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The modern-day body struggles against our most basic instincts and impulses to maintain our mind and bodies in good health, while becoming more and more numb to the pleasures of everyday life. We’re basically underutilizing ourselves, and evolution is hacking our body.   The human body is made for complex, precise, and powerful movements. We are meant to walk, run, crawl, climb, jump, balance, swim, throw, lift, and fight. When the body is utilized to its full potential, all the cells get activated, they receive oxygen and nutrients, muscles are loaded, they release waste, they get restored, and the cells grow and stay healthy. Not many people perform these actions on a constant basis. Unfortunately, what all the old folks told you when you were young is true, if you don’t use it, you lose it. If you’re not utilizing all the cells and tissues in your body, they may die or start slowly failing you. Humans went from doing all kinds of manual work to primarily specialized office work, while living in artificial environments, eating low quality or fake food, breathing pollution, and utilizing daily goods with toxins.   Industrialization increased scientific knowledge, allowing us to discover bacteria and viruses, invent vaccines, improve our living conditions with advances in sanitation and plumbing, and allowed society to combat disease. Over time, industrial jobs have greatly decreased, and people have been replaced by machines and technology. Now here we are, controlling our sterile environment with our thermostat always set at the perfect degree, sitting on comfy chairs, sleeping on mattresses, not having to wash our own clothes or dishes, wearing padded shoes, utilizing all kinds of gadgets to make our lives easier, while trying to squeeze our daily dose of physical activity in on machines designed towards cultural standards, with an abundance of food available due to large corporations taking over farming.   Throw in modern technology, which provides us supernormal stimulation, that may contribute to addictions, but ultimately amplifies our craving for comfort, security, calories, friendship, love, sex, and entertainment. We seek stimulation, pleasure, and the feeling of reward. Modern-day technology exaggerates the things we enjoy and allows us to instantly fulfill that pleasure. Unfortunately, our bodies aren’t made to manage the constant stress induced from our cravings for food, objects, and entertainment.   The human body is designed to manage short term stress. We’re supposed to make simple decisions, simple actions, with a definite end point. Modern day stress is the exact opposite, it’s long lasting, requires complex decisions, and may not have an end point. Living with a constant feeling of stress is common for many people today. Long term stress can be a vicious cycle. To relieve stress, most people indulge in a craving to reward themselves, so they feel better, causing a constant dopamine resistant cycle. So we continue the cycle, living our modern stressful lives, constantly stimulated, rewarding ourselves with a craving when we’re stressed (which may be often), our daily pleasures become unsatisfying, we replace our normal stimuli with super stimuli to fulfill our dopamine levels, and we do it over and over causing us to become desensitized to dopamine. This continuous lifestyle affects our hormones, especially our stress hormone, cortisol. Hormones are critical for our basic function. They control every biological function, such as, body temperature, metabolism, energy, mood, stress, sleep, and how we look. How does modern times affect our modern day body? Let’s face it, we aren’t our ancestors. We aren’t biologically adapted to the complex modern life we’re living in. We’re overeating, lacking exercise, and highly stressed. Although modern life may not be life threatening, it may be causing many ailments and noninfectious disease may be a result. Perhaps we aren’t sick, we’re just missing key movement nutrients. In today’s world, knowledge of the benefits of exercise is well known. The problem is the use of the abundance of information. People understand they need to exercise more than ever. Working out is an uncomfortable activity for most people and they strive to make it a habit. That habit becomes a routine, and the exercises you do are what you feel comfortable with, and those movements become repetitive. The cells and body tissues that are loaded through physical activity grow stronger, your body changes shape, the alignment of your body adapts to your routine movements, muscles pull more strongly on joints, and the shape of your body becomes a direct representation to how you move and the load you put on it daily. If you do not load your body tissues with diverse movements (like walking, running, crawling, climbing, jumping, balancing, swimming, throwing, lifting, and fighting), odds