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The Connection Cure by Julia Hotz: A Book Review Bonus Episode · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

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  Welcome to a bonus episode of the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
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  On bonus episodes, I review books that can impact your health,
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  especially as someone with an autoimmune disease.
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  For any book that I give positive recommendations for, I will have an affiliate
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  link down in the show notes, but of course you can always get the book at your
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  local bookstore or at the library.
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  If you have a book that you would
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  like me to review for the Health with Hashimoto's podcast, let me know.
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  I love to read, I love to learn, and I love checking out new books.
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  So let me know what book I should review next.
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  Let's dive into today's bonus episode content.
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  The Connection Cure by Julia Hotz, H-O-T-Z is her last name.
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  I love this book. I'm going to give it five stars. I'll let you know that right now.
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  Go out and buy it and read it. It is so good.
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  The subtitle of this book is The Prescriptive Power of Movement,
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  Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging.
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  This is a book about things that help us get well that are not medications.
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  I loved it. It is so affirming of like there are other aspects of life than just medicine.
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  It's so good. Okay, so let me read you the back of the book or the description.
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  It says, in this combination of diligent science reporting, Okay,
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  I'm going to interject here.
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  There is research in this book. She does not tell you just stories.
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  This is real information.
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  These are real things. It's not just like, woo.
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  It's real. I love that. Okay, back to the description.
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  In this combination of diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories,
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  and surprising self-discovery, journalist Julia Hotz helps us discover lasting
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  and life-changing medicine in our own communities.
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  Traditionally, when we get sick, healthcare professionals ask,
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  what's the matter with you?
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  But around the world, teams of doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers
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  have started to flip the script, asking, what matters to you?
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  Instead of solely pharmaceutical prescriptions, they offer social prescriptions,
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  referrals to community activities and resources like photography classes,
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  gardening groups, and volunteering gigs. The results speak for themselves.
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  Science shows us that social prescribing is effective for treating symptoms
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  of the modern world's most common ailments, depression, ADHD,
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  addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, dementia, diabetes, and loneliness.
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  As healthcare's de facto cycle of diagnose, treat, repeat reaches a breaking
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  point, social prescribing has also proven to reduce patient wait times,
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  lower hospitalization rates, save money, and reverse health worker burnout. out.
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  As a general sense of unwellness plagues more of us, social prescriptions can
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  help us feel healthier than we've felt in years.
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  That's all I'm going to read from the back there is a little bit more.
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  And you can read it on the blog post that goes with this episode,
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  or you can read it on the back of the book or in Amazon or wherever you shop for books.
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  And like the description said, one thing I loved about this book is that it
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  really does flip that script.
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  Instead of asking what's the matter with you, they ask what matters to you.
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  And then you go pursue that thing.
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  There are three parts in the book. And the first part is largely stories about
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  different people pursuing things that matter to them.
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  And the thing is, they might not have known that it mattered to them beforehand.
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  A lot of the people were actually prescribed, this is mostly in Europe,
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  they were mostly prescribed these groups.
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  And it's a new thing in Europe. The doctors or nurses or social workers had
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  actual prescriptions and they would say, okay, go to this group.
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  And the group is usually involved in nature, but not always.
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  It's a community and they're all supportive of each other.
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  One thing I loved about a lot of the groups when they were talking about it
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  is it's not a group about the illness.
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  They're not focusing on what's wrong.
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  They're focusing on something else. They're focusing on coming together and
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  doing an activity, whether it's going out in nature.
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  Stories about being afraid of bears was kind of fun.
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  So going out in nature or fishing, which again is nature.
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  There was another one that went swimming in the cold ocean.
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  There were so many different types of activities and
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  they all had this togetherness about them
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  I loved it this is such a good book okay a little bit about a social prescription
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  from the book it says a social prescription is officially defined as a non-medical
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  resource or activity that aims to improve a person's health and strengthen strengthen
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  their community connections because.
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  Again, from the book, it says, to survive, we need basic resources,
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  the things we think about when you hear environment, clean air,
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  trees, nutritious food, shelter, and money.
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  And to thrive, we need sources of joy, meaning, and relationships in our environments too.
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  Reasons to wake up in the morning, things that make us feel healthy,
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  connections to what matters to us.
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  And I think that's the biggest premise of the book. And not everybody knew what
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  connections Matter to them.
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  And some of the parts of this book, we're exploring what does matter to you.
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  So like I said, there are three parts in this book. Part one is about the science
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  and it has a lot of stories.
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  It shows that movement, nature, art, things like that.
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  There is their scientific validation for how it helps people in their health and in their diagnoses.
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  It really works. Part two is
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  more of the, I would say, like systems behind it, how they make it work.
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  There's 30 different countries that the author toured in writing this book and
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  in figuring out, you know, what goes into a social prescription.
