It’s road construction season again. Or maybe it’s always road construction season which just slows down a bit during winter. While decent weather conditions persist, construction zones pop up on roads like dandelions in your lawn. Often you are happy to see the work being done, because the roadway was full of potholes and cracks which made driving over the road a hair-raising event. At least it’s finally getting fixed. But for how long will the fix last before another round of repair and construction hits?
The roadways start out well. A new roadway is beautiful, without any problems or flaws. Or so it seems. Yet, cracks start to develop, then those cracks get wider. Chunks of material start disappearing from the roadway surface, leaving ever-widening holes. Eventually the once beautiful roadway looks more like a war zone.
The culprit isn’t poor materials used to construct the road, or bad paving techniques. What tears down the roads is what tears us down: chronic stress. Vehicles travel over the road constantly, putting pressure on the road surface that they drive over. Just as the stress from one vehicle passes, another drives over that same part of the road and gives it another shot of pressure. Now we have electric vehicles which are heavier than their gasoline counterparts due to the weight of the vehicles’ batteries, so the stress on the roads is even greater. Roadways can’t get a break, so they break. And construction is needed more often than ever.
Stress is driving us
We live our lives under societal stress. As computing power increases, jobs are demanding greater mental acuity and knowledge to keep up with the pace and the information that is only getting faster and more voluminous. While modern medical technology is getting us past some hurdles that would have killed us in the past, generally we are getting sicker as diseases, especially degenerative diseases, are showing up more often and at earlier ages than before. We are, like the roads, getting stressed more and our health generally suffers. Modern technology has managed to bring on even more stress even though it should be improving our lives.
Once, jobs were more physical than mental. We had to work to grow our food and expend our own physical energy to travel places. Now this is reversed: we sit almost motionless in front of computer screens and use our brains to solve problem after problem, issue after issue. We use our higher thought centers of our brains more than ever. We move less and have to find time for exercise because it is not a natural part of our day.
At least we understand the value of exercise. Even couch potatoes know that they should exercise. That’s not in dispute. And it’s common knowledge that exercise makes us feel better, staves off disease, and gives us clearer thinking. But it’s still hard to get sufficient exercise in our schedules. We need to know that it is worth the sacrifice to propel us off the couch or out of the chair. Sure it’s helpful, makes us stronger, and may add a few years to our lives, but is that enough motivation to get us moving?
A better investment
When you spend your money, you think about how much value you get for that money. Why do you buy certain things and skip over others? Generally it’s because you feel the value you will get is greater on those things that you spend your money. You ask yourself if the purchase is worth the investment. If something is a really good investment, giving you back many times what it costs, you rush to buy it. If you believe that exercise pays you back many times over, you will find time in your day for it.
Research shows that exercise is indeed worth many times the effort and time you put into it. It is better than most investments you can make. Proper sleep, diet, hydration, and mental relaxation are extremely valuable, but you have to maintain them through out your day and night. Exercise, however, can pay back with less than an hour per day with benefits for the whole day. That’s not to say you should be a couch potato the rest of the day, but even if you are, the exercise is paying off. The most impressive exercise payback comes from HIIT (high-intensity interval training). Here you spend short periods where you go full-out, then take it (relatively) easy. For hours afterwards, your body is responding wonderfully even though you’ve finished the exercise.
Where does mental stress hit you? When a stressful event occurs, obviously it hits right then. But most such events come and go. Why do they lead to chronic stress? The reason is usually that you multiply the event by thinking about it. If the event is in the past, you replay it in your mind time after time. If the event hasn’t happened yet, it gets played in your imagination and leads to worry. Whether in the past or future, the stressful event is multiplied by your thoughts.
Ever heard of “emotional resilience”? Some people can take bad news or an emotional upset better than others. We consider them to be emotionally stable or well balanced, but we don’t really know why they can handle it and wish we could do as well. Research is showing that exercise plays a key role here. In a study published in Frontiers in Physiology, researchers from The University of Chicago examined the effects of regular exercise on the heart and the mental state. The participants were divided into two groups: those getting regular exercise during the week and those that did not exercise. They found that a mere exercise routine once a week was able to reduce the participant’s resting heart rate, meaning that the heart was working more efficiently, beating less to produce the required circulation. Both groups were also subjected to a mental stress test. The non-exercisers reported greater loss of desire, enthusiasm, and interest after the stress tests than those who had been exercising. The mental stress test was designed to be mentally difficult and discouraging, but the exercising group naturally didn’t have it get them down like the non-exercisers did. (1)
I thought so…
Higher thought is centered in your prefrontal cortex. That gives you the ability to think at a high level, which also gives you the ability to fear and worry at times beyond the occurrence of an event. Guess what? Exercise helps stabilize your whole brain, but particularly your prefrontal cortex. This is shown in a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. There, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital conducted a study of 50,359 adults exploring the effects of exercise on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. As expected, the study saw a reduced risk — 23% less risk — for those regularly exercising. Such a finding is consistent with many other studies. But their study of the effects on depressed people showed a surprise: “Physical activity was roughly twice as effective in lowering cardiovascular disease risk among those with depression.” (2) Their study showed a clear contrast with those suffering from clinical depression, but why would exercise have so much greater effect for them?
The researchers found the reason is that exercise, a physical stress, has essentially the opposite effect on the prefrontal cortex as mental stress. The depressed participants “tended to have lower stress-related brain activity.” Those reductions were found primarily in the prefrontal cortex. Exercise was calming the thought processes which led to the chronic mental stress in the first place.