are your body will become more and more out of alignment. (This explains why it’s not uncommon for people to complain of aches and pains, bum knees, collapsed arches, limited hip mobility, tight hamstrings, tilted pelvis, collapsed ankles, shoulder pain, and the list could keep going). Most people have lost the ability to put their body in natural positions. You should be able to comfortably hold a squat or lay down and feel at rest at the same time. Not being able to do basic natural movements has serious implications on your health and longevity. Like physical movement, diet wreaks havoc on our entire body. Not getting the nutrients our body can properly digest can cause chronic inflammation and metabolic malfunctions. The industrialization of food has promoted infectious and noninfectious diseases. Metabolic disorders and diseases are on the rise because our bodies are unable to adapt to sugar levels. The gut is considered our second brain. The gut is directly correlated to overall body inflammation, stress, and primary bodily function. It has more nerve endings than our spinal cord and our peripheral nervous system. Chemicals and manufacturing byproducts in the foods we eat affect our hormones and alter immune function. This means we not only experience digestive malfunctions, but we also now have an endocrine system that can’t properly adapt. Eventually our immune system can go in overdrive and malfunction. Keep in mind, not everyone may experience digestive disturbance symptoms from their diet, however, the gut is the second brain, it may cause inflammation in other areas of your body. As a results, we slowly begin not feeling well. Depending on our genetics and lifestyle, an infectious or noninfectious disease may develop. Ultimately, the ailments of the modern-day body result from doing too much of something, too little of something, or doing something new we have not yet adapted to. Here’s a list of questions to give you a piece of mind about your modern body… When was the last time you ran, crawled, climbed, jumped, balanced, lifted, or threw? Can you touch your toes without bending your knees? Can you hold a squat with both feet flat on the ground while maintaining a neutral pelvis and spine? Do you have tight hips? Do you have tight hamstrings? Can you balance on one foot? Can you sit on your heels? Can you straighten your arms overhead? Can you scratch the middle of your back? Can you lay flat on the floor without any aches and pains? Do you get restful sleep? Do you have regular bowel movements? Do you experience regular bloating? Does your physical health and esthetics improve with physical activity? Does your skin have imperfections? Do you have joint pain? Do you feel anxious? Do you feel depressed? Do you have trouble concentrating? Do you experience headaches or migraines? How often are you exposed to sunlight? How does society affect what foods you eat? How much does culture standards play a role in your health? How often do you eat the same thing or combinations of food? How do you hydrate? What is your family health history? How old were your parents when you were born? Do your parents have a disease? How often do you get sick? How often do you consume animal products? How often do you consume fake food? Do you experience signs of inflammation often? Do you experience allergies? What are your daily stressors? Do you have a chronic disease or disability? We exercise and adjust our diet to offset the ailments of modern-day living. If our bodies are constantly stressed and inflamed, can our inflamed organs and tissues respond efficiently to our healthy adjustments? If our muscles are inflamed and we load them, are we still going to get results? If we consume healthy nutrients and the mucous membrane of our digestive track is inflamed, is it absorbing the nutrients? If our lymphatic system is overloaded, will it be able to dispose of cellular waste? How much are we benefiting from our healthy actions if inflammation is altering how our body operates? Modern day life is filled with lots of stress and inflammation. The science and knowledge of diet and exercise are at our fingertips. We have all the tools we need. Why are so many people not feeling well? Why is the shape of our body changing or not changing? Why are people not getting results from their diet and exercise program?   If you’re searching for the root cause to your continuous annoying ailments, don’t let it stress you out. You can buy all the home testing kits to see what you’re sensitive to. You may never figure it out. You’re most likely inflamed and sensitive to modern day life.   Our modern-day focus should be on reducing stress, reducing inflammation, and not being creatures of habit. Reducing stress and inflammation, while performing diverse physical movements, will help regulate our hormones. Stop stressing. The new modern health trend is breaking habits, even healthy ones.

