Everything is Broken, But You Don’t Have to Be (Part III)
This will be our third and final installment of this mini-series. Today we’ll examine social norms and how they don’t seem to serve our health and hygiene.
When I say hygiene, I’m not talking about brushing your teeth or washing your hands, though those things are important, but how we take care of the rest of our bodies. Going forward, I want you to think about physical activity, exercise and good nutrition as part of your hygiene (as a shorthand let’s call these “the big 3”). If brushing your teeth preserves the future function of your teeth, the big 3 preserves the future function of your heart, muscles, bones and just about every vital organ in your body. If these 3 things were given daily attention, like how we brush our teeth daily, our health would be greatly improved.
Let’s start with physical activity,
which I want you to remember is different from exercise.
If we prioritized physical activity, which is simply everyday movement, we might change our relationship with our cars. It always baffles me when people go to the gym to exercise but they park as close as possible to the front door, this is a broken concept. I’m not blaming anyone, I understand the convenience factor, especially with a busy schedule, but again, if we look at physical activity as part of our personal hygiene, we wouldn’t think twice about parking further away. Maybe you’re thinking the extra 100 steps to the front door is insignificant, if it is only done once, I would agree with you. However, developing an everyday habit of adding 100 extra steps to your routine would grant you an extra 36,500 steps per year, or an extra one million steps every 30 years. The accumulation of these extra steps can really add up to something significant.
Exercise on the other hand,
is more than just moving our bodies, exercise is the pursuit of improving specific aspects of our fitness from very specific, measured movements.
Fitness is typically divided into 5 categories: Body Composition, Flexibility, Muscular Strength, Muscular Endurance & Cardiorespiratory Fitness. While we don’t have time to explore each aspect in depth here, I will say that exercise is so important for your personal hygiene for two big reasons. First, muscle mass, more so than the insulin your pancreas secretes, is responsible for most of your glucose disposal. Simply put, if your blood sugar spikes, muscle mass is the primary driver for lowering this number. If you’re concerned about diabetes, maintaining or increasing muscle mass should be as important as brushing your teeth. So, if you don’t consider muscle mass for long-term health, your perception of personal hygiene is broken.
Second, tracking your body composition
(the difference between fat & muscle mass) can be a useful proxy for disease prevention.
More specifically, if the fat around your organs increases (this is known as visceral fat) you’re more likely to battle chronic diseases (heart disease, metabolic disease, etc.) in the future. Luckily, the Inbody machine we have at Marino’s helps us track and measure these factors. If you haven’t used this test in a while, try to get in the habit of scheduling a test monthly. So, if you want to stay healthy, washing your hands can be a good start, but taking daily steps to improve your body composition can be just as important for your health span. Afterall, if our bodies fall victim to chronic disease, it might not matter if there is a little dirt underneath our fingernails.
Lastly, our cultural relationship to what we eat and drink
is absolutely broken.
If you haven’t already, I suggest reading the book Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss to get a behind the scenes look at how terrible many of our food systems are. Next, I want to spend more time talking about what we drink, looking at you, alcohol. One of my favorite song lyrics is, “There's too much poison in our glass to make a toast to our health.” While this couldn’t be more true regarding the effects alcohol has on the body, culturally this fact is not just ignored, it is often celebrated. I was recently at a wedding where the Bride & Groom decided to swap the champagne for sparkling cider to help toast the speeches. This was immediately, and quite loudly, met with jeers of disapproval. Despite the open bar, people felt the need to complain about having just a little less alcohol. Now if you’re someone who enjoys an occasional drink, enjoy it. Just know that if personal hygiene is important to you, alcohol works in opposition with your goals.
Now you may be thinking, wait a minute, I’ve seen a “blue zone” documentary in the last decade touting centenarians who drink daily, why are you telling me alcohol is bad? Well, there is new evidence to suggest that the blue zone data is a bit misleading. Before you decide either way, I suggest looking at the evidence on both sides. Unfortunately, the way a lot of research is being conducted these days is part of a broken system, this is well documented by how many studies are redacted annually. The Freakonomics Radio podcast did a great investigative mini-series on this exact topic, episodes 572 & 573 are certainly worth a listen. Anyway, the point here is that you need to be careful about where your information comes from.
I want to leave you with one final suggestion from the great British economist, Tim Harford. Resist the urge to believe someone’s analysis of data because it conveniently fits your desire for something to be true, especially if the data gives you a strong emotional reaction.