Old truths about health: part 1

Old truths sometimes sound tiresome, because we have heard them before: move more, eat more sensibly, don’t live on comfort alone. But Nikolai Amossov put the idea more sharply: the body needs effort, the ability to withstand cold and heat, and the ability to cope with hunger and microbes. Health doesn’t last on knowledge alone, but on what the body actually does.

Old truths and the body’s natural need

Nikolai Amossov’s idea is simple, but uncomfortable. A person’s biological health rests on physical effort, resistance to frost and heat, hunger and microbes. These mechanisms took shape long before we got the soft sofa, the elevator, the car, the remote control and food that reaches the table with hardly any effort.

“A person’s so-called biological health is based on physical effort, resistance to frost and heat, hunger and microbes. This fact and these health-securing mechanisms took shape long before the emergence of higher mental function. The social and technical environment of civilization disrupted the mutual influence between the body’s functioning and nature. Conditions arose of undertraining in some structures and overtraining in others.”

So what actually happens? The body is built to be used. If we don’t use our muscles, heart, lungs, joints and nervous system, they won’t stay at the same level just because we were once active. The organism adapts to what we give it every day. If we give it sitting, comfortable temperatures and too much food, it adapts to that too.

How old truths work in everyday life

A simple truth: to stay healthy, a person has to push beyond their limits regularly. Not heroically, and not once a year. The body needs a repeated training load that raises your heart rate above its resting rate and gets the whole organism working.

Heart rate isn’t the only thing, though. To stay healthy, you need to use the body as a whole. Muscles have to work, joints have to move, breathing has to deepen, and the nervous system has to get a signal that strength and endurance need to be maintained.

There is one important nuance here. You can’t do physical effort far in advance. If I go skiing today, on December 26, for 10 km, the rise in heart rate and the other health-supporting changes it brings won’t stay in the body forever. With a passive lifestyle, they fade quickly.

If I keep moving, though, the effect lasts better. For example, I do a new workout on December 28 or 29, shovel snow properly or spend a workday in the forest. The body gets a repeated message: this capacity is needed. That’s when your health and work capacity gradually start to get stronger.

With age, the rule gets stricter

When you’re young, nature gives you a lot for free. You have more energy, recovery is faster, and a bit of laziness doesn’t show right away. With age, part of that natural capacity starts to disappear. Wanting to be healthy isn’t enough to counter it. Regular activity and sensible nutrition help.

Comfort, technology and the price of health

“The social and technical environment of civilization disrupted the mutual influence between the body’s functioning and nature.”

This sentence explains a lot. We have learned to survive with less effort than nature originally intended. Food is within easy reach. Work is often sedentary. Transport takes us to the door. At home, a warm room and a screen are waiting. Comfort isn’t bad in itself, but beyond a certain point it starts working against us.

Amossov said it plainly: “If pleasures are overdone, the price can turn out to be too high, and physical suffering swallows all the enjoyment gained from the benefits of civilization.”

Frankly, this is even clearer today. In many people, the systems tied to movement are underactive, while the opportunities for eating and taking in energy are far too plentiful. The body gets too little work, yet more than enough calories and comfort.

A common misconception is that once machines do the physical work, people no longer need to be physically active. In fact, the opposite