Three Things To Live Longer

There are three things you should do if you want to live a long, healthy life, regardless of your specific training goals.

1. Stop only training at high intensity and follow the 80/20 rule. Too much high intensity promotes chronic low-grade inflammation that leads to plateaus, injuries, and worse. Aim for 80% low intensity and 20% high intensity instead.
2. Track markers of systemic inflammation to take a proactive, rather than reactive approach to health. These include HRV and blood work to gauge high sensitivity C-reactive protein, homocysteine, fibrinogen, and cholesterol markers.
3. Learn how to turn down your sympathetic system. Switching off the fight-or-flight response after a stressor (like training) is over is just as important as exercise for your health. Especially after training and before sleeping, when you need recovery most.

It’s easy to buy into the idea that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. When it comes to too much stress, however, it kills us, just not right away.

Preventing acute inflammation—whether it’s from too much high-intensity training, work stress, emotional stress, or anything else— from becoming chronic, systemic, low-grade inflammation is absolutely ESSENTIAL to preventing the many diseases that plague our society and so many of our loved ones.

Chronic, low-grade inflammation isn’t something that most people feel. By the time real symptoms start showing up or a medical exam reveals there is something wrong, the damage has already been done.

Fortunately, the story doesn’t have to end like this. There’s something that each and every person can do to combat the inherent stress of life and avoid becoming another sad tale.

Although science can’t yet answer the exact specifics of why or how, one thing that’s abundantly clear is that a high level of aerobic fitness is the most powerful tool we have for increasing the body’s ability to mitigate inflammation.

This is because aerobic fitness is directly linked to what’s called vagal tone – the overall function of the vagus nerve at rest.

Schedule an appointment at Corner on Wellness Chiropractic Center today.