Health is such a broad term, have you asked yourself that question? You want to be healthy, sure, but do you have a clear vision of what that means? For most people it’s some vague notion of nirvana. I’ll be discussing all aspects of health here and then you can continue your personal journey toward health. This article will bring some “concreteness” to the term.
Health is not the opposite of being sick. Lack of sickness isn’t health, that’s too low a bar. Health is about living your optimal life, with optimal health and optimal energy. At a minimum, being healthy is being full of energy, excited about life and being resilient with no chronic diseases. When you wake up in the morning, you feel rested and ready to face the joy of each day. Is that you? Ultimately, being AntiFragile(1) is a key ingredient of health. Fragility is a body that breaks easily, antifragility instead gets stronger when subjected to the shocks and stresses of life. What do you want?
The human body is a complex system that requires focus on many different areas to achieve optimal health. I’m assuming you don’t want to be average, with average health. You want optimal health, right?
Aspects of Health
Health consists of a number of components, each of which contributes to Health but you need all of them to be optimal, to be truly healthy. Sleep and Stress are the two primary components. For a variety of reasons many people are not getting the quantity and quality of sleep that they need for optimal health. Stress is also super important. If you’re chronically stressed, you are putting extraordinary amount of pressure on your systems – increased cortisol, inflammation, fight or flight is in high alert ( via the Sympathetic Nervous System). You body thinks it’s under attack and treats it like a physical attack. What’s different is this is a chronic condition. A physical attack is of short duration, chronic stress continues for many hours, days, weeks, months, even years. Wearing down your body and using up micronutrients at an accelerated rate. If you don’t address this stress, you will eventually get sick or at the very least be not well.
The third component of health is Nutrition. The typical American does not follow the diet that we have evolved and adapted to for 100’s of thousand’s of years. We consume vast quantities of sugar and processed grains (flour) along with industrial seed oils that cause untold damage to our body and saps our bodies ability to heal, grow and become healthy. We need to find the components of an eating plan that allow us to function at our best. This varies from person to person but the one that has proven itself is the nutrient dense, unprocessed eating called the Paleo Template. Eating what’s in season, local is better. This is a template that needs to be customized for you – your body, your activity level, your genes. It consists of eating a variety of healthy meats, grown humanely, grass fed, wild caught fish and seafood and a variety of vegetables, including an appropriate amount of starchy, tuber based foods like sweet potatoes and plantain.
The fourth component of health is Movement. We are a sedentary society. You know it. Most of us don’t need to move to earn a living. We can go through life hardly exerting ourselves. Wake up, eat sitting down at the kitchen table, driving to work (or walking to your office in your own dwelling due to covid19), sitting down all day, then repeating this from your office to back home. We then sit down to dinner. What happens next? We sit down and read, watch TV, watch our screens with social media and email. Then off to sleep. As Erwin Le Corre of MovNat says “we’ve become like human zoo animals, ..outsourcing movement”. Do you want to be a human zoo animal?
This is so damaging to the body as we slowly pack on the pounds and become winded just walking up the stairs. Even those who do exercise, this is often only an hour or two, three or four days a week. Not nearly enough to make up for all that sitting. Have you considered non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)? NEAT is the energy we use for everything we do when we are not sleeping or exercising. If this activity is too low because we’re sitting all day, we’re going to die sooner than we should. This is backed up by a meta analysis published in the Lancet.
Our ancestors required movement for survival. They walked 5-7 miles a day, occasionally sprinted, climbed, lifted heavy things, crawled, swam, ran. They never sat for 8 hours a day unless they were severely injured. Stop being a human zoo animal and get off your chair and move! You’ll feel so much more alive!
The Study Interpretation
High levels of moderate intensity physical activity (ie, about 60–75 min per day) seem to eliminate the increased risk of death associated with high sitting time. However, this high activity level attenuates, but does not eliminate the increased risk associated with high TV-viewing time. These results provide further evidence on the benefits of physical activity, particularly in societies where increasing numbers of people have to sit for long hours for work and may also inform future public health recommendations.
When you read the study details you’ll see high TV-viewing time has the same effect as sitting at your job. If you’re sitting at your job for 5 or more hours per day, even 60-75 minutes per day of moderate levels of physical activity will not significantly reduce all cause mortality. If you sit, you die.
StrongFirst Certified Master Instructor Fabio Zonin wrote an excellent article on how to counter the detrimental effects of excessive sitting – 160 Seconds a Day Keeps the Doctor Away!. This is where I first saw the reference to the Lancet study mentioned above. Fabio knows what he’s talking about and he lives it.
And in my opinion, getting on a treadmill doesn’t count as exercise, unless you’re a hamster.
The more you move like our ancestors, the more you move toward optimal health. There are many ways to move – hike, bike (not so ancestral but still good), kettlebells, bodyweight training, barbell training, rock climbing, swimming, lifting stones. You can also mimic animals by doing various forms of bodyweight training – bear, crab, duck walk, scorpion, pullups. I personally bike, hike, train with kettlebells and weights and do bodyweight training. Variety but consistency.
There’s more! The secret fifth component.
Mindfulness.
Why do we need mindfulness? Isn’t that just for monks? I’d argue, if you aren’t mindful, you aren’t truly alive. You can’t have health without mindfulness. Mindfulness is about awareness and equanimity. It’s being fully aware of everything going on around you and within you. Equanimity is keeping balanced and calm no matter what is happening around you. It’s about stability and composure of the mind.
Awareness will allow you to handle stress better, to realize you’ve been sitting too long, to appreciate life – sunrises, sunsets, eating, moving, lying still. Everything becomes more interesting and vivid through mindfulness.
Mindfulness can be developed through meditation and is a good place to start. Remember though, you need to bring mindfulness into your life or activity or you miss the point. You can be mindful while walking, eating and talking. You can be mindful of your emotions and catch yourself before your emotions cause you to spin out of control. Anger, hatred, ill will are detrimental to your health and wellness. Don’t suppress them, be aware. When you’re aware, you can act appropriately, instead of reacting. When you’re aware, the negative emotions lose their grip and you can see them for what they are.
The opportunities to practice mindfulness are infinite. Start small and add more as you’re ready.
You can do it!
Help on the Journey
There’s a hell of a lot of things to consider on this journey toward health. Sleep, Stress, Nutrition, Movement and Mindfulness. Connection to your community is another component but that’s for another article. Start today.
I’d highly recommend getting a health coach to help you on your way. A Health Coach can partner with you to set your vision and goals. Most importantly, they can assist in helping you make the behavior changes necessary for health. It takes some work and focus but can you imagine anything more important? Why wait?
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
–Chinese proverb
Reach for optimal health and have optimism, energy and become the best you can be.
Cheers,
John Robbins
Footnotes
(1) From Nassem Nicholas Taleb’s Book Antifragile “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.“