Hello, and welcome to the Synergy Wellness Blog! In this inaugural blog post, I’ll lay out the
narrative of this blog. The primary
theme of discussion is health and wellness, specifically lifestyle choices we
can make to optimize our health. The content
within this blog is data driven and based on good scientific principles and
practices. You may notice that some of
what I write appears at odds with what you’ve read or heard from other sources. My plan is to lay out my thoughts and provide
the scientific rational behind those thoughts in every post. Where my ideas diverge from conventional
thinking, I will describe why I believe the conventional thinking is flawed and
how the science may not be saying what you think it says.
Before we go on I would like to lay out what I believe to be
the best health model and compare it to the current model we use in the
US. First and foremost, optimal health
requires the proper nutrition, very little sedentary time, daily activity, 8
hours of quality sleep, and the proper ratio of stress to recovery. Within the stress:recovery category we look
at things like strength training, work stress, family stress, and stress
management modalities such as yoga, meditation, beach time, or just plain
laughing. When you take care of all of
these things the vast majority of people achieve optimal health. Pharmaceuticals provide help when infections
occur, genetic defects are present, or a person leading an otherwise healthy
life encounters a health problem.
Contrast this model with the current US model where people make terrible
lifestyle choices and use pharmaceuticals in attempt to make up for those poor
decisions.
As our understanding of human biology increases, the
foundation that the current US health model is based upon crumbles. Through advancements in the field of
epigenetics, we now understand how nutrition, stress, and physical activity
impact our health. Epigenetics is the
science of how our genes interact with the environment, referred to as genetic
expression. When we get regular physical
activity and eat the proper foods, we affect thousands of genes in a way that
improves health, immune function, brain function, stress management, physical
performance, and any other way you can measure human health. It appears that the primary flaw in using
pharmaceuticals to compensate for not doing what is built in to our genes is
that while the proper lifestyle choices affect thousands of genes, taking a
drug to alleviate symptoms from poor choices may only affect as few as 10-20
genes, leaving many other avenues for things to go wrong. It also could help explain why the average
person takes as many pills per day as decades they have lived. For a 60 year old person that’s 6 different
pills per day!
I hope you enjoy this blog and pick up some good habits on
the way. If you have any questions or
would like to discuss opposing ideas I welcome you to post in the comments
section. My only rule is that comments
and discussions remain productive and don’t devolve in to flame wars or pissing
contests.
Thanks,
Dave
