The Comfort Crisis

Subtitle: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

Author: Michael Easter

Genre: Non-fiction, self-improvement

Format: Digital Purchase via Kindle

Publish Date: May 2021

Read: May 2023

Favorite Quote: Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.

Synopsis: Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis is part memoir and part exploration into human history and the situation we find ourselves in today. Easter explains that humans have become increasingly comfortable over the last 100 years. Between climate-controlled homes and being further away from where our food comes from, we experience very few true discomforts in life. Easter then explains how our lack of discomfort creates real physical issues for us, including rising rates of chronic diseases. Easter discusses the comfort crisis as he is on a month-long caribou hunting expedition in Alaska, allowing himself to experience extreme amounts of discomfort and relay this experience to readers.

Why does this book beguile? I first heard of this book after reading Peter Attia’s Outlive. Easter embarks upon a month-long caribou hunting trip in the extreme reaches of Alaska. Through his trip, Easter chronicles his trip in Alaska and peppers his research into human comfort and discomfort. By interviewing experts on screen time, burnout, anxiety, and physiology, Easter makes a compelling argument for readers to spend more time outside, move more like our ancestors, and embrace things that make us uncomfortable so we are more unflappable in everyday life.

Rating: 5/5

Link*: The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter - Amazon | The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter - Bookshop.org