To Exercise or Not to Exercise

Laziness seems to be as American as (eating) apple pie and (watching) baseball (on TV). After all, we can’t even seem to change TV channels without a remote control (Gawd forbid you should get off your ass and turn a knob), we don’t have to leave our houses to buy groceries anymore (damn www), and we spend more leisure time surfing the Internet than exercising. Lazy? Yes! But has that same laziness completely stopped us from being physically active?

Until a few years ago, experts would have said yes. Now, though, there’s a new thought: If you hate to exercise, you might not be lazy, but just “exercise-resistant.” I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies have a drug for this new disease. J

Exercise resistance was first coined in 1996 by Francie White, MS, RD, a California-based nutrition therapist who also holds an exercise physiology degree. “Exercise resistance is a conscious or unconscious block against becoming regularly active,” she says.

White stumbled upon this syndrome during her work with her clients. She would teach the benefits of exercise, trying to educate her clients into action. Some who began exercise programs stuck with them, but most gave up quickly or never started at all, calling themselves lazy.

White refused to believe all those people were just lazy. “I believe all human beings, by nature, are athletic,” she says. In her eyes, being athletic means losing yourself in the joy of movement, rather than excelling in a sport.

Because all mammals enjoy play, and humans are mammals, White believes people don’t want to lie around, but prefer to move and play. Yet something has interfered with that drive. “When did playing become exercising?” she says. “When did it move from I’ll-race-you-down-the-street-and-the-last-one-home’s-a-rotten-egg to let’s do sit-ups?”

When answered, that question may play a significant role in motivating the masses to move. Although there’s no estimate about how many people experience exercise resistance, White believes the number could be staggering, especially with society’s emphasis on exercising to lose weight. (Note that not everybody who’s sedentary is exercise-resistant. Only those who experience a block against exercise fall into this category. Yeah, some people truly are lazy asses.)

Tim Lohman, PhD, professor in the psychology department at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says White’s discovery of exercise resistance could be a major breakthrough in understanding why a majority of the population isn’t active. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with so much of our entertainment being the observance of other people’s activities, so we live vicariously through them and feel no need to do anything ourselves. Of course, I could be wrong.

“We’ve got thousands of diet plans and exercise programs with more on the way, but none are working,” he says. “Instead, we need to address our struggles and figure out why we resent exercise. Then we can learn to move.” So why not divorce exercise from diet? Be active first, then worry about your weight and the two will come together without fear.

Exercise resistance may be linked to a number of different causes. For starters, people whose parents obsessed about their children’s exercise patterns might harbor resentment toward exercise. Men, particularly younger men, who are underweight or who don’t have the solid, chiseled frame that defines a man in today’s society might shy away from exercise.

Women, on the other hand, have other issues, many of which revolve around puberty and sexual development. As girls, women may have been humiliated in gym class, having to shower in front of other girls, go through weigh-ins, and do physical tasks that they failed. Or they may have transitioned poorly from childhood to womanhood.

For others, the connection between exercising and appearance is frustrating, White says, especially if women can’t or don’t want to look like the models on covers of fitness magazines.

By working with her clients, White has found that exercise resistance is treatable. She outlines a series of steps involved in the recovery:

Step 1: Explore the history of what may have happened to block your drive to have fun moving. Ask yourself these questions:

• What feelings or memories surface when you think of exercise?
• When did exercise become a chore or requirement?
• Do you connect exercise to losing weight or changing your shape; if so, how does that make you feel about exercise?
• What connection does exercise have to your sexuality?
• Did changes in your attitude toward exercise occur during puberty?
• Were attitude changes related to sexual abuse, harassment, or feelings of sexual vulnerability?
• How does exercise relate to your current view of you and your body?
• Who are your fitness role models?

Step 2: Forbid yourself to exercise for several weeks to six months. “When you do this,” White says, “you start wondering when you can exercise.” (That which we are forbidden to do is that which we most want to do – basic childhood psychology?)

Step 3: Think about what activity you enjoy doing. If you could do any physical movement you wanted, what would it be?

Step 4: Imagine connecting with that activity. If you’ve always loved walking, don’t think about getting on a treadmill. Instead, see yourself hiking a trail surrounded by nature.

