We are Sprinters not Marathon Runners

“Slow and steady wins the race.” “Everything in moderation” These are some fairly old, yet prevalent sayings. And there is some wisdom to be found in them when applied to the right aspects of life.  But as biological creatures, they do not describe our natural mode of operation.

Our species evolved to become hunter-gatherers.  Like most pack-hunting mammals, this means evolution left us well suited for short, but intense spurts of activity.  The typical work week of a paleolithic-man is estimated to be fewer than twenty hours a week.  That’s right, twenty hours a week.  Hunting was of course a grueling and dangerous endeavor. But after killing a mastodon or bison’s relative, our progenitor would be set for food for a while, and have time to sit around an contemplate existence.  Think about a pack of Lions: most of their time is spent sun-bathing, interrupted by intense athlete hunting feats.

While we cannot alter the world around us to accommodate a 20 hour work week, we use this guide in terms of health matters.   For exercise (separate this from physical activity done i for fun) we should be favoring short and intense workouts, which repeatedly cross the anaerobic threshold: sprints, and sprint-like activities.  Heavy, but short (low rep, low volume), resistance training sessions, utilizing the body’s largest muscle groups which pushes the you almost to your max.

In terms of diet this means dismissing the convention  of seeing food only as energy, but instead as the bricks and mortar for your body as well. And then consuming the right kind of calories for your activity level.  In recent years the “Caveman” diet-variations have become increasingly popular.  While there are a handful of “non-caveman” foods I think should be added to everyone’s diet, and a couple more that should be added to the diets of athletes, the basic principles are sound: no processed foods, no grains or legumes (in another post I hope to have a discussion on these), no dairy or very limited diary, and the bulk of you calories coming from protein and fat.  This model of nutrition fuels our bodies appropriately for the types to type of activity we’re made for, and in a lucky trick of fate, matches up pretty well with the sedentary lifestyles most people have these days.

It also means not being able to have everything, which is often what “Everything in moderation” turns into.  You cannot devour pastries on a daily basis, and expect to be slim. You cannot drink like a fish, and expect to remain healthy.  You cannot smoke and expect to maintain cardio.  This things seems self-evident, yet all the time we see people try and “moderate” between extremes and reach a balance: well it’s okay if I eat this much junk because it won’t hurt that much. It’s okay to smoke a little bit, I mean it takes years to get cancer, and how much could it really effect my breathing?”

It takes a kind of mature knowledge to acknowledge that real moderation is not indulging in everything “in moderation”,  but regulating the different aspects of one’s life in a balancing way.  Moderation is not about it being okay to engage in a number of negative behaviors, because they’re balanced by positive ones (the world rarely brakes down into good and bad that way), but finding aspects and that complement each other.

Without a doubt, one of the larger fans of the “everything in moderation” approach is the pharmaceutical companies, and the paradigm that insists they are the cure-all.  They are the ultimate “you can have your cake and eat it to” salesmen.  Lose fat without changing your diet or lifestyle. Gain muscle without working out.  Lower your bad cholesterol levels without changing your diet and activity levels. Treat diabetes without losing weight or changing you lifestyle.  Treat and ignore pain without treating and confronting the root causes.

So try being a little more “caveman” and see how it goes. Re-engage that lost knowledge or our progenitors: eat what is healthy, avoid what is not, be intense and hard-working, then balance that with real rest and recovery, Confront (health) problems at their root, don’t treat or cover the symptoms by rationalizing that the lifestyle change or effort to truly correct the problem will be too great.

Live Well.

Health is an Issue of Culture, Not Just Materials

Material causes, or factors, in problems are often easy to point out.  However, often, it is a deeper (and much more controversial) cultural aspect at work which is the root (or a root) of the problem.  What I'm calling cultural, some might call ethereal (in an attempt to dismiss it).  It is those non-material factors that come into play, whether we are talking about the culture around pain management, or the growing culture of obesity int he US.  Whatever the culture may be, it established baseline norms within its realm: standards and expectations.

As our mini-case study in this, let us look at some recent studies about the growing world-wide obesity epidemic. In the first part of 2011 a number surveys have shown that elsewhere in the world, mostly parts of the Middle East and the Pacific Islands, the US is being overtaken.  Unfortunately this does not seem to suggest that the rate of increase of our obese and overweight population has been stemmed:

Recent data show that about 34% of American adults and 17% of children are clinically obese.  About double that amount (for adults): 68%, are considered seriously overweight.  Of course these statistics are reached based upon the BMI (Body Mass Index) which is a very imperfect measure based on mass (in the US we just call it weight and treat it like the same thing) and height.  An athletic or muscle-bound individual can easily end up being grouped with the overweight or obese when they become a data-point under this system.  Body-fat measurement would be much preferable: but that's another topic.

