The Stress Paradox

Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier

De: Sharon Horesh Bergquist

Narrado por: Dana Wing Lau

A paradigm-shifting approach to wellness that reveals how the right levels of stress are actually good for you and how stress can help you unlock the body’s natural ability to stave off aging, prevent disease, and improve metabolic health.

What if we’ve gotten stress wrong?

There’s a breakthrough happening in the study of wellness and longevity. We know that excessive stress can be toxic, but emerging new research reveals that too little stress is just as bad for you as too much.

Dr. Sharon Bergquist, a pioneering physician and leading stress researcher, is at the forefront of this movement. In The Stress Paradox, she explains that our bodies are designed to heal and repair themselves, but we need the right amount and type of stress to rejuvenate at a cellular level.

Many modern comforts have inadvertently increased our risk of mental and physical illness by causing us to underutilize our inherited response to challenges. Our need for stress is so deeply embedded in our genes that you can’t achieve good health without it! Dr. Bergquist reveals how to optimize five key stressors to maximize mental, emotional, and physical resilience and reap a host of health benefits, from staving off dementia to increasing the years of your life. These simple lifestyle changes can keep your mind sharp, improve your mood, increase energy and metabolism, support a healthy gut, maintain a healthy weight, and decrease your risk of serious diseases like cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s.

• Eating more plant “toxins” in foods like vegetables, dark chocolate, and spices
• Exercising with intermittent bursts of intense movement
• Engaging in heat and cold therapy to awaken your body’s ancient healing pathways
• Fasting most effectively for your circadian biology
• Challenging yourself mentally and emotionally while managing unhealthy stress levels

Rooted in cutting-edge science and complete with customizable protocols, workouts, and recipe templates, The Stress Paradox is an accessible life-changing roadmap to dramatically increase health, happiness, and longevity.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2025 Sharon Horesh Bergquist (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers

Amazing must read

With the biohacking movement that I personally believe has so much to of, it is so good to have the research and education this book offers. We can easily get swept away by the promises and info of what technology and “shortcuts” can offer but this books is an excellent reminder to balance out that view. Plants are toxins but not toxic and actually have a hormetic effect! That info alone is priceless given than plant based diets are now getting a bad rap and there is fear around them in terms of toxicity. This book was wonderful and gave me more confidence and a well rounded view of stress, the tools and how and when to use them to maximize my resilience and longevity.

Real Medicine

This book does a great job at outlining the way our modern lifestyle works against our own and innate biology. Getting back to the basics, exercising, and eating real food. I am a nurse working in cardiology and see firsthand the devastating effects of the modern lifestyle. This is a great introduction to getting back to the basics.