Recovery is the restoration of physiological and psychological processes, so the body is prepared to train again at an appropriate level. Recovery includes proper nutrition for refueling, hydrating, repairing your muscles, restoring glycogen, reducing inflammation, and rest so the body is not compromised. Recovery from exercise and athletic training is now recognized more that ever. There's an abundance of modalities to help enhance performance and recovery for our modern-day bodies. It is important to keep in mind, just like your training program, it is best to tailor your recovery methods to your individual needs. If you keep up with sports and pop culture, we're now trying to identify humans as "The Goat." Many strive to be the "greatest of all time" by doing whatever it takes to be stronger, faster, bigger, slimmer, and more successful to dominate life. Unless you're genetically blessed, to be the greatest of all time, or if you just want to greatly improve aesthetics and performance, it requires a lot of stress on the body. Many recognize the need for recovery in their active lifestyle, but knowing whether you have fully recovered may be questionable. Why include recovery into your active lifestyle? Another reason why recovery is more recognized and needed, is the evolution of the fitness industry. The growing assortment of fitness classes, apps, and not so qualified fitness professionals putting your one-of-a-kind body through a "one size fits all" workout that's not designed for you, may be causing you more pain than gain. Those who do not get sufficient recovery, over time, compromise homeostasis (we'll explain that shortly) and immune function. They're increasing their chances of injury, illness, and overtraining which often creates reoccurring pestering issues. If health, fitness, and recovery are a priority to your lifestyle, it is important to understand your goals, level of training, body type, components of your training program, any additional stress (environmental, psychological, emotional, chemical, social, etc.), your nutritional and fluid intake, and risk factors (age, diseases, physical limitations, disabilities, etc.). Many of these factors can suddenly change. It is important to have a plan and continue to adapt your workouts, diet, and recovery methods to achieve the ultimate goal, homeostasis. What is homeostasis? Homeostasis is the ability to maintain, in dynamic balance, the stability of the internal environment. In the human body (and goats), that means there needs to be a steady state of all body systems, including temperature, fluid balance, oxygen levels, resting heart rate, and blood sugar levels. As most of us know, our bodies go through a lot of stress during workouts, and we disturb its balanced state by pushing our systems out of their normal state. You're causing muscle tears, dehydration, fluctuating body temperatures, changes in blood pressure, changes in pH, altered breathing patterns, and hormonal changes which produce symptoms of fatigue, shortness of breath, body aches, soreness, swelling, changes in mood, and the list can keep going., A lot may be happening within our bodies, but our bodies are built to handle internal changes, so we continue to push through each repetition over and over. As the intensity changes, our body adapts to the physical, metabolic, respiratory, and cardiovascular effects. With more consist exercise and recovery, the body can adapt more easily and allow us to increase muscle strength, endurance, and bone density. How does our body maintain homeostasis during exercise? GIMME FUEL! 🍽 No one gets anywhere without fuel. We eat food that contains glucose. Our muscles use the glucose as energy, and the pancreas adapts our insulin levels to maintain our blood sugar. As we increase intensity of our workouts, our body requires more oxygen so we can convert food into fuel. Our liver also helps restore our fuel levels back within our muscle which is stored and used for short higher-intensity exercise bouts which is quickly depleted. THE PUMP! 💪 Every movement our body makes we're pumping blood. During exercise, our heart rate increases and pumps more blood into our demanding muscles. Our adrenal glands excrete hormones to help signal where the blood is going in the body, and redirects the blood to our cardiovascular, respiratory, and muscles systems so our bodies can adapt and push through the workout. THE SWEAT! 😅 When our body is moving at a faster rate our body temperature elevates and our nervous system tell our sweat glands to help cool it down. Sweating is the product of temperature regulation that brings us back to a balanced state. Some people sweat more than others and relate it directly to how effective their workout was. Fitness veterans know you should never judge your workout based on your sweat; it does not necessarily mean you're getting results. What can we do to help maintain homeostasis? How to achieve homeostasis is different for each person, but the basics to maintaining homeostasis is breathing to get efficient oxygen supply, hydrating to replenish and maintain fluid levels so nutrients can flow to your cells and organs, and fueling with a diet that accommodates your activity level and performance goals. You also need to be nice to your muscles and joints, they'll be holding you together for the rest of your life. Pump them up a little bit with a warm-up before dominating a workout. Spend time working on mobility and range of motion. You want your muscles, joints, and connective tissues to maintain balanced tensions to prevent pain and inflammation. If you're living the "go hard or go home" style, don't be lazy and skip over your recovery. If you need help planning your recovery program, click below to request a consultation and we'll reach out to schedule an appointment.