It seems that in our modern society of fast fads and quick trends, we are constantly hopping on the latest fitness and diet hype trains. Will doing Keto make me lose weight faster? Should I be doing HIIT workouts if I want to get leaner, or is pilates better? What protein powder will help me gain the most muscle mass, the fastest?
If these are questions that you have heard from your friends and family or have asked yourself, then you can recognize the dilemma that people create for themselves. There is nothing wrong with doing Keto, pilates, or even using protein powder if it’s right for your body. But what is wrong is hopping on every and any trend without doing much research, in order to see fast results.
It seems everyone wants to look better and feel better, but they want it fast. Just like many aspects of our life, we are seeking quantity over quality, and faster over lasting results. This is what brings body longevity and movement into the conversation.
If you have never heard of body longevity, and don’t fully grasp the importance of movement, then this article will be for you. If you want to achieve lasting health improvements managed through a reliable wellness strategy, then you’ll want to keep reading to learn more about the concept of Longevity, and how the SWatson Solutions Method can contribute towards it.
The Longevity Dilemma
Body longevity is the duration that a human can live a healthy, stable life without difficulty of regular movement. According to the National Library of Medicine, a person’s body longevity is determined through their genetics, environment, and lifestyle. Although we cannot control our genetics, we do have some control over our environment, and we have lots of control over our lifestyle, as well as how we choose to spend our time from day to day.
This is where the dilemma of contributing toward your body longevity comes in. With thinking about the far distant future, and how you may feel and move then, it can be difficult to think about how to prepare for that. Even more, it can be difficult to muster up the concern to worry about it at all, and the courage to take small actions toward your goals.
Meanwhile, the most recent diet or exercise fad can make you feel good NOW and promises results NOW, and so we often turn towards these instead of methods meant to promote long-lasting wellness.
That is why our goal is to showcase more ways that people can contribute to their Longevity through the factors they can control, like their environment and lifestyle.
Environment
Our Environment includes the physical and emotional aspects of our surroundings on a day-to-day basis.These aspects equally affect our physical and mental states.
Some physical aspects of our environment include:
Safe drinking water
Access to clean and non-processed food
Safe living conditions
Exposure to pollution and infectious diseases
Access to nature and sunlight
Access to medical care
Some emotional aspects include:
Non-stressful living situations
Socialization with friends and family
Support for your aspirations
Concern for your mental health
A healthy work-life balance
By looking to maximize the quality of our surroundings, we can better contribute to not only our immediate health and wellbeing, but our Longevity as well. Some of these factors are difficult to manage on our own, but not impossible. So, what can be more important than identifying the next fad to try, is identifying what you need to make your surroundings more accommodating to your health.
Lifestyle
Even if we cannot control all of our environmental conditions, all of the time, we do have control over many of the lifestyle choices we make daily. The National Library additionally found that centenarians, or those humans who live to their hundreds, have little in common with education, profession, or income. What they do show to have in common includes eating a healthy diet (most often mediterranean style), every-day moderate movement or exercise, drinking in moderation, and abstaining from use of tobacco products.
We all have our vices and finding the most enjoyment in life means sometimes indulging in things that wouldn’t be the “healthiest” regularly. These experiences are valuable to our emotional health, and often are associated with decrease in stress, a most potent factor on health. However, it is important to remember to manage less healthy diet practices and lack of exercise with concern for your future physical health.
One of the most important lifestyle choices we can make for our present and future is to maintain a consistent level of daily movement.
Daily Movement
Daily movement has been shown to increase life longevity over time, as well as to help maintain healthy body weight to avoid obesity. Obesity has been linked to chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, which is responsible for over 186,000 deaths per year in the US.
What type of daily movement is best? Of course, not all of us can be professional athletes, and the good thing is, we don’t need to be! In fact, according to this study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, people who take more steps daily greatly lower their risk of an early death from any cause.
There is not any evidence to show that professional athletes remain healthier or have better body longevity over time. However, there is evidence behind recovery in how much those who take the time to allow their bodies to recover can move better, and for longer.
Recovery is defined by both warmup and cooldown, before and after a session of intense movement, as well as longer sessions of recovery once or twice a week for regular athletes. Recovery helps contribute to:
Muscle build up and break down
Soothing soreness
Muscle longevity.
One of the most important contributors to recovery is the power of stretch. Let’s discuss a little further why stretch should be considered one of the most important parts of your exercise plan.
Longevity and Mobility: The Power of Stretch
Of all the practices that people need to follow in order to maximize their recovery process, stretching is not done nearly enough. To quote Rick Sharp, a professor of exercise physiology at Iowa State University in Ames, “People don’t stretch enough…Stretching helps break the cycle, which goes from soreness to muscle spasm, to contraction and tightness.”
It is best to stretch after your heart rate has returned to resting levels, and you should focus on the muscles that you worked out in that session. Stretching can help alleviate the feelings of tightness and restriction that can build up through a session of exercise. By stretching, you can help keep your tendons and muscles more mobile, and this can all be done with at least 60 seconds of stretching after exercise.
The focus of your stretching and mobility exercises should be to complete them in a slow and controlled manner, letting your muscle relax into the stretch without forcing a position that can cause the muscles to further tighten up or cause injury.
How the SWatson Solutions Method Increases Longevity
The SWatson Solutions Method was designed to help emphasize Longevity while taking care of your body. The backbone of the method are the ideas of Rest and Neuromuscular (this refers to anything relating to the muscles and nerves in
the body) and Cognitive Optimization (focusing on brain health, such as perception, memory, judgment, reasoning, and thinking). By following the SWatson Solutions Method, you can look to optimize brain, nerve, and muscle function in the body, to increase well-being, performance, and happiness.
As we mentioned before, mental health and performance are just as crucial to your Longevity as your physical health. By promoting rest and giving adequate time and care for your body to recover from the physical stress of exercise, and the mental stress of your life, the SWatson Solutions Method aims to contribute to all of the lifestyle factors you can control. Through practices like restorative yoga, you can look to:
Reduce body pain
Enhance your immune system
Increase blood flow
Reduce anxiety and stress
Help reverse heart disease
Increase energy
Introduce mindfulness and meditation to your routine
Play the long game: Why does Longevity matter in the long run?
Longevity is important because it looks to contribute to your health for the duration of your life. While the latest trend can be exciting in the moment, and can even help some people with lasting results, many of these fads are built on hype alone and will contribute to short-term excitement, but not long-term health benefits.
With the SWatson Solutions Method, exercise alongside recovery sessions helps to promote physical and mental health consistently, with practices that can be maintained throughout your life. Intense exercise might seem to get your goals completed faster, but without the proper athletic recovery, you will be short-term gains at the cost of long-term health.
More movement is beneficial for mobility in the long run. Mobility plus recovery is even better for movement longevity. With the SWatson Solutions Method, movement + recovery + mindfulness are combined into one consistent practice, and provide a proven method to help support your body longevity.
To learn more about how the SWatson Solutions method improves body longevity, visit SwatsonSolutions.com.
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