If you like learning new stuff, you’ll love this list.
Source: Books mentioned, recommended or praised by Andrew on his Twitter or on his podcast.
Improve jaws, improve life.
The reason why so many kids need braces or adults need the wisdom tooth extracted, is because… we are breathing wrong.
The authors bring to our attention the hidden pandemic. Brought on by a liquid diet, and soft pillows, the modern human is facing what the hunter-gatherers never did.
“Everybody’s wearing braces, everybody’s teeth are crowded, jaws are too small to house the teeth, and also people are starting to have issues with their sleep.”
Our ancestors had roomy mouths. It allowed for perfectly aligned teeth and wider breathing passageways.
Modern humans have smaller mouths, crooked teeth, and narrow passageways. As a result, many struggle with sleep apnea.
“If the tongue has to partially live inside the throat, then you’re going to be breathing through a narrow area, so the airway would be narrow.”
The book touches on the practice of ‘Orthotropics’ or ‘Forwardontics’ which focuses on improving postures in everyday actions.
The correct mouth posture is lips close, teeth slightly touching, and tongue to the roof of the mouth.
If I could name one key actionable item from this book, it would be: Start breathing from your nose.
We can’t see it but it hurts.
A comprehensive book covering all about trauma.
Conti is a doctor of psychiatry and has helped numerous people with their traumas. His experience and knowledge make him the perfect person to write this book.
“You can’t see trauma itself; you just see it at work — silently but maliciously.”
Divided into 15 chapters, the book starts with what trauma is and how we talk about it.
In the subsequent chapters, Conti discusses types of trauma, the issues with healthcare of traumatized individuals, and long-lasting effects on mental and physical health.
We are not meant to face trauma alone. The author continually focuses on the power of empathy and humans coming together.
“Compassion, community, and humanity are intertwined in that they exemplify the full expression of who we are as humans.”
This book is important because most of us either faced a traumatizing experience or know someone who did.
What’s the secret to living forever?
We want to live long.
To know how, you have to read this book.
Like the ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse’, Attia gives us the ‘four horsemen’ which bring the doom of life. They are heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and type 2 diabetes.
Modern medicine, which the author calls Medicine 2.0, doesn’t focus on prevention. It starts treatment when symptoms appear.
In reality, diseases don’t appear overnight. They keep building up over many decades.
“One macronutrient, in particular, demands more of our attention than most people realize: not carbs, not fat, but protein becomes critically important as we age.”
The author tells us about Medicine 3.0 which provides a holistic approach to being healthy.
Exercise
Nutrition
Sleep
Emotional health
Exogenous molecules (drugs, hormones, or supplements)
“… I now consider exercise to be the most potent longevity “drug” in our arsenal, in terms of lifespan and healthspan.”
This book is enlightening and will help you make the right changes in your life.
Unleash the creative force inside you.
Rick Rubin is a successful music producer with a career spanning over 40 years.
In his first and only book so far, he gives us a down low on the creative process.
“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”
He tells us to open ourselves to inspiration and let ideas flow through us. Nature is a good source of inspiration and the author equates nature to our rich inner world.
Rubin tells us about two kinds of people: Experimenters and Finishers.
Experimenters enjoy the early stage of creation. They like to play with ideas and start the process.
Finishers are focused on completing their artwork, sometimes undermining the value of experimentation.
To make great art, he tells us to embrace both qualities simultaneously.
“The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend.”
Whether you are an aspiring artist or someone who is already on the way, this book will help you up your creative game.
Pushing the boundaries on normal and acceptable.
Oliver Sacks is known for his book, ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’.
He is a British neurologist and writer. He moved to America at the age of 27 years and spent most of his career there.
‘On the Move’ is his second autobiographical work. The first one is ‘Uncle Tungsten’
which details his childhood. 4 months after the publication of his second autobiography, Sacks passed away.
“The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings.”
He shares raw and personal accounts in this book. His love of writing, his use of LSD, his sexual orientation (he is gay), and his shyness.
Sack is known for being eccentric. Consider this. One time he abducted a patient from the neurology ward to honor her dying wish.
“I only seem to find the right way after making every possible blunder, and finally exhausting all the wrong ways.”
This book reminds me of ‘The Man Who Loved Only Numbers’, which is the biography of mathematician Paul Erdős.
Both men were fully dedicated to their field, decided not to marry, and had weird quirks about them.
Perhaps being completely immersed in one thing does that to you.
Pick up this book to learn about the power of writing and the life of an unconventional but talented physician.
A scientist’s journey to understand emotions.
