Although it may feel like tightness is your “natural” state, the reasons for tight muscles can go back all the way to your time in utero, which is why many people have always felt tight! When your body goes through oxygen deprivation, the brain begins shutting down different parts of its function. Motor function (communication between nerve and mus

A few posts back I mentioned a bit about the intensity of exercise (over sixty percent of peak) increasing turbulent flow, a precursor for arterial plaque accumulation. Big deal. Huge deal. Especially for those of you out there who think that the more you work your heart, the healthier your heart will be. Nope. This is not correct, and it is really

Notice the terms like “it’s my natural state,” or “I was born this way,” etc., above. Your motor pathways are somatic—which means you have total control over what is happening to all your muscles. When you have beliefs that reinforce where your body is, then it’s going to be difficult to change. This is a new mantra for everyone: Muscle length is c

3. Please explain that research shows that consistent, lower-intensity movements (walking, yoga, stretching classes) demonstrate greater long-term decreases in body fat than high-intensity and joint-damaging high-impact exercise sessions.

For more reading: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471015308000962 Eat Behaviors. 2009 Jan;10(l):68–70. Men, muscles, and mood: the relationship between self-concept, dysphoria, and body image disturbances. McFarland MB, Ka-minski PL.

Blood sugar. The higher your blood sugar, the more your blood is like syrup. Like the type of syrup Starbucks puts in your vanilla latte.

The main difference is that water is a Newtonian fluid—meaning that all parts of water are doing the same thing at any time. Blood is a non-Newtonian fluid, meaning different parts of blood do different things. This is because blood is made up of blood cells floating in liquid. The cells have a rigid shape (well, rigid for cells), while the liquid

Berkeley architecture professor Galen Cranz wrote a book called The Chair: Rethinking Body, Culture and Design. (You could walk to the library to pick it up!) It is a great, thorough history of the structure of the chair, the role the class system has had on chair design, and the impact sitting has had on the body.

Because sitting alters the muscle lengths in the legs so greatly, the lower half of the body no longer gives muscular support to the cardiovascular system. The calves and hamstrings become so tight they cannot hold their share of blood, causing excess strain on the main arteries, increasing the risk for cardiovascular disease. The evil henchman Sit