Your body is designed for a wide variety of movement - running, jumping, leaping, stretching, reaching, hanging, lifting, carrying, twisting - there is a lot our bodies are capable of.
Our primal ancestors had to be able to do all this to survive in a varied environment with constantly changing challenges. Hunting and gathering food, building shelter, escaping from sabre-tooth tigers… you get the picture.
Our bodies have evolved to need this kind of activity regularly in order to be healthy.
And there’s the problem. In our modern world, we fall into patterns of moving (or not moving) that put us in the same positions every day. Think about how much time you spend sitting at a desk, in your car, at your dining table, or on the couch in front of Netflix.
You may think “Why does that matter? I don’t have to run away from tigers, and my hunting and gathering is in the aisles of a supermarket.” But this lack of movement can have an impact on the way our bodies are built. Movement creates changes and adaptations right down to the cellular level. It’s also integral to how our brains work.
We are creatures of habit and our bodies adapt to what we do over and over again. Our body changes to conform to these familiar shapes.
When we don’t perform a movement for a long time, we become less able to perform it – our bodies are “move it or lose it”. And if we don’t move much at all, our overall health suffers.
How’s your movement nutrition?
Let’s be clear: what we’re talking about here is not your regular exercise. We’re talking about the way you move and how much you move the rest of the time.
Most of us would benefit from having a more active lifestyle. And going to the gym or playing a sport is a great thing to do, but problems can still arise if we remain really sedentary and static in the rest of our lives: stuck in a chair behind a desk most of the day. Don’t get us wrong: regular exercise is really important, and can benefit just about every area of your health. But if you’re not moving enough the rest of the time, that’s a problem.
An easy way to this is through incidental movement. Increasing incidental movement will improve your movement nutrition.
Movement matters
We all know the importance of eating a varied diet. Did you know the same applies to the way you move? You could think about this as your “movement diet”.
Moving our bodies in a variety of ways regularly over time helps more than just increasing the movements available to us.
Good movement nutrition can aid our general health, helping prevent and manage several chronic diseases like:
Cardiovascular disease
Diabetes
Cancer
Hypertension
Obesity
Depression
Osteoporosis
There are many benefits you can gain from simply changing up the ways you move in your everyday activities – your incidental and regular movement.
The good news: You don’t need a lot of equipment to move more. You don’t need to fit in an extra session at the gym.
You can incorporate a wider variety of movement into your everyday living that will benefit your body. Think about the following movement menu:
Walking
Running
Jumping
Climbing
Lifting
Carrying
Pulling
Pushing
Twisting
Rolling
Spinning
Throwing
Catching
Squatting
Hanging
Swinging
And that’s just for starters…
How to move: nutritious movement
Let’s start by changing some of the conveniences we’ve gotten used to.
Change up where you sit
We know that sitting for long periods is detrimental to our health. So why not make the way you sit work for you instead?
Sit on the floor instead of a chair. This incorporates the whole-body movement of getting down to the floor and back up again.
Find different sitting positions. Give yourself a reason to move every 20-30 minutes, creating a movement break.
Walk more
Incorporate more walking into your day. Even small increases in activity are beneficial.
Park your car further away from your destination, and walk the last leg. Better still, park your car a level down in the car park, and take the stairs! Walk to your local shops rather than jumping in the car.
If you are catching public transport, get off a stop of two earlier and walk the rest of the way.
Walk as you talk
Can you take a walking meeting? Grab a takeaway coffee and walk as you talk.
Or take that phone call as you walk around your workplace or home.
Take the stairs
When you take the stairs instead of the elevator you benefit from greater hip and pelvic mobility. Stair-climbing exercise “snacks” have been found to improve your cardiorespiratory fitness, blood sugar levels, and increase bone density.
Hang your washing instead of using the dryer
Hanging your washing on the line instead of using the dryer gets your arms up over your head more regularly.
Play with your kids at the playground
This is a great one! You may be surprised at how much climbing around play equipment will challenge you to move differently – for example, joining your kids on the monkey bars can encourage more shoulder stability.
Find obstacles to move around as you walk
Balance and whole-body coordination can be improved when you climb over rocks and boulders instead of walking around them, or balance along a retaining wall or gutter.
Get playful with your movement, it can also help to put you in a creative mindset for problem solving.
Get out into the garden
Gardening creates a myriad of opportunities to move differently. From deep squats, to raking and sweeping, digging and lifting, pushing and pulling.
There are a lot of mental health benefits that come from getting your hands in the dirt.
What’s on your nutritious movement ‘shopping list’?
Use the examples above or come up with your own way to increase incidental movement.
The point is we need to be regularly walking over uneven ground, carrying and lifting things, hanging and swinging off things, sitting, squatting, standing. Move regularly in as broad and varied a way as possible to maximise your body's function and health.
Move your DNA
With a little thought and planning, you can add variety into your movement diet without it feeling like a chore.
Adopting a lifestyle where you are moving regularly and are exposed to a wide variety of environments and types of movement is better for our bodies.
Research shows that nutritious movement affects the way our cells express our DNA right up to big things like mood, cardiovascular health and gut function.
The more variety you can include in how you move, the more you will notice your range of motion, skill and capabilities increase in those different movement patterns.
And you will be setting yourself up for a healthier life.
Katy Bowman on the difference between exercise and movement
More on nutritious movement
Burn: The Misunderstood Science of Metabolism by Herman Pontzer, PhD
Move!: The New Science of Body Over Mind by Caroline Williams
Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement by Katy Bowman
Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved To Do is Healthy and Rewarding by Daniel Lieberman
Herman Pontzer talk on Metabolism
Can a chiropractor help with your movement?
Contact us or book an appointment at our clinic in Canberra.
References
Health benefits of physical activity: the evidence. Warburton D, Nicol C, Bredin S. CMAJ March 14, 2006 174 (6) 801-809
Too Much Sitting: The Population-Health Science of Sedentary Behavior. Owen N, Healy G, Matthews C, Dunstan, D. Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 2010 Jul; 38(3): 105–113
Physical activity and all-cause mortality across levels of overall and abdominal adiposity in European men and women: the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition Study (EPIC). Ekelund U, et al. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 101, Issue 3, March 2015, Pages 613–621
Do stair climbing exercise “snacks” improve cardiorespiratory fitness? Jenkins EM et al. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, Vol 44, Issue 6, 16 January 2019
The impact of brief high-intensity exercise on blood glucose levels. Adams OP, Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes. 2013; 6: 113–122
The Effectiveness of Physical Exercise on Bone Density in Osteoporotic Patients. Benedetti MG et al, Biomed Res Int. 2018; 2018: 484053