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  And in part two, they also talk, she also talks about, you know,
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  the wait times and the healthcare environment and talks about how social prescribing can help with that too.
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  And then part three is really, let's put this in action. Let's help you figure
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  out how this works for you.
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  How can you prescribe, not technically prescribe, but how can you prescribe this for yourself?
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  So a quote from the book from part three, she says, the author says,
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  I prescribe myself movement, nature, art, service, and belonging when I find
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  myself feeling the symptoms that resemble theirs.
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  And by theirs, she's talking the people in part one, feeling stuck,
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  distracted, worried, grumpy, and lonely.
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  And then, spoiler alert, I surprised myself.
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  I realized I'd been wrong about health all along. It's impossible for me to
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  keep a cool journalistic distance from this topic and investigate it the same
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  way I might investigate corporate tax fraud.
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  I realize that all of us are at risk of feeling unwell in our ever-disconnected environments.
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  And I realize, too, that all of us can stand to feel better when we reconnect what matters to us.
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  This book is not anti-medical. It's not anti-pharmaceutical.
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  Instead, this book is opening you up to a whole other world of things that you can do for your health.
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  For your mental health, for your physical health, for your spiritual health.
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  Although she didn't really talk about spiritual health. It's mostly mental and physical.
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  This book is about what else you can do.
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  So let me give you one example from the book. And this is in a chapter talking about movement.
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  Everybody knows that we sit too much. We're sedentary too much.
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  We know that we should go outside and we should be active, right?
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  But what happens when the doctor gives you a prescription to help you do that?
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  Well, a doctor gave a patient specifically Frank in this book,
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  a prescription for a cycling club.
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  Now he was an adult and I can't remember if it was Frank or somebody else in the cycling club.
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  They wanted to learn, but as an adult, they hadn't ridden a bike in decades
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  and they didn't even remember like all of the right rules.
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  Well, this cycling club is designed for people like that.
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  And they started out with like a refresher course on safety and helping you
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  just get the basics back down.
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  But I loved what the book said about movement and and this social prescription.
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  It says, "...patients didn't need doctors to tell them to move.
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  They needed everything else, a sense of joy while moving instead of an obligation
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  to be, quote, fit, a way to freely access places to move instead of an expensive membership,
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  a personal motivation to get moving instead of an aesthetic one,
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  and perhaps most important, people to hold them accountable.".
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  And that's what they found in this particular chapter in this cycling group.
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  They found people and even when they were done with the prescription,
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  a lot of the people in that cycling group stayed together and formed their own
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  group, their own accountability group.
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  And they're having fun, but they're taking care of each other too.
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  I remember one story about that cycling group and one of the ladies I think
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  had, she had something physical so that she was slower and they all cared for her.
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  And she was like the comedy or the comedian of the group. It was a group of
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  friends at the end of the social prescription.
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  They stayed together and they were all increasing their physical and mental
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  well-being because of this group, because of this social prescription.
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  There's a lot of different types of prescriptions and social groups in this book.
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  I highly recommend checking it out. Like I said, there's nature, there's art,
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  there's even a chapter about the farms in Northern Europe where they provide
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  work for people with dementia,
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  the lifestyle work where they'll
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  go and they'll collect eggs or feed the cows or clean out the stalls.
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  This sense of purpose, it does so much for that community of people with dementia.
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  There's so many great stories in part one. And like I said, part three is all
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  about how to apply this to your life.
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  So The Connection Cure is out this coming week.
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  You can pre-order it today if you are listening when this episode airs on a
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  Saturday, June 8th. The book itself comes out on June 11th.
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  It is going to be such an encouraging an uplifting book for you.
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  Just the stories themselves are fun to read. All of part one.
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  Just stories about people finding better health, physical and mental health
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  through social prescriptions.
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  And then part two is about lots of stuff around the world and making it work.
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  And then part three is all applying it to your life.
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  I highly recommend this book. It is five stars from me. Go out and get it and
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  then come over to the Health with Hashimoto's community in the app and let's talk about it.
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  What are you doing to not quite prescribe, but kind of like prescribe a social
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  cure or a connection cure for yourself.
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  And again, of course, the FDA, the FTC, all of their government agencies.
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  They don't like the word cure.
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  But since that's in the title of this book, The Connection Cure, I'm going to use it here.
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  Are you going to cure your Hashimoto's by connecting with others?
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  No. Are you going to make an impact in your physical and mental health?
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  Probably. And I would love to hear your results. Go out and get the book,
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  read it, and then pop over to the Health with Hashimoto's community and let's talk about it.
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  Thank you for listening to this bonus episode of the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
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  If you know of somebody else who would maybe enjoy this book,
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  will you share it with them?
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  You can share the episode or you can take a screenshot and you can share it
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  to your stories and tag myself on Instagram.
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  I am health.with.hashimoto's. And you can also tag your friend who might enjoy
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  this book. I look forward to talking to you.
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  Music.