Exercise: Nourishing The Body Proper
Fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, grass fed beef, raw dairy; I believe most of us have an inner sense of good healthy nutrition, even when the media sells something different; but does good nutrition simply refer to what we put in our mouth? There’s a tremendous amount of research to show that movement, in the form of regular exercise, is just as vital to overall health as the foods we eat every day. Your brain, connected to every cell in your body, has been shown to require a certain amount of stimulation from all the joints, especially those of your spine, to maintain normal health. This stimulation is critical not only so the brain can manage every issue related to moving the body properly but to prevent the stress that has been shown to be associated with inactivity.
This stress often comes by other names like obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. From the Journal of Applied Physiology, Booth et al. writes “In other words, physical inactivity is an abnormal event for a genome programmed to expect physical activity, thus explaining, in part, the genesis of how physical inactivity leads to metabolic dysfunctions and eventual metabolic disorders such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and so forth.” What he is saying is profoundly important if you want to understand exercise for what it really is. It is nothing short of genetic food for the brain and if we choose not to exercise then we choose to starve ourselves of one of the most important nutrients the body requires every day. To add, Eaton & Eaton state “At present human genes and human lives are incongruent, especially in affluent western nations. When our current genome was originally selected, daily physical exertion was obligatory; our biochemistry and physiology are designed to function optimally in such circumstances.” With all our modern luxuries, we are sacrificing our genetic God given potential, our health many times for the sake of convenience.
I hope this has sparked some interest to reconsider the importance of regular exercise in our daily lives. As always, I’m here to serve and should you ever have questions, feel free to ask about our weekly workshop schedule were we take time to expand on topics that nourish the body proper.
See Reference page for citations.