La Jolla, CA – May 29, 2026 – After more than two decades in integrative medicine, clinician-researcher Dr. Erica Oberg, ND, MPH, is releasing her new book, Healthy Hedonism: Why Feeling Good is Good for You!, making a case that feeling good is not frivolous; it is foundational to health. In the book, she argues that joy, connection, nourishment, nature, movement, creativity, and purpose are not optional lifestyle extras but biologically meaningful inputs that help regulate stress, support resilience, and improve long-term well-being.
Oberg’s perspective is grounded in a career that bridges science, public health, and patient care. She has been practicing integrative and natural medicine since 2003, completed an NIH fellowship at the University of Washington, served as Founding Medical Director at Bastyr University California, and published more than 30 peer-reviewed research papers. Today, she leads a concierge-style practice in La Jolla focused on chronic disease prevention, brain health, hormones, nutrition, and personalized wellness care.
Her professional experience helped shape the message of Healthy Hedonism. After years of treating patients, she repeatedly saw that the people who aged best were not the ones “white-knuckling” their way through wellness checklists, but the ones who built health into lives they genuinely enjoyed. The book presents wellness as something that can be supported through practical, enjoyable daily practices rather than deprivation, overwork, or self-denial.
The book also speaks to the overlapping pressures many adults, especially women, face while trying to maintain their well-being. Approximately 1.3 million women in the United States enter menopause each year. Gallup reported in late 2024 that 51% of working women in the U.S. felt stressed “a lot of the day yesterday,” compared with 39% of men. And the National Institute of Mental Health reports that 10.3% of adult females experienced a major depressive episode in the prior year, compared with 6.2% of males.
Rather than adding one more punishing to-do list, Oberg’s book offers a different approach: pleasure that restores rather than numbs. Healthy Hedonism distinguishes between shallow, depleting habits and intentional practices that calm the nervous system and make healthy choices more sustainable. It asks readers to rethink wellness not as performance, but as alignment.
Healthy Hedonism offers a timely lens on why so many people are “doing everything right” and still feel depleted—and what a more humane model of health can look like. Review copies and interview opportunities are available upon request.
Key Takeaways from Healthy Hedonism
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Pleasure can be preventive medicine when it supports recovery, connection, sleep, nourishment, and meaning.
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People do not need more guilt-based wellness messaging; they need sustainable rituals that fit real lives.
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Health improves when daily practices work with human biology, not against it—through rest, movement, supportive relationships, creative expression, and time in nature.
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As it turns out, feeling good is actually good for long-term wellness.
To learn more about Healthy Hedonism: Why Feeling Good is Good for You! or related resources, please visit https://www.drericaoberg.com/.
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