Discussing exercise with a family member
Published on 19th December 2024 by Phil Elson
Athletes
Think about your favourite sport, and ask yourself why do the athletes need to train? They train to encourage their body to adapt to the sports requirements, so they acquire fitness and are then able to compete in that sport at the level required. When they're injured, commentators discuss how long the recovery will be, whether they will be fit enough to compete in the next season or sometimes at all. With training their fitness improves, without the training their fitness declines.
The same is true for us, but we don't seem to see it anymore. Just because most people are watching the TV or using their phones doesn't make it a good idea, or good for our health.
It's ironic, that we sit and watch sports celebrating the sporting prowess of the athletes we watch while letting our own health decline.
And that's what many people do, we sit down, watch TV and expect our health to improve, or at least not decline, but in reality, our muscles will waste away from our body and our heart making us frailer, more prone to falls and future injury and less able to enjoy life and seize the day. It's the same story for people who have gone through surgery or have long recoveries from injury, they generally slide back into their old habits and expect a similar result, but sadly and especially if they're elderly, they'll have lost muscle while in the hospital, be frailer, more prone to falls and future injury - the start of a spiral downwards.
If you don't want that fate, you need to make the change for yourself - you won't regret it.
Take a couple of minutes here to think about where you are, and what you want from life - spending time with the family, the grandkids, being independent, walking to the shops etc?
Abundance, Convenience and Old Age
Our current health or education system doesn't teach us about how to live a healthy life - it's not focused on prevention, which is what we need. It steps in once your health has started to fail - your heart is failing, your blood pressure gets past a certain threshold, your blood lipids are elevated or you have high uric acid for instance. For these maladies, you may be prescribed medication to treat the symptoms without fixing the root cause, and if they do try to fix the root cause it's generally vague advice like eat better, or move more and that's because they've never been taught either (Dr P Attia, 2023), and while it's good advice, what does this mean?
We need to teach ourselves how to be healthy and to increase the likelihood of longevity. One pillar of health we have is exercise, exercise is preventative medicine and there's no prescription needed - it reduces the risk of injury, and the risk of developing one of the non-communicable diseases of our time (Cancer, Neurodegenerative Diseases (Alzheimer's, Dementia), Metabolic Disorders (type 2 Diabetes, Gout) and Heart Diseases). When we combine this with the other 2 pillars of health; nutrition and sleep, our chances for longevity - checking out with a life full of the things we love to do increases by multiple factors.
Step into the past
You've probably not thought about this for a long time, but we evolved from our hunter-gatherer ancestors and inherited their genes, these genes have served us well and we're only here now because of the survival edge they gave us.
In the survival context, being able to adapt is critical - life for the hunter-gatherer is dynamic and seasonal changes put different pressures on survival; they need to escape and evade predators, travel, hunt and forage but also conserve energy for times of hardship. Due to these pressures, our bodies have learned to adapt (train) and when the adaption is no longer required, our body essentially says, “If you're not using this level of fitness, then I won't spend the resources maintaining it”. This evolutionary adaptation is now backfiring on our minds and bodies in our world of abundance and convenience - TVs, sofas, desk jobs, games consoles, supermarkets and fast food delivery as you can see in the charts to the right.
The similarity in the charts is clear but it's happened so fast that it's only in recent years that the veil surrounding the diseases of our time (Cancer, Cardiovascular disease, Neurodegenerative and Metabolic dysfunction) is being pulled back and we're finally seeing that as we become more sedentary and eat a more processed diet, the prevalence of these diseases and dysfunctions increase.
One example of our body' adaption backfiring is osteoporosis, made worse for women by menopause but critically also our bodies adapting to a lack of exercise - do you think your bones will get stronger by sitting on the sofa or by using them? Lifting weights, doing yoga, walking, carrying shopping, jogging, riding the exercise bike and so on? When diagnosed with osteoporosis, you'll often be prescribed calcium tablets. But if you're just sat on your bum watching TV, your body doesn't know where to put the calcium - it's not like you're using your bones for much, so most will be excreted and some will be sequestered to other functions. When you exercise, your bones sense the load and will tell your body they need calcium and other building blocks to strengthen themselves (Dr P Attia, 2023) - they need to be told to get stronger, and the only way to tell them is to use them, to exercise.
Self-reflection
Time for some self-reflection, look through this list, and select the activities that relate
If you've checked some of those boxes and you've started to feel lazy then that's probably a good thing, and you can change. If you're not exercising then you're losing fitness and in time you'll lose your health. To counter this trend we must deploy exercise with discipline/willpower - not to survive due to lack of abundance and convenience but because of it - this loss of fitness gets worse as we age, so it is as we age we need to exercise more, especially after 65 (Dr P Attia, 2023).
The chart below indicates how screen-time and a sedentary lifestyle increased in the population in the last 100 years.
The chart below indicates how the diseases of our time have increased in the population in the last 100 years.
The chart below indicates how the consumption of processed food has increased in the population in the last 100 years.
Exercise the body
We exercise 3 pillars; our heart and lungs to strengthen the cardiovascular system (1) so we have the energy to do the things we love. We work on strength (2) to increase muscle mass, making you stronger and protecting you from falls and increasing bone density making it less likely a fall will result in injury. Finally, we train for stability (3), making us less likely to fall, and if we do take a trip, we're stable and strong enough to catch ourselves (Dr P Attia, 2023).
Exercise the mind
Exercising the mind through ongoing and diverse activities like music, dance, language and activities which encourage proprioception (the awareness of the body in space), like walking on natural surfaces (not tarmac), playing catch and other dynamic sports. Social connections are also key. All these activities help maintain cognitive integrity, protecting us against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's (J Turknett et al, 2022).
Just in case it's not clear, ignoring high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low bone density and other age-related maladies, if you're weak or have poor cardio-vascular fitness, then as you age, you're 3-5x more likely to die of any cause (all-cause mortality) compared to someone of the same age who is strong and has good cardiovascular fitness (Jama, 2018). If you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low bone density and other maladies, then the odds are stacked against you even more, and exercise must be integrated into one's life as quickly and safely as possible (Dr P Attia, 2023).
Exercise can seem overwhelming at first, but it doesn't need to be. The most important thing to do is start, start small, and be positive, this is for you, it will be enjoyable and you'll have a much greater chance of living a longer, better, stronger, independent life for longer.