It adapts to new environments. For example, in equatorial regions we develop more pigment to prevent burning. And in arctic regions we retain more bodyfat for insulation against cold weather.
It responds quickly and measurably to stimuli. For example, step on a tack and you will reflexively flex the knee and or hip to pull away from the source of the pain. Or if you cause damage to the soft tissues of the body, which help to maintain strutural integrity, we will get an inflammatory response to provide more stability to the injured body part.
For everything we subject our bodies to there is a reaction. Sometimes the reaction is obvious and external which allows us to take notice and make the connection. Falling asleep in the hot sun on vacation may result in a sunburn which is easy for us to recognize and connect the dots as to why we got burned.
Other reactions in our body are harder to perceive.
They may not be as immediate.
Drinking 2 cans of soda a day as a young person may eventually lay the foundation for future diabetes issues. But at the time it is difficult to recognize the damage we are doing.
I guess it's kind of like being a baby.
We are not able to communicate our needs except through crying. And unless something is painful, such as a dirty diaper or hunger pangs, we may not cry at all, giving the impression that everything is alright.
But absence of pain doesn't mean everything is alright.
We can be putting stress and doing damage to our tissues and organs without even realizing it.
How can this happen?
Well as long as we can 'get away' with a lifestyle or habit there is no reason to change it, is there?
However when we discover there is a problem we always wish we had done something sooner. We wish we introduced exercise into our lives sooner. We wish we had eliminated the crap from our nutritional plan. We wish we had gotten better quality sleep.
Basically we just wish had done the basic things differently.
So what can we do? How can we find out if something is causing us pain? How can we amplify the effects of a negative lifestyle choice to see how bad it is for us really?
Eliminate it for 2 months then try it again.
What we need to do is recalibrate the sensitivity of the cells of the body. We need to reduce out toleranace for whatever the negative lifestyle choice might be.
And this doesn't even have to be a negative lifestyle.
Consider for example if you stopped eating gluten for this period of time. There is a certain percentage of the population that are silent or latent celiacs and have not yet demonstrated symptoms for this disease. Eliminating this nutrient from the diet of these individuals would therefore be advantageous.
What else could you eliminate for two months and see how your health improves?
* alcohol
* processed food
* sugar
* corn
* diet pop
* caffeine
If you are going to test out the impact these foods have on your health use the following guidelines.
1. Keep a journal. Record as many aspects of your health including scale weight, resting heart rate, bodyfat, performance measures, BMI...and anything that applies to your goals.
2. Only test one food at a time. If you remove more than one at time it would be hard to know which one was responsible for the change.
3. Don't cheat. Go cold turkey.
If you do this for two months and then reintroduce this same food two months later your body will quickly let you know how toxic it is for you. You may experience nausea, headaches, gastric distress, fatigue, disrupted sleep and many unfavourable symptoms when you start eating the toxin again.
The downside?
If you don't try this test you'll gradually increase your tolerance to these poisons. Your body becomes more desensitized to the effects of these foods. And you slowly do more damage to your body from the inside out.
Chris okanaganpeakperformance.com