This week a long time patient of mine reminded me how much of a force multiplier exercise is for our health.  

 

He is like many busy working professionals and entrepreneurs in their 30’s trying to get settled in his career while balancing the prospects of starting a family at home.  He is busy, the phone calls and emails are constant, and quite frankly he doesn’t have a whole lot of “me time”.

 

He has been a patient of mine on and off for years for his back pain.  But in early 2022 he came to me in despair; frustrated with his ongoing debilitating back and sciatica and fearful of what his life might look like if his back continued to get worse.  He had also become aware of his declining overall health, with his work demands taking over his life, and wanted a bigger change, but wasn’t quite sure where to start.  

 

So we crafted a plan that initially started with about a half hour 2 times per week focused on low back strength and stability.  As his back improved, the plan shifted toward a more wholistic total body strength and stability and eventually we incorporated some cardiorespiratory work as well. This amounted to just over 60 minutes of total additional exercise a week for him.  

 

On our one year “anniversary” of this plan he blew me away with the following (unsolicited) email:  

 

Hi Dave just thinking about it more after we were talking yesterday I wanted to try and collect list of issues that have completely cleared up since working with you for a year – I think it’s important for you to know how much of an impact this has had

• Had cramping pains in my heart everyday
• had to sleep on right side to keep my heart elevated, cramping felt like I would have a heart attack at night if I laid on my left, like blood couldn’t be pumped.
• Totally winded after doing any activity
• Foggy Brain power
• Pounding headaches
• High blood pressure
• Ocular migraines
• Eye vision blurred when doing normal tasks 
• Eyes looked yellow and bloodshot at times, my eyes white now
• Ongoing back issues have made leaps and strides
• Debilitating leg cramps and shooting pains on my right leg have improved drastically
• Poor circulation, extremities were always cold
• Toenails were literally yellow and looked like they were dead, totally reversed
• Face Complexion and skin overall more even and healthy
• Brain – Negative Intrusive thoughts/ spiralling mind, Totally different mindset now
• Don’t bite my nails nearly as much as before 
• I have found since doing more cardio the dryness in my hands has been better – attribute to circulation maybe
• Posture is on a great track

There are probably many more things that I don’t even see or remember. Some are big things and some are small things but overall confidence in the way I walk, talk, carry myself, interact in my day to day, mental mindset has changed completely –  I would not be putting myself on live TV a year ago. Really proud of the work we have done together and genuinely want to say thank you for committing to helping me!!!

There is still work to do but it feels really great to go through this list and I never want to be back in that place

 

Wow.  It’s hard for me to read an email like this from a patient and not get a little emotional; this is the reason I went into healthcare, to help people.

  

It was a good reminder for me that as manual and movement based therapists, like the great practitioners at The Proactive Athlete, we can have on a profound impact on a patient’s life.  We aren’t emergency room physician’s or cardiac surgeons saving lives in the acute emergency sense.  And we aren’t oncologist’s curing cancer and giving patients a second lease on life.  But we absolutely can help guide our patient’s towards health habits that will prevent those acute emergencies or chronic illnesses altogether.  

 

And this patient’s situation is far from a one-off anecdote that “couldn’t happen to me”.  

 

There is a growing scientific base demonstrating that exercise helps both prevent and manage many (if not all) of the chronic diseases that ail us today.  

 

The American College of Sports Medicine’s Exercise is Medicine initiative https://www.exerciseismedicine.org/eim-research0/physical-activity-health-impact/

highlights key conditions for which there is moderate or strong evidence for the benefits of exercise for adults:

• Lower risk of all cause mortality
• Lower cardiovascular incidence and mortality (including heart disease and stroke) 
• Lower incidence of many types of cancer including: bladder, breast, colon, endometrium, esophagus, kidney, stomach and lung
• Improved brain health including: reduced risk of dementia, improved cognitive function, improved quality of life, improved sleep, reduced feelings of anxiety and depression
• Decreased pain and improved quality of life for Osteoarthritis   

 

Name me one other treatment that can, on its own, can affect such a broad spectrum of chronic health conditions?  Exercise is a therapeutic, in a class of its own.  

 

I would argue it is as close as we might get to a cure-all for our health.  And yet, it plays such an insignificant role in our current OHIP driven (sick-care) system.  

 

The list of conditions above is just the tip of the iceberg.  The group of conditions that has been studied and given the rubber stamp of approval.  This list will undoubtably continue grow as more resources are deployed and studies are conducted.  

 

The more interesting question at this point is almost the converse…is there any condition for which some form of physical activity/exercise isn’t an asset?  Exercise IS medicine.

 

And why is exercise such an untapped resource for our health?

 

Our current lives are a mismatch to our evolutionary biology.  We are living increasingly sedentary lives.  Especially when compared to our former hunter gatherer or more recently pre-industrialized farmer civilizations.  

 

World renowned evolutionary biologist, and major figure in Christopher McDougall’s 2004 NYT bestselling book “Born to Run”, Daniel Lieberman says the average hunter gatherer was about 6-10x more active than the average current American. 

 

We are getting further and further away from what we have evolved to do: move.

  

The take home point here is: it is not you.  From an evolutionary perspective you have been born into an environment that has set you up to fail.  From the way our cities are built in North America to the way our work lives have evolved, it is an up hill challenge to meet physical activity guidelines.

 

Maybe in addition to this evolutionary mismatch you have some self limiting excuses preventing you from engaging in a good exercise routine.

 

But let me ask you this, what do you value in life?  Seriously, though.  When I was asked to do this as a thought exercise at a conference years ago this gave me such clarity on how to prioritize my time.

 

My top 5 list (as I recall) looked something like this. 

Family

Health

Finances

Friends

Recreational Interests/life experiences

 

 Your list may look different, and that is ok.  

 

But what I realized is I couldn’t take care of and enjoy time with my family if I wasn’t healthy, I wouldn’t be able to get my finances in order if I wasn’t healthy, time for recreation, travel and freinds would be different.  Essentially if I “lost my health” I would have lost all of what was important in my life.  

 

If you come to the same conclusion I did you simply have to prioritize setting aside time in your schedule.

 

My patient highlighted above shows you what’s possible in as little as 60 minutes a week!!

 

If you’re looking to get started…here’s the proactive blueprint for success in your exercise plan:

 

1.Have a plan: set goals and establish a path to achieve those goals

2.Be consistent: a great plan crumbles without consistency

3.Work hard: Intensity matters to stimulate change

4.Get specific: once you have a plan that you are consistent with and are working hard at, then dial into the nuance of the training details