I have a guilty secret. I am the consumer for whom the Matrix will be made. If I were a brain plugged directly into a net with access to all the books, games, movies and TV shows ever made, I’d probably be perfectly content.
But I’m not just a brain or a node on a computer network. I’ve got a body and all its accoutrements (best said with a French accent). Having a body means I get messages from it and the world around me ALL THE TIME. If I ignore some messages, like “you’ve been sitting way too long” or “your toes lost all feeling about an hour ago because you put them in preposterous shoes” or “this 4th cup of coffee is not delicious and is making you dizzy,” then my body talks to me louder. By loud, I mean messages of pain.
My body was and is made for motion. Computers, Hulu and smartphones have been around about a nano-second relative to how long the human body has been in existence. If my hunter-gatherer agrarian ancestors wanted to eat, drink, eliminate waste and make merry, they had to move. Until relatively recently, they had no telephone or internet by which a pizza and cheesy breadsticks could be ordered. There was no online catalogue of potential mates to choose from. Which was ok, because they had bodies which evolution had honed into perfect locomotive machines. It’s pretty much the same body I’ve inherited.
The human body is such a marvel in the myriad ways it does what it does, to allow us to do what we do. I think that if people knew more about it, we would all take much better care of ourselves. For instance, physical work by the body results in oxidants being created by the cells, specifically, reactive oxygen and nitrogen (aka “RONS”). Oxidants, in case you haven’t read all the ads for expensive anti-oxidant supplements, can harm the whole body starting at the cellular level. Oxidants running rampant in your body cause your cells, organs, skeleton, brain – YOU – to age faster. Oxidants causes wrinkles, got it?
But wait! The body is sooo brilliant, it creates its own cure! How, you may ask? I’ll tell you how! By making its own ANTIOXIDANTS! (But really the story is too complicated to tell it all here, so I’m going to relate a few of the fascinating findings described in a paper by Ji, Radak and Goto that was published in the American Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology in 2008.)
For instance: the body engages in hormesis. Hormesis is a term for how the body may use low doses of toxins to increase the body’s tolerance for larger doses of those toxins. When we engage in any sort of aerobic exercise that works muscles, we create oxidative stress in our bodies. We create oxidative stress in our bodies by merely sitting and breathing. (The major mover of breath is the dome-like muscle called the diaphragm.)
But the body, because it really loves us and wants us to survive and keep feeding it, combats the bad oxidants by creating antioxidants. Increased blood flow from exercise causes the generation of nitric oxide (NO) which, at low concentrations, is an antioxidant. However, at high concentrations, perhaps due to an irregular and high-intensity exercise session after months/years/a lifetime of no exercise, NO can react with superoxide to generate highly reactive and (bad) cytotoxic peroxynitrate (ONOO). I did not make that acronym up. High levels of NO create ONOO! Get it?
Moving on. This should NEVER be used as an argument for being a couch potato. Because exercise does not appear to harm vascular function “because of the high scavenging capacity of the antioxidant system.” (Ji, et al., referencing study published by Goto, Higashi, Kimura, Noma, Hara, et al., in Circulation in 2003, 108:530-535.) Also, regular exercise is absolutely beneficial in preventing diseases and improving both physiological and psychological functions in ways researchers are just beginning to understand.
Come back for part 2 of this article on Friday (and the answer to how YTU will make you younger!).
[...] By: Alexa Kim | Friday, February 24th, 2012 | Comments 0 Category: General Health | [See Part 1 of this blog and the discussion of antioxidants here!] [...]
ONOO, I better get on those happybaby minivinis more often. I tend to get lazy with those and I can feel the ONOO practically oozing when I do them in Jill’s class. Brilliant. Thank you for this blog. I will spread the word and encourage my students to stick to NO.
Moderation and listening to your body is key! Sadly, I often find that when I get too busy I ignore the messages until I already have the caffine jitters or the achey hip and tight shoulders from sitting at the computer too long! But if you listen, the body is indeed brilliant. and the creation of natural antioxidants from the increased blood flow of moderate exercise is yet another example. The body was designed for motion….You have more to worry about from lack of mobility than of oxidative rust! Say YES to NO and eat foods naturally high in anti-oxidants for that extra boost! Looking forward to part 2!
