Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Pregnancy Gainz | Why You Shouldn’t Avoid Exercise During Pregnancy

During the first trimester visit, many medical practitioners will tell pregnant women not to lift more than 15 lbs until 6 weeks after the birth of their baby (maybe). I truly believe these practitioners are doing what they think is best, but unfortunately, they are missing the mark for the vast majority of women under their care.

The positive intention here is that there are a handful of women who should not be lifting more than 15 lbs due to an impeding medical condition. I also believe there are a handful of women who do not have sound movement patterns and lifting more than 15 lbs resulted in a preventable injury (prevention being the right coaching not necessarily the lifting itself). So, to reach the widest audience with medical advice, practitioners speak to the lowest common denominator and continue to recommend not lifting more than 15 lbs during pregnancy.

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Sitting is Suicide

The Unexpected Physical Consequences of Modern Technology aka ‘sitting is suicide.’

Don’t get me wrong, technology is great! We live in an era where pretty much whatever we want to know/learn about is right at our finger tips. We have modern modes of travel that allow us to travel great distances in a short amount of time. We have machines that allow us access to vast amounts of information and entertainment like never before in human history.

Humans are designed to move.

We, as human beings, are designed to move.  We are designed to move at a low intensity, throughout our day.  As hunter gatherers, we survived on our feet.  We were nomadic people, traveling long distances, over long periods of time, gathering food and chasing the occasional wild game.

We continued to survive on our feet during the Agricultural revolution, tending crops and raising domesticated animals for food. Even into the Industrial Revolution, we continued to survive on our feet, as we stood in factory assembly lines and used our bodies to help forge this country into prosperity.

It wasn’t until the advent of modern conveniences like TV and automobiles, and later on the personal computer, that the idea of sitting for long periods of time became the norm, instead of the exception.

We now sit, on average, 9.3 hours a day. The average person, in this country, spends only 7.7 hours sleeping! We sit more than we sleep!

Bottom line, is that we weren’t designed to sit for long periods of time.  We were designed to move.  Movement is life.  Sitting is suicide.

MOVE!!

The problem is that we have turned sitting into our mode of survival today.  Most of us have jobs that require long periods of sitting.  We sit in our vehicles, we sit at our desks at work, we sit for long periods of time while watching TV.  We sit…a lot.

But at what cost?

 -Sitting 6 or more hrs a day makes you 40% more likely to die within 15 yrs than someone who sits < 3 hours a day.

 -People with jobs that require them to sit have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease.

Another recent analysis of 18 studies found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least. According to lead researcher Thomas Yates, MD:

 “Even for people who are otherwise active, sitting for long stretches seems to be an independent risk factor for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease.”

 -80% of people in this country will experience chronic back pain in their lives.

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Maximize Recovery…Reassess These

The point of exercise and training is to break the body down.  Your workout is actually doing damage.  This damage is essential and intelligent to you getting stronger, faster, quicker, and more efficient.  The only way the body gets better is through challenges. 

The problem is that many think it’s the workout that creates the magic.  The actuality is that it’s the recovery that is key.  Most people might workout 30 minutes.  That leaves 23 1/2 hours to recover.

Reassess these 3 common practices that put a damper on your recovery and ultimately your performance.

caffeineCaffeine

Many consume coffee pre-workout to boost their performance.  It’s essentially a performance enhancing drug.  There’s no denying that coffee boosts energy.  Just ask the 54% of Americans over the age of 18 who consume coffee daily.   It’s also no mystery that kids consume caffeinated beverages like energy drinks and such, which would drastically raise that 54%, if you included the entire population.

The problem is that this habit may boost short term performance at the expense of longevity, injury prevention, and recovery.  If you ever have lab work, usually there is a panel that lists out the type of white blood cells.  You will see these as neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils.

Monocytes are cells that clean up inflammatory damage as well as debris from destroyed microorganisms.  They differentiate into macrophages and play a huge role in tissue repair whether you are injured, you are sick, or you have been training hard.  Without monocytes, muscles would not be able to heal after training or injury.

Cortisol and adrenaline (hormones released during times of stress, which can be physical, chemical, or emotional) lower macrophage activity and count.  In essence stress lowers your immune system.  Your immune system stimulates inflammation.  Caffeine is a direct hit to the adrenals, causing release of cortisol and adrenaline, lowering your healing inflammatory response triggered by your immune system.

Think about this way.  If you’re running from a bear, it would not be efficient if you had to stop to cough, sneeze, or dig a hole and pop a squat because you’re fighting the flu.  It also wouldn’t be conducive to your survival if you rolled your ankle and it ballooned up and caused you to be immobile.  Ever get injured during the heat of competition but not realize it until it was all over?  That’s the cortisol and adrenaline kicking in to keep you surviving.  Caffeine is a stress on the body.

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Best Seth Godin Advice Ever.

I just read a great blog post from one of my most favorite authors on the planet,  Seth Godin.  It was only 2 sentences long.  It goes something like this:

“Don’t measure anything unless the data helps you make a better decision or change your actions.  If you’re not prepared to change your diet or workouts, don’t get on the scale.” – Seth Godin.

Mr. Godin is in the marscaleketing world but he just nailed one of the biggest reasons why our healthcare system fails to create health. We have become a nation that is focused on our numbers.  Most people know their total cholesterol, blood pressure, their weight, and maybe even their blood sugar levels.

The problem is that with all the emphasis on the numbers, only 1 solution has been offered…a drug to control that number.  We have been led to believe that the only reasonable and successful manner to manage those numbers is through chemistry not innate to the body.

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