Step 5: Commit to being active because you want to be active. “Don’t start exercising because you’re supposed to or because you want to lose weight,” White says. Rather than relying on external reasons to exercise, internalize your desire. Also, understand that being active is a lifelong commitment.

Step 6: Get educated about exercise (i.e., find out what shoes are best for your chosen activity) and start moving.

“What’s on the inside matters most,” White says. “Think about how much fun you’re having and let that motivate you.”

Is this an extreme liberal’s excuse for allowing the population to be fat and lazy? Or, just possibly, is this an enlightened approach to waking up the sleeping giant in all of us? I, personally, look on my daily activities as something I want to do, not necessarily something I have to do. That makes for a large psychological difference in whether or not the job gets done.

How Jumping Genes Alter Our Wiring (DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 10, October 2005)

Why are no two human brains alike? Medical geneticists say it could be that jumping genes rearrange our mental structure. Jumping genes, or transposons, are bits of DNA that can move freely about the genome. For unknown reasons, they either travel to a new spot or paste copies of themselves into random stretches of DNA, sometimes wreaking havoc.

Transposons are already thought to be responsible for some mutations in sperm and eggs, such as the genetic changes that cause hemophilia. But scientists had no clue that these restless genes might be active elsewhere. University of Michigan geneticist Fred Gage and his colleagues found that a transposon called LINE-1 readily moves around in the brains of mice, suggesting that the same gene may do likewise in humans. The reshuffling seems to take place starting before birth and continuing throughout life in places like the short-term memory center. According to Gage, not only do humans have a much higher proportion of transposons in their genomes than other animals but the LINE-1 seems predisposed to alter genes for brain function.

(This could be an important clue to figuring out how we create new pathways – stay tuned for some later theory.)

“Whether it is going to have any effects on learning, memory, and behavior, we just don’t know,” says Haig H. Kazazian Jr., who heads the genetics department of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. But if transposons do spawn variety in mental architecture, that could help explain the differences in identical twins, says Gage. “Even though they are clones, they have their own personalities.”   

Introducing Brains in a Bottle (DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 10, October 2005)

Neuroscientist Gary Lynch at the University of California at Irvine says he has created a compound to make you temporarily smarter. He spent the last decade figuring out how to make brain cells more efficient at passing along signals. The result is a compound called CX717, which improves the brain’s efficiency and boosts memory power, making it a potential cure for people suffering from age-related memory loss. “It also presents a promising treatment for diseases from attention deficit disorder to Alzheimer’s – and any neuro-psychiatric disorder where a breakdown in neuron communication is implicated, which is most of them,” he says.

Humans who received the drug performed better on tests assessing memory, attention, alertness, reaction time, and problem solving. Earlier studies on rhesus monkeys showed similar success. In fact, monkeys given the drug did better on tests while sleep deprived than did those who were well rested but hadn’t received it. A commercial drug is only a matter of time, Lynch says. “The days of these kinds of drugs are just beginning.”

(You know, I am really excited by discoveries like this, but I dread having one more damn drug in the pharmaceutical arsenal.)

Can Tetanus Reduce Anxiety? (DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 10, October 2005)

Like its cousin botulinum, the bacterial toxin that causes botulism, tetanus kills. When it infiltrates nerve cells, it triggers unshakable muscle contractions like lockjaw, the hallmark of tetanus. In the chest, it causes suffocation—and death. But biochemist José Aguilera of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain says that tetanus—like botulinum toxin, which can tame wrinkles—has its own silver lining: as a potential new treatment for psychological disorders. Depression and anxiety are often caused by low levels of a brain chemical called serotonin, which is also crucial for regulating sleep. Because tetanus patients often suffer from insomnia, Aguilera and his colleagues reasoned that the toxin might be tinkering with serotonin levels. In animal studies, the researchers found that tetanus affects serotonin levels—but only one part of the toxin is responsible.

The tetanus toxin consists of two parts: One blocks the release from nerve cells of chemicals that stop muscles from contracting, leading to deadly spasms; the other mimics the structure of chemicals normally found in the brain, allowing the entire toxin to slip into nerve cells. It is also responsible for increasing serotonin levels.