What a brilliant and charming way to tell us that exercise makes us younger. I can’t wait to read part two. I really liked the no and onoo part of the blog. Thank goodness our body loves us and wants to achieve homeostasis. It really does want to heal itself. Sometimes we just have to relax and really listen to the messages that we receive.
I can’t believe how serendipitous those acronyms are. I am a consistent exerciser, mostly high intensity, and I have to wonder even though it’s consistent am I still creating too much OONO!?
Hi Alexa S!
Consistent exercise is a great thing. Just be mindful of how you feel, both in body and mind, after your exercise sessions.
Before I say anything about the research regarding high intensity exercise (“HIE”), I have to emphasize that everyone is different – at least a little, depending on the topic. (And I’m assuming that HIE is defined by a calculation based on a person’s individual peak performance metrics.) However, there are pretty respectable studies which indicate that HIE may be linked to adverse health effects. The British Medical Journal offers one paper here: http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/42/1/11.full – entitled: “Deleterious effects of short-term, high-intensity exercise on immune function: evidence from leucocyte mitochondrial alterations and apoptosis.” (Yes, it appears that all serious scientific papers have titles which will put you to sleep before you get to the first paragraph.) Here’s another study regarding damage resulting from unaccustomed bouts of exercise in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation: http://journals.lww.com/ajpmr/Abstract/2002/11001/Exercise_Induced_Muscle_Damage_in_Humans.7.aspx.
But then again, here’s a recent NYT summary of a small study out of Canada which indicates that very short bursts of HI Interval Training (1-minute) may not be bad and might be helpful as it hasn’t killed any of the test study subjects (yet): http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/how-1-minute-intervals-can-improve-our-health/
Overall, though, it might be interesting to keep track of how you feel, mentally and physically, after your normal exercise routine (hopefully involving a YTU or other whole-body regime) and after one involving HIE. How are you, on a scale of 1-10, in terms of mood, ability to and capacity for breath, joint mobility, flexibility and strength?
Hmmmm. I think I’ll start keeping a journal of the same in my new too-smart-for-me mobile phone. But then, I’ll also have to make myself do some sessions of HIE for comparison. Hmmmm.
Cheers!
My roommate has been pretty sedentary since September but has a naturally slim frame so doing day to day activities one wouldn’t consider him “out of shape.” He recently decided he wanted to go for a run with me, keep in mind I run on a regular basis so I wasn’t holding back for him. He ended up getting really sick immediately after and experienced digestive problems for a few days after too. I can’t wait to show him this post, very interesting.
Up until a year ago, my exercise sessions had been highly irregular. I wonder how much damage has been done. You made this information fun to read. Our body is truly amazing. Can’t wait to read more…
ONOO! Brilliant. Thanks for bringing up the problem we have of living in hunter gatherer bodies in smart phone worlds. My work life is filled with people with chronic pain (I’m a Rolfing practitioner) and they’re always asking me why XYZ is giving them pain. They have to ask me, because the issue is so rarely something obvious and concrete like “Well my right hip hurts because I broke my pelvis in that car accident.”, and so much more frequently the slow demise of tissue fluidity from chronic inactivity. To be sure, people have pain from accidents or overuse, as with athletes, but the vast majority of the chronic pain out there in the world today (I believe) is from in-action rather than too much action. Clients always ask me what, in my experience working on people, I believe the most damaging sport or athletic activity is and I always tell them: “Sitting at your computer!”.
It’s funny. We know I’d we don’t charge our cell phones the battery will die. If we don’t put gas in the tank our car won’t run. If we don’t pay our bills our credit goes bad. But, how many people know that exercise can lengthen their lives and help them lead a healthier one? Even worse, how many people know all of these things and refuse to exercise? But, hey, at least they have the latest and greatest fully charged iPhone.
Thank you for this very informative post, Alexa!
I am in the YTU training program right now as part of my yoga teacher training. This post is pretty interesting as it pertains to HIE. As a life long athlete in high intensity sports up until I graduated college, I can definitely appreciate the way a regular yoga practice makes my body feel vs. daily jump/sprint training and intense weight lifting. I don’t feel burnt out after a yoga workout – in fact I feel more energized than before, which I can’t say was true for my very high intensity college athletic training.Not only that, but I feel much more natural in my skin and entire body doing yoga(with occasional mid-intensity and a little high intensity exercise) than I did doing lots of HIE. Very insightful post!