Exercise: Your vaccine against injury and lifestyle diseases

Today we're talking about the vaccine against injury and lifestyle diseases: Exercise.

Read time approx: 4 min 12 sec 

If you could take the benefits of exercise and put them in a pill, you would quickly become the richest person in the world.Why?You would be solving some of the most pressing problems in society.Diabetes alone costs the United States ~$327 billion every year. Heart disease costs $216 billion in healthcare and $147 billion in lost productivity.What are the main drivers of these chronic diseases?Lifestyle factors

Sleep, stress, diet, and exercise; these are the magic lifestyle levers all of us can pull to improve our health at any time during our lives. While all of these factors are interconnected, exercise is unique in that it very predictably helps to improve the other aspects of lifestyle. 

SleepWhen you're up and moving and active, consistent sleep is easier to come by. It's easier to get outside and get sun in your eyes early in the morning to set your circadian rhythm (biological clock). And as silly as it sounds, it's important to recognize that fatigue due to physical exertion is an incredibly potent sleep aid. StressExercise is one of the easiest and most reliable ways to reduce stress that's ever been studied. The simple act of walking reduces activity in the amygdala, a structure in your brain that looks for threats. What that means is when you're outside walking, you're literally turning the dial down on your anxiety, and you don't have to do anything special. You just have to walk. DietHealthy eating is usually the hardest thing for people to integrate into their lifestyle. Eating is a very emotional and pleasurable experience; getting that under control can be a struggle. Exercise has an interesting effect on diet. On the one hand, your appetite will increase if you're more active. On the other, once you start to see the changes exercise makes in your body, the link between your diet and your results/how you feel becomes obvious. Once you get a taste of what life can feel like, healthy eating starts to have a gravitational pull rather than a repulsive push. Exercise LITERALLY functions like a vaccine to protect you from some of the most common and deadly chronic diseases in the world, and we didn't even go into the effects of exercise on mental health. You can't afford not to be exercising. What about injury?

Beyond lifestyle

Ok, cool exercise does wonders to prevent chronic disease, but what about avoiding injury?Don't people get injured all the time while exercising?Yes, but there's more to it than that, so let's dig into it.A common phenomenon in sport is that those athletes with higher workloads often have lower injury rates than those who maintain lower workloads.A great example of this is the injury rate of athletes who rest the entire off-season vs. those who continue to compete or train during the off-season. Those who were more sedentary during their off-season are more likely to be injured.What does this all mean, and how does it apply to you if you're not a competitive athlete?It demonstrates an important principle. In scientific terms, the principle is called "Acute: chronic workload." which probably means nothing to you, and that's fine. In English, it's the principle of consistency, and everybody understands consistency.What all these studies and scientific mumbo-jumbo are saying is that if you stop exercising and then ramp your activity back up too much, you're going to get hurt.What does that look like in real life?Jumping into a pick-up basketball game after not playing or being active for months.Doing difficult yard work on a weekend after doing little more than your desk job during the fall and winter. Stepping into the gym at 40, assuming you can do the same things you did when you were 20 even though you haven't touched a weight in years.

Consistency

If you're consistently moving and staying active, you're effectively vaccinating yourself against the injuries most people take for granted as a side effect of aging.That doesn't mean you'll never have any aches and pains or that you can't get hurt exercising and living an active lifestyle, just like medical vaccines don't protect you from getting sick 100% of the time. It means that you'll be able to avoid the vast majority of the problems tripping up most of society, and if you do end up with one of those lifestyle diseases or get hurt, you'll be able to bounce back WAY FASTER than you would otherwise.  

Summary

Exercise is the vaccine against injury and lifestyle diseases. It lays the groundwork for a healthy lifestyle that will support you through every phase of your life. Without it, you're essentially guaranteed to end up with a chronic disease, and your likelihood of injury goes through the roof. Set yourself up for success and start exercising today.Find something you enjoy doing and do it for the rest of your life; it doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

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