Throughout my life, I have held many views on exercise. Initially, I was a sports performance guy. Anything that could improve my performance from an athletics standpoint was worth doing. That was the lens I viewed exercise through.
Shortly after that I started focusing on two things: size and strength. I wanted to get bigger and I wanted to get stronger. That was about it.
However, now the conversation for me begins and ends with health. Specifically, using exercise to prevent and manage chronic conditions such as MS, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, and chronic pain of various forms.
With that in mind, there is a lot to talk about. We need to discuss the different mechanisms that allow each of these chronic conditions to take place, and how to prevent these mechanisms from activating. We need to talk about how exercise can create an environment within a cell that affects these mechanisms. We need to look at the various exercise conditions that create these cellular environments. And we need to figure out how to create these exercise conditions for the long-term, not just for a 90-day quick fix.
Not all of the mechanisms for all chronic diseases are the same. Therefore, there are going to be different cellular and exercise conditions created in order to activate these mechanisms. This means exercise will have to be tailored to the precise mechanisms that want to be activiated.
For example, in order to use exercise to prevent insulin resistance leading to heart disease and type 2 diabetes, you need to exercise in a different manner than you do in order to prevent cancer. Without understanding the differences between the two, you may be completely missing the benefits of certain types of exercise and leaving yourself vulnerable to developing certain chronic diseases even though you are a regular exerciser.
Like I said, there is a lot to talk about, but I am looking forward to the exploration.
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