Integrating Exercise into Our Daily Living

 The most critically important parts and functions of the human body are at the head, hands and feet — which people overlook and ignore totally — but will be the death of them. Those are the parts of the body that tend to indicate aging — at the neck/face, hands and feet — because of its poorest circulation at the extremities.

Realizing this, the proper measurement of the effectiveness of the circulation would be at these extremities rather than the heart. The purpose of the heart, is to pump blood out to the extremities — and not merely to pump blood to itself. That’s already included in the evolution of the heart and has become an autonomic function — which means one does not have to get up each morning and get the heart pumping — or any other time of the day, except when trauma disrupts the heart beat.

At such events, alternating compressions of the chest, causes pressure differences in the chest cavity that simulate the pumping action of the heart (circulation) — but also, the same compressions cause the movement of air in and out of the lungs by varying that pressure within the lungs — and the environment provides atmospheric pressure of about 15 lbs per square inch. That means when one relaxes the pressure on the chest, air will automatically enter to equalize the pressure difference — making the old mouth to mouth resuscitation redundant and unnecessary.

Besides, if you blow air into a lung that is already half full, that new air doesn’t get to the lowest part of the lungs where it exchanges with the blood vessels because of the branching structure of lung tissue — similar to the blood vessels by evolutionary design. That means air and fluids have to follow a fixed pathway — and is not like a balloon like sac that randomly distributes gases and fluids.

This is an important concept in realizing that blood flow is dictated not by the contractions of the heart — but by the contractions at the extremity farthest from the heart — to complete the circuit. Therefore, the most effective movements for ensuring the health at these extremities, are the contractions that take place at the axes of the neck, wrist and ankle — and that activation and engagement, triggers similar contractions at the supportive muscles to which those finer muscles are attached — all the way back to the center of the body.

In throwing, hitting, writing, painting, playing a musical instrument, or opening a jar — the extension and flexion is the ultimate objective. In running, jumping, kicking, balancing, biking, the ultimate objective is to extend and flex at the ankle to use the foot as a lever against the earth — just as the hand does against any other object. But before those movements occur, the head turns to see, hear, take in information appropriately to determine the right action.

However, the sedentary life mainly makes those critical movements unnecessary — and that is the problem. And when people think of exercise, they think it is most important to get their heart working faster and harder — when the heart is always working appropriately as required — but there are no longer the critical movements of the head, hands and feet — that powered the evolution of the human being to levels beyond other animals — in the larger brain, upright posture, and tool-making ability. These capabilities are the first to go in the unexercised life.

What needs to happen to maintain this health and vitality — is to relocate the priority of movement at these axes of movement — rather than the heart, which one notes in marathoners as well as treadmillers, that the rest of the musculature remains undeveloped and atrophied despite their dedication — because there is no alternating contraction/relaxation (extension/flexion at the extremities that produce the blood flow there because the contractions produce the vacuum that allows the blood from the heart to replace it.

Instead, the steady state of the muscle retains the fluids at the extremities we recognize as edema, lymphedema, lipedema (inflammation) — which are the retention of the waste products produced by natural cell functions. Thus the body becomes toxic — and so the nerves die (neuropathies) — which are the familiar conditions of deterioration and disease of bodies blamed entirely on aging — rather than the lack of proper use of the human body to self-maintain and grow to health.

That is the major reason traditional/conventional exercises have failed to drastically address this “aging” process — because the emphasis is entirely misplaced to the heart primarily, but also to the biceps and abdominals — which are not primary muscles of function and expression. Both are supportive muscles to the movements of ultimate expression at the head/face, hands and feet. That is what has to move — up and down through the full range, and left and right through the full range for the head. Then there won’t be that awful atrophying of the neck we see in most deteriorating people which predictably causes dementias and the failure of the critical/cognitive functions of the head, grip strength, balance, etc. which are the markers of declining health associated primarily with age, but also in people of any age.

But once one properly activates and operates the human body as it was designed and intended to optimize its function and health, it takes care of itself.