Lifetime Wellness Strategy: How Much Exercise is Enough?

 

Lifetime Wellness Strategy: How Much Exercise is Enough?

Patients often ask me, "How much exercise do I need? How often should I do it?"

According to the American College of Sports Medicine all adults under 65 years of age require, “moderately intense cardio 30 minutes a day, five days a week OR vigorously intense cardio 20 minutes a day, 3 days a week AND eight to 10 strength-training exercises, eight to 12 repetitions of each exercise twice a week.”

Unfortunately, the allopathic scientists who developed these recommendations mistakenly study and evaluate exercise as a possible treatment for disease rather than looking at lack of exercise as a primary cause of illness.  Exercise is a required nutrient for health and our genes are programmed to need it in order to create healthy cell function. The question should not be how much exercise is needed to change the signs and symptoms of disease, the question should be how much exercise is needed to create optimal health. 

We have come to be brainwashed to perceive exercise, energy expenditure and physical fitness as optional tools for improving sport performance, achieving weight loss, or improving the way we look.  Our genes require these things in order to produce healthy physiology and biochemistry and without them we are literally deficient and sick – they are neither optional nor therapeutic.  This deficiency is a primary causal factor in all of the “diseases of lifestyle” including cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, stroke, etc...

So how do we know how much exercise we need? 

Although our genes have hardly changed, our culture has been transformed almost beyond recognition during the past 40,000 years, especially since the industrial revolution.  There is increasing evidence that the resulting mismatch fosters “diseases of lifestyle” that together cause 75% of all deaths in Western nations, but that are rare among persons whose lifestyles reflect those of our pre-agricultural ancestors.

Our ancestors, and surviving tribes that model their lifestyles did NOT die from the “diseases of lifestyle.” We also know that they had significantly different exercise, energy expenditure, and physical fitness levels than modern industrialized activity patterns.

The ACSM’s recommended activity levels are only about 44% of the energy expenditure levels observed among hunter-gatherers. In other words modern industrial humans are all deficient with respect to exercise resulting in sickness. 

Our ancestors had the bone density, muscle mass, body composition, aerobic fitness, anaerobic fitness, strength, agility, core strength, and attractiveness of today’s elite cross-training athletes (decathletes).   What we now call elite is really just normal.  What we now call normal is unfit, unhealthy, and unattractive.  Our hunter-gatherer ancestors physical exertion patterns likely resembled cross-training, not the more focused regimens of pure runners or weight lifters; activities analogous to both aerobic conditioning and straight training were thus integral components of their physical routine. 

Although each day’s ordinary tasks required at least some muscular effort and stamina recently studied hunter-gatherers tended to space their more vigorous exertion. Men commonly hunted from two to four non-consecutive days a week, while women usually gathered every 2-3 days. 

The message is that our ancestors were active every day and had several days per week of high intensity activity.  They also chose leisure activities that involved physical exertion (dancing and other games).  In addition, virtually every day involved walking for an average of 15 km every day.

However the activities of our ancestors, while demanding, lacked the efficiency of physical exercise conducted according to the tenets of modern exercise physiology.  It might be possible to attain similar physiological effects with less time expenditure.  The best way to increase physical activity levels on a daily basis is to incorporate as much physical activity as possible into the normal living routine.  Taking stairs, walking to work, walking to get groceries, cycling to work or to shop, joining an activity club, organizing lunch break walks, finding active hobbies for after work rather than watching TV.

One of the greatest tragedies to me is that people now feel that elite athletes represent something unattainable.  The reality is that what we now consider elite athletes were once the norm in every hunter-gatherer society.

There is a great deal of evidence to show that the strength, agility, stamina, power, bone density, body composition, and muscle mass of average hunter-gatherers was equal to that of today’s Olympic athletes.

We are all professional athletes.  We all make a living from our physical and mental abilities and our health determines our abilities more than anything else.

Understand that daily physical activity is a required nutrient not a therapy or an option.  Choosing to refrain from physical activity is a form of suicide.  Love yourself and take care of yourself: you are too precious to do anything else.