Improve Your Life

Here at Inner Evolution Fitness, we like to think long term. If we started doing this regularly, how would it help us later in life? Normally, if it improves our health and well being, we adapt it. We try to cultivate a beneficial environment inside the gym and out. To enhance your workout and to ultimately have a healthier and longer life; we make some changes to your daily lives that are pretty simple but add immense benefits. Most people know it is hard to change unless it’s simple or it shows immediate results. It’s hard to make a positive habit stick, so here are some simple ways to improve your life.

Dental Hygiene

I know what you are probably thinking, “how can flossing and brushing my teeth make my workouts and life better?” I’m glad you asked. Besides the benefits of not having food stuck between your teeth, regular dental hygiene practices have been shown to lower bad bacteria entering your bloodstream which can lead to heart disease and blood clots. The studies aren’t yet conclusive, but there are a lot of correlations leading to a bad ticker. So why are you trying to strengthen your heart and body if you aren’t even brushing your teeth? I personally like a water pic.

http://www.worldhealth.net/news/poor_dental_hygiene_increases_risk_of_he/

Daily Activity

Well, duh! Everyone knows that, why even mention it. I’m not talking about going to the gym and sweating all the time. I’m talking about just walking more, sitting less, going to the park, or riding a bike to the grocery store. According to Dr. James Levine’s book ‘Get Up’, “Sitting is the new smoking”. This came about due to the numerous studies showing the ill effects of being sedentary. So even the “gym rat” who works out all the time, then goes home to play video games for the rest of the day is still getting the effects of sitting too much.

To help combat this, try to break up your sitting. After 45 minutes of continual sitting, get up and walk around for a minute or two.

American Heart Association Article

Social Bonding

Getting together with friends and family to go on a hike or play a board game can be great for stress reduction. In the book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, author Matthew Lieberman illustrates that it is more beneficial to your health to play a game with your friends in person once a week than it would be to quit smoking a pack a day. That is a very bold statement in my opinion, so why not have fun for your health. Try to have a family game night or something even as simple as playing catch with your friends and experience great benefits of being social.

Healthy Diet

Again, I’m stating the obvious. This should be the basis for anyone looking for ways to live longer and better. There are numerous ways to improve your eating habits. Inner Evolution Fitness follows a Paleo lifestyle, but knows that isn’t simple for everyone to do. What we recommend is to eat real food, that’s it. If it is in nature and hasn’t been heavily processed or formulated in a factory, go ahead and eat it.

Mobility Training

Mobility training is a type of training that focuses on increasing range of motion in joints that need freedom of movement and decreasing range of motion in areas that need more stability by using exercises that mimic real life situations. This is a way to keep your joints and muscles working the way they are meant to.

Increasing your mobility has obvious benefits: reduces injuries, increases strength, and helps everyone in their daily living. So being able properly to carry groceries and not worry about your back, walking up and down the stairs with no knee pain, and even getting off the couch easier is what mobility training has to offer.

Ways to increase Telomere length

This is a bit nerdy in the research. So I’ll try to make it less painful and simplify it. Vitamin D has been shown to increase telomere length. “Telo-what now”. Telomeres are the caps that keep your DNA strands together. You know the plastic ends on your shoelaces? That is what telomeres are, they are the plastic things on the end of your DNA strands.

Studies have been shown that the longer telomeres are, the longer you will potentially live. So the optimal amount of Vitamin D in your body will make you live longer.

Effective ways to increase your intake of Vitamin D
-Eat more Fish
-Go outside
-Supplements

http://blog.wellnessfx.com/2013/08/14/the-vitamin-d-sweet-spot-and-its-relationship-to-aging/

De-stress in Nature

A number of studies have shown the benefits of just getting away from the daily grind of life and kicking up your feet. Watching a movie and just lounging around is good, but I prefer great. Going into nature and being around trees is like relaxing on steroids, according to this study. Being in nature lowers cortisol, the hormone that is high up when you are stressed out, even more than just relaxing and also increases NK cells (NK cells or natural killer cells are known to fight off cancer cells and viral infections). You don’t have to be a Bushman or Grizzly Adams, just go for a hike or try a meal at a park by the trees or lake and decompress.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20074458

Like I said, I want things in life to be simple. Simplify life for great results, so I came up with an easy way to achieve most of these steps. Inner Evolution Fitness loves to train groups of people in the park; this covers being outside, being in nature, social bonding, mobility training, and being active. You can even bring a healthy meal and that pretty much covers it. We won’t do group flossing or brushing, that’s all on you. Grab some of your friends and join me in an enjoyable time outside to help your health in multiple ways. No matter what fitness level, we will accommodate to you.

-Mark
Stay evolved