Purified doses of the second molecule could do the same, Aguilera says, with an added benefit: The toxin seems to protect nerve cells from damage, making it a possible new therapy for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s. Aguilera plans to start clinical trials in Barcelona soon using an injectable form of the toxin. If it works, treatment could be available in a few years.  

(Anyone remember what we said several issues back about serotonin levels being affected by fungi? This development could lead to interesting breakthroughs, but again, I don’t think we need another new drug.)

Cerebral Chemistry Causes PMS (DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 10, October 2005)

Neurologist István Mody of UCLA has found a biological basis for the behavior that comes with premenstrual syndrome. Visible changes in brain chemistry may underlie behavioral fluctuations, he says. During studies with mice, he concluded that female rodents were more anxious when their hormone levels mirrored those of premenstrual women. He examined the mice’s brains and found that the cells had lower levels of delta GABA, a key receptor subunit that stops nerves from firing too often and has been linked to epileptic seizures. “It’s been known for a while that epileptic women are prone to seizures around menstruation, when progesterone levels are low,” he says.

Mody hypothesizes that the seizures, irritability, and anxiety are side effects of neurons firing without inhibition. Even more intriguing, he says the regions of the brain most affected match up with those most sensitive to alcohol. Does this mean premenstrual women act as if they are intoxicated? Not really. “Although it’s acting on the same system, alcohol reduces anxiety,” Mody says. “But this does suggest there are definite changes in the brain that can play a large role in behavior.”

(OK, here again, we have alcohol mentioned, which we know definitely contains mycotoxins, and we know mycotoxins have a huge effect on the brain. Is there a solid connection here? I am doing significantly more research in the brain area, without regard to the possible mycotoxin effects, but it could be there is more of a connection than even I suspect.)

Are You Committing Slow Suicide?

How shocked would be you be to learn that the U.S. population is being slowly poisoned by a single ingredient deliberately added to your food supply?

At first, it sounds like nonsense. But then you realize, after learning more, that the World Health Organization tried to outlaw this ingredient decades ago. Hundreds of doctors, researchers, and scientists are warning us about the detrimental health effects of this ingredient. And you learn that this substance causes cancer, birth defects, heart disease, diabetes and many other fatal diseases. In fact, this substance causes a cell-by-cell failure of the human body by destroying the porosity and flexibility of healthy cell membranes. It’s like tearing your body down from the inside out.

What ingredient am I talking about? Hydrogenated oils, of course. For decades, food companies (and even our own government regulators) have lied to us about hydrogenated oils, telling us this disease-causing substance was not merely safe, but actually better for your health than other sources of fat, like butter. But today, we know this was nothing more than a global deception, a hijacking of science by the food manufacturers in a blatant attempt to get people to buy their high-profit products like margarine, shortening, and snack crackers.

The real reason why food companies use hydrogenated oils has everything to do with radically increasing their profits and they don’t give a rip about your health. Stay tuned to this station while I rip margarine apart by giving you the complete history of this product that even bugs won’t eat.

Mycotoxin News Flash from Europe

In temperate climate regions, grain preservation and storage are primarily questions of avoiding damage by fungi. Ochratoxin A (OTA) is probably one of the most common mycotoxin produced in stored grain in these regions. The probable producer is Penicillium verrucosum. OTA is of considerable concern for human health and is classified as a possible human carcinogen. Cereals are considered to be the main contributor (50 to 80%) to the OTA intake among European consumers. The European Commission has stated a maximum legislative limits for OTA in unprocessed cereals to 5 µg kg^-1 (five micrograms per kilogram). Similar maximum levels for cereals are also being discussed within the Codex Alimentarius. In Sweden, OTA seems to be most common during years when the harvested grain have high moisture content. The occurrence is attributed to insufficient drying or too long storage before drying.

OK, You Asked for This

I have heard from a couple of you, wanting to know how I dig all this stuff out. Without giving away all the secrets, instead I’ll give you a photo of The Dungeon. Because this is a patched-together picture, there is a slight blur in the middle, but you’ll get the idea anyway.

No, I am not a hacker. I just have an insatiable hunger for knowledge… data… data… I need more INPUT !!!

Yes, this is my bedroom. That stack of binders in the lower right corner is actually my bed.