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Book review: The Perfect Medicine: How Running Makes Us Healthier and Happier

"I once heard an author tell an interviewer that you should only write a book if you can't stop yourself from doing so, if the words are racing out. I feel that compulsion with running — I just can't help from putting my shoes on, heading out the door, and putting one foot in front of the other. I've become fascinated by running and what it means to be a runner. I've also been inspired by the growing scientific evidence that tells us how to run faster and farther and which reveals running is a powerful way to achieve better physical and mental health. I wrote this book because I couldn't stop the words from racing out."

Christopher Kelsall

March 10, 2023

Title: The Perfect Medicine: How Running Makes Us Healthier and Happier

Author: Dr. Brodie Ramin

Pages: 216

ISBN: 20210167513 (paperback)

ISBN: 2021016770X (ebook)

Publisher: Dundurn Press, Toronto, Ontario, www.dundurn.com

The review

Canadian physician, Dr. Brodie Ramin, grew up in various places throughout the world, but moved back to Canada to finish his education and become a medical doctor. His book — part autobiographical and part observational narration — starts off with an emergency room scenario after a stabbing of a young man. A metaphor presents itself; we run for various reasons based on immediate needs for care, blood, help. Life is us running around.

Ramin finds the joy of running in his mid-30s, after spending years being a student and then a physician — career focussed. Understood. Like many mature runners, he reflects back on childhood memories of cross-country running. His love for the activity is only rekindled when he became fascinated, not for typical reasons like weight loss benefits or for the sport — at least not at first — but more for the mental health and the low-hanging-fruit (pardon) solutions to common maladies and epidemics like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

On the pages of The Perfect Medicine, Ramin shares his discovery of this life-giving activity that we freely have access to. Readers will be left wonder why we don’t run? It is work, but running can become a labour of love with patience.

Ramin explores the science of running health. He demonstrates that first decade of fascination. Ramin takes the reader through his personal journey and discovery. He writes about man’s superpower its evolution and offers strategies to get fit and run faster and shares how exercise may help people recover from addictions and mental health issues.

This book will be of value to others who may be at the beginning stages of their own transformation into running. However, much of the science, some of the lore will not speak to the veterans of the sport who may be competitive or have already spent decades running, daily.

However, for anyone who may need motivation to get out the door for the first time and especially those who are needing to improve their own physical and or mental health, The Perfect Medicine is perfect medicine.

More importantly, many physicians who do not run, need to understand the benefits of daily, vigorous endurance exercise. A prescription of running over drugs or to wean a patient from prescription drugs or additions, for that matter, should be adopted by the majority of doctors who do not run. It is a specialized knowledge and far too few know of our very own natural superpower freely available.

For that alone, The Perfect Medicine, comes from a cohort, who can influence the majority, who have the position to influence millions who will benefit by being in better mental and physical health.