What I really find interesting is this breakdown by state and then by county. Isn't it interesting how 'regional' the obesity rates appear to be?  When we look at the top ten counties for obesity, we see that 6/10 are in Mississippi and then 3/10 are from Alabama.  Then if we look at the top ten for the lowest rates we see 7/10 are in Colorado, with the remaining three in New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming: all in the Mountain West.

What does this tell us? Region to region in the US, we all have access to pretty much the same stores, the same food, the same health-products.  The differences are not even based in urban vs. rural (the best and worst counties all turn out to be relatively rural).  This argues against a material-cause being the root of the problem (however, I would be premise if I ignored that some of those counties in Mississippi are very poor, and some of those counties in Colorado are pretty wealthy).

I would like to suggest that the issue is largely a cultural issue.

Shifting the Healthcare Paradigm Part II

There are a couple areas of specific interest to me personally. One is nutrition.  Food has medicine-like effects.  Your weight, your muscle levels, your fat levels, your insulin sensitivity, you metabolism, your cholesterol levels, your hormone regulation, just to name a few, are all factors best controlled by good dietary practices: not pharmaceuticals and surgery.

Yes the very institutions which exist ostensibly to help in this area, often betray us. They betray us to personal and political agendas, and most often, they betray us to money.  Take the FDA for example:  the FDA has a long history of making poor nutritional recommendations, starting back in the early part of the 20^th century when it was decided that the US needed an export, a cash crop, and suddenly it became the FDA’s job to make sure Americans were eating producing grains.  More recently, as diabetes was skyrocketing, and Americans were becoming less healthy, they gave us the Food Pyramid: a travesty that, for example, recommends about 70% of calories come from carbohydrates, while relegating essential,  and healthy fats, to the “do not touch” cone at the tip of the pyramid.  Just recently, the FDA did away with our old nemesis the pyramid, and gave us a new one: the FDA food plate. An industry driven absurdity which treats both grains and dairy as their own food groups, abhors dietary fat, and four at of six “food groups” on the plate are carbohydrate sources. So what will change?

An improvement over the traditional food pyramid, but not by much. 

Nothing.  Doctors will continue to tell their patients to each this way, obesity rates will continue to rise, and childhood type II diabetes will continue its march towards normalcy. But there is hope:  and it lies in us, and our ability to seek, find and apply good information which leads to good health. In future posts I will spend a great deal more time and space discussing the importance of good dietary practices, what those practices are, and some specific medicine-like effects of foods..

Another area of particular interest to me, as both a combat athlete and someone who’s been on the receiving end of a couple of pretty bad sport and auto accidents in my time, is injury prevention and treatment, and pain management.  This area, perhaps more than any other, we’ve been told drugs are the best, and often only solution.

A better food pyramid (for non-athletes)

To start, if you have chronic pain, there’s something wrong.  That’s right. It may seem almost too obvious to say, but how many people do you know simply accept some level of constant pain or discomfort as a fact of life? It’s not, and no pain killer is going to treat the root causes of the problem.  However, pain medication does come with a litany of side-effects, often including liver damage and weight gain (so, for example we get a person with chronic back pain who gets put on pain meds, only to gain weight, putting additional stress on their back compounding the problem: happens all the time) just to name a few.

What I would like to focus on instead is the power diet and supplementation can play (especially where inflammation is involved), what exercises can do to strengthen weak links and balance your body, and what alternative pain relief and therapy can do for you.  And when I talk about that I’m talking discussing everything from tried and true, scientifically validated alternatives to pharmaceuticals  such asTENS units and Icy Blue Coolant Gel, to more alternative and holistic approaches, such as acupuncture and massage (which happen to work even better when used in tandem with something like a TENS unit).

Constant or reoccurring pain is not a normal part of life

At the end of the day, we are going to have to put the bulk of the responsibility for our health, and the health of those we love, on ourselves. Yet, we don’t have to do it alone. While we as individuals will be responsible, we as communities of concerned, interested and informed people (online and otherwise) can come together to sort through the muck, and stay on the path to health.

Comments are welcome.