Load Your Body for Good Health; EMF, RF, EHS: On Your Radar; and Racquet Sports for the Longevity Win
Lightbulb & Pearls | 005
Loads for Good Health
Although I’ve been on the movement train for decades, recently a lightbulb went off while reading Move Your DNA by Katy Bowman, about the ancestral importance of “loads” on our bodies. Essentially, we are hunter-gatherers. Our bodies were designed to move in an unlimited combination of ways, traverse long distances and lift heavy things. To squat, bend, and twist…while holding hefty objects such as babies or jugs of water.
Katy explains that the benefits extend beyond merely the activity: “The frequent consumption of varied movement is what drives essential physiological processes.” These processes drill down to our essence at a cellular level, to our DNA. Activity ignite our cells. It is what helps us maintain proper health, keeping illness and disease at bay. Her professional opinion, as a biochemist, is that movement is what most humans are missing more than any other factor.
I see her theory on steroids as the InstaCart delivery is made to my neighbor’s house. Consider the everyday task of eating. We used to have to plant, cultivate, grow, and pick our food…all before even preparing it. Now, people don’t even get in their car to drive to the store! Modern conveniences have essentially removed nearly every task our bodies were designed to do, which has led to an unnaturally sedentary lifestyle with deleterious cascading consequences. It feels as though our society is on a path to the jello-boned, reclining masses depicted in Wall-E, where people have devolved to the point they can’t even stand.
EMF, RF, EHS: On Your Radar
Speaking of unnatural things that we do to our bodies…let’s talk EMF, RF and EHS, oh my.
Years ago when my husband and I were moving our design studio into a new space, we were meeting with our trusted IT guy about how to link the 20+ computers to the server and he said we absolutely had to hard wire the office. I was confused, isn’t our world moving to wireless? Yes, but with over 15 wireless networks in the building and all those signals swirling around, crashing into each other—they become scrambled and weakened. Interesting. OK. Hardwire it is.
That was more than an expensive project, it was a lightbulb for me—if all those signals extended beyond their walls and were interfering with each, that’s all passing through our bodies as well. Right? This brings me to today and the scads of conversations and articles I’m running across about that very thing. Very wise people in the health space are ringing alarm bells over EMF and RF possibly leading EHS. If you haven’t been ravaged with enough initials, EMF is electromagnetic fields, RF is radio frequency, and EHS is electrohypersensitivity.
Full disclosure, this is a hotly debated issue, with some scientists in the “there is nothing to be concerned about” camp and others on the “there are not enough studies to definitively know” side. Rest assured that I’ll be doing deep dives as information becomes available, but in the meantime, I think it’s important to put this on your radar.
While we have been exposed to a certain level of RF for decades, it has exponentially increased in the past 15 years. Tiny levels of radiation and electromagnetic fields are all around us every moment of the day from televisions, smart phones, wearables, digital devices, smart meters, and on and on. Studies confirm reactions to RF and EMF at a molecular and cellular level have been seen in healthy people that could result in long-term EHS—with consequences ranging from headaches, to difficulty concentrating or poor memory, all the way to cancer…and that’s what they know now.
Touching briefly on this subject in a recent episode of the Huberman Lab. Huberman, a neurobiologist, asked his guest, Dr. Matthew MacDougall (the head surgeon of Neuralink) his thoughts on wireless earbuds. Dr. MacDougall thinks the EMF exposure is too little to have any consequence, however Dr. Huberman is uncertain and until he is more convinced, he does not wear them. (I’m on team Huberman for this one, I just won’t do it.)
This is a vast, complex issue that is unnatural to our physiology. Is it possible that it is totally benign? Anything is possible. BUT, what if it isn’t harmless? If it ends being totally innocuous but we didn’t hop on board, the most we have sacrificed are minute conveniences that will have had little overall positive impact in the grand scheme of our life. So what if a cord is attached to a device?
My spidey sense tells me the jury will be out for years—perhaps decades—to come as this has been a bullet train of innovation and evolution will need time to catch up. In the meantime, I’m erring on the side of caution and adopting common-sense measures to mitigate my exposure. For instance, as a family we leave our phones on the phone table at night. We don’t keep devices in our rooms—we actually have an alarm clock. I don’t wear anything wireless. And I don’t carry my phone next to my body. (I’ve seen women tuck their phones into their bras! For crying out loud, move that thing away from your breasts!) I’ve gone as far as to tell our son if he wants kids in his future he better get the phone out of his pant pockets.
Racquet Sports for the Longevity Win
On the March 22, 2023 episode of The Model Health Show, guest Dr. Daniel Amen said “people who play racket sports live longer than everyone else.” According to the Brain MD website article “Top Health Benefits of Playing Tennis and Other Racquet Sports”, a 2016 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that followed more than 80,000 adults found that those who played tennis, table tennis, squash, and other racquet sports had the lowest risk of dying during the nearly decade-long research.”
While racquet sports like tennis, pickle ball, and ping-pong—Dr. Amen’s preferred choice—give the body an aerobic workout that increases overall circulation and blood flow to the brain that promotes strong cells, perhaps the mental health benefits are what makes them longevity powerhouses. These sports challenge key areas of the brain vital to keeping it young. Let’s start with the cerebellum in the back bottom part of the brain. While it is only 10% of the brain's volume, it has over half of the brain’s neurons—our brain’s nifty little information messengers. This critically important part of the brain is responsible for coordination—both physical and thought—how quickly we can process information and act on it.
Dr. Amen favors ping-pong for its speed and the multitude of ways it stimulates the brain. The fast pace hones our reflexes, while the spin of the ball stretches our hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills and makes us think strategically. In addition to working out the cerebellum, it works out the parietal lobes that enable us to see where the ball is in space and the frontal lobes that are creating strategy.
Think of the far-reaching effects this whole brain workout can have in our lives as we age. Physically we can have quicker reflexes, better balance, and better coordination. Mentally we could make more sound decisions, have an easier time concentrating, and handle stress better. I’m trying to figure out how the heck we can work an all-season ping-pong table into our backyard…
A Nutty Habit
Nuts and seeds are a staple in my daily morning routine for a variety of reasons. Almonds have an impressive nutrient profile that is high in fiber and protein and contain vitamin E and magnesium. Cashews are a great source of copper, which aids in the production of collagen. Walnuts contain alpha-linolenic and linoleic acids which may be anti-inflammatory. Pumpkin Seeds are high in protein, manganese, copper, and zinc. And that only scratches the surface.
I go the extra step to sprout the nuts because it makes them much more digestible and bioavailable (aka able to be used by the body), and—in my opinion—more delicious. This is a simple process of soaking and dehydrating that sounds much more laborious than it really is. Sally Fallon has a good soaking recipe in her seminal book, Nourishing Traditions, but you can also buy sprouted nuts from Go Raw and a few other sources. While sprouting is great for unlocking many nutritional benefits, it doesn’t magically reduce the fat and calories, which can be quite high and unfortunately for me, I easily get carried away—a handful leads to 3 or 4.
So how do I avoid going overboard? I dole out a serving of nuts in a lovely, small dish and when they are gone, they are gone. I don’t stand next to the open jar and graze or set it on my desk next to the computer. Serving them in a bowl also makes my daily ration of nuts feel like they are part of a meal, not just a snack.
And that, in a nutshell, is my pearl to mindfully eat your daily serving of nutritious nuts.