Well, that’s great for the short period of time someone is exercising. But how about the rest of the day? What this study showed by focusing on CVD risk was the long-lasting effects of exercise. The thought-calming would not reduce CVD risk, which builds over time, unless the effects lasted well beyond the exercise period. The more your mind is occupied by worry, depression, or fear, the greater is the effect of exercise.
In the past, mental stress had an outlet in physical action. If you were confronted suddenly with a hungry lion, you would run. We are built such that mental stress is supposed to translate into physical action to remove the stress. But that’s not how we live. By exercising, you are bringing your body closer to the original plan, and your mental stress has a physical outlet, at least for a while. So this reaction makes sense. It’s a very painful condition to think on something stressful and be unable to do anything about it.
So now you know why exercise is simply mandatory. It’s worth your investment more that most endeavors where you are likely to spend your time. Even with a packed schedule, it’s worth finding at least a portion of an hour to engage in. Try it and see if you don’t feel better even if a lot is weighing on you. Exercise simply works!
Dr. Nemec’s Review
There was a classic line in the movie, The Flight of the Phoenix:
I think a man only needs one thing in life.
He just needs someone to love.
If you can’t give him that, then
give him something to hope for.
And if you can’t give him that…
just give him something to do.
What’s the something to do that we all should be doing every day of our life? Exercise! And as this research showed, high intensity, short duration is the best investment of your time because it takes the least amount of time with the greatest long-term benefit.
You were created with movement and for movement. Life is movement, and where there is no movement there is no life.
Let us mention briefly some of the functions of the prefrontal cortex part of the brain:
* Top-down regulation The prefrontal cortex (PFC) helps us to flexibly regulate our behavior, such as shifting our attention or changing our decision making. Think of the prefrontal cortex as one of the major controllers of your entire body. That’s what top down means.
* Emotion regulation The PFC is connected to areas that control the release of cognitive functioning and emotion-affecting neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin.
* Planning and strategy The dorsolateral PFC is associated with planning, strategy, and executive decisions. What is executive decision? This means it makes the final decision on what neurotransmitters are released and what hormones are released.
* The PFC is not fully developed until around age 25. This is really important, because if it doesn’t develop fully until age 25, then one of the most important parts of your brain is still adapting to the environment, and you can change that environment, mentally emotionally, and physically.
The University of Chicago study showed that exercise makes one stress resilient, meaning that when you exercise, the mental-emotional stress does not affect you as much as if you don’t exercise. And in this study they were only required to exercise once a week. It decreased their heart rate, which means it strengthened their heart and increased their mental-emotional stress resilience. Can you imagine if they did this every day instead of once a week?
What about the Journal of the American College of Cardiology? It stated quite clearly that high intensity, short duration exercise not only decreases cardiovascular risk by almost 25%, but an even greater benefit is it balances the prefrontal cortex, which is the higher thought center in the brain — and many times the decision-maker in the brain that controls the mental, emotional, and physical response. The most interesting part of this research was that in mentally emotionally challenged people, especially people with depression, they had twice the benefit of reducing cardiovascular risk.
Now let’s reason why. Why would a person with depression have twice as much improvement with exercise as compared to a normal non-depressed person? What is the thing most depressed people do more than non-depressed people? Many times they think about and ruminate on negative events and negative people in their lives. So they spend a lot of time negative thinking.
What was the greatest benefit of the high intensity, short duration exercise? It balances the prefrontal cortex, which is the higher thought center and the decision maker in the brain.
What the exercise is doing is balancing the prefrontal cortex, whether that is because you’re choosing the exercise to improve your health or just because exercise decreases prefrontal cortex activity — whichever it is, the benefit is clear: it increases physical health, cardiovascular health and mental-emotional health all at the same time.
Quite an investment
I don’t think you’ll come across too many investments in your life that require this little energy and have this much return on your investment. High-intensity, short-duration exercises are done in one to three minute intervals at very high intensity and started with one cycle, but then can be done cyclically in sets of 3 to 4. Do it every day: it only takes minutes, yet it balances your brain and your body. That’s the hundredfold return.
I think a man only needs one thing in life.
He just needs someone to love.
This is the Father, who is unconditional love
If you can’t give him that, then
give him something to hope for.
For in Hope (100% knowing who our FAMILY IS and that we are part of that FAMILY), we are made whole and complete in body, mind, emotion, and spirit.
And if you can’t give him that…
just give him something to do.
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Revolution New Medicine but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Revolution New Medicine along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
(1) Childs, Emma, and Harriet de Wit. “Regular exercise is associated with emotional resilience to acute stress in healthy adults.” Frontiers in physiology vol. 5 161. 1 May. 2014, doi:10.3389/fphys.2014.00161
(2) Hadil Zureigat, Michael T. Osborne, Shady Abohashem, Kenechukwu Mezue, Charbel Gharios, Simran Grewal, Alex Cardeiro, Nicki Naddaf, Giovanni Civieri, Taimur Abbasi, Azar Radfar, Wesam Aldosoky, Antonia V. Seligowski, Meagan M. Wasfy, James Sawalla Guseh, Timothy W. Churchill, Rachel P. Rosovsky, Zahi Fayad, Anthony Rosenzweig, Aaron Baggish, Roger K. Pitman, Karmel W. Choi, Jordan Smoller, Lisa M. Shin, Ahmed Tawakol. Effect of Stress-Related Neural Pathways on the Cardiovascular Benefit of Physical Activity. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2024; 83 (16): 1543 DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2024.02.029