We classify our pets’ behaviors as being sad or happy, but are they?
The author says that there is a wide range of disciplines that try to understand emotions like psychology, cognition, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and neuroscience.
But all of them speak a different language and go about it in different ways.
“Not only are we the proverbial blind men grasping different parts of the elephant and trying to describe what we are holding, but we don’t even have the same word for “elephant.”
Anderson aims to understand emotions in animals and humans in a way that is empirical and grounded in facts.
The author introduces a new way of understanding emotions in animals. For this scientists use ‘model organisms’, animals that are specifically bred in the lab. For example fruit flies and mice.
This technique studies individual neurons and their electrical signals.
“Neuroscience has something real to tell us about how emotions work; we’ve just been going about it in the wrong way.”
What I understood from Anderson’s work is that animals do have emotions.
Through this book, you can travel the path of electrical impulses in the brain.
If a 40-year-old alcoholic can turn his life around, can’t you?
Rich Roll is a swimmer. His ‘lifelong love affair with water’ began when his mother threw him in the swimming pool as an infant.
“I barely lifted a finger — let alone a pair of swim trunks — throughout the nineties. Alcoholism left me too hungover to get off the couch…”
In his middle age, he let himself go. He was overweight and addicted to alcohol.
His wife stood by him when he was at his worst. She urged him gently by giving a bike to him on his birthday.
When he was 40, Roll decided to turn his life around.
This part of his story motivated me a lot. You can become fit at any age. What matters is that you choose to start.
“But you simply cannot make someone change.”
After starting exercising, Roll decided to take on 5 days of Ironman challenges. Despite hitting rock bottom on the third day, he didn’t give up.
Along with sharing his personal story of becoming an endurance athlete, Roll enlightens us on various issues. For example the importance of healthy gut bacteria.
This book will make you get off the couch and get going.
A glimpse into ancient Rome through the eyes of a medic.
Galen is a doctor from the 2nd century who was born in what is now Turkey.
His writings make up the eighth of the surviving classical Greek literature. Some of his work survived because Islamic scholars translated it into Arabic.
Mattern’s work is Galen’s first biography in the English language. She draws on his writings to write this book.
Galen started his career by treating gladiators in his hometown. He used cloth soaked in wine to cover their wounds.
“A gladiator’s chance of death in any particular contest, either in the arena or later of his wounds, was about one in nine.”
He later opened his practice in Rome. Taking pride in his work and talent, he took pleasure in pointing out the flaws of his peers.
Galen also dissected animals to understand human anatomy better. His writings also show that he took detailed case histories of his patients.
Eventually, he was appointed as a court physician by the emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Succeeding emperors retained him in his position.
The author calls Galen a ‘a surprisingly pious man.’
This book will make you appreciate the human achievements of the past.
Monks meet science, meditation meets MRIs.
Does meditation make you a better person?
That is the question that this book answers.
It uses multiple studies of various groups of people who are on different levels of meditation. Some studies were done in Richie’s (Richard’s) lab.
The results in this book are mind-blowing. Meditation changes the brain structure, improves emotional health, and increases working memory.
In the short term, participants report increased focus and less wandering of mind.
For lifetime yogis who lead lives of solitude, the gamma rays in the brain are significantly elevated. Gamma rays occur when different regions of the brain exist in harmony.
“Just as Mingyur began the meditation, there was a sudden huge burst of electrical activity on the computer monitors displaying the signals from his brain.”
It was difficult to convince the yogis from the mountains to aid in research. They couldn’t be swayed by money. However, the authors managed to do so by appealing to their compassionate side.
Once you finish reading this book, you’ll be convinced of the power that meditation holds.
Shifting from ‘me’ to ‘we’, can humility heal society?
Brooks, a journalist and cultural critic makes us reflect on the materialism and hyperindividualism that exists in today’s culture.
He contrasts two selves that live in all of us.
One of them is concerned with wealth, status, and career success. This self possesses ‘résumé virtues’.
“When you have deep friendships with good people, you copy and then absorb some of their best traits.”
The other self is concerned with moral virtues and living a meaningful life. The values of this self are termed ‘eulogy virtues’. These are the virtues that a person is remembered by. It includes things like kindness, bravery, and love.
The book draws on the life stories of people who displayed strength of character. People like Francis Perkins, who was a worker rights advocate, and Johnny Unitas, an NFL player.
One of the main lessons is to get rid of pride and embrace humility.
“Humility is a virtue of self-understanding in context, acquired by the practice of other centeredness.”
I’d say this book is a little bit preachy but for the right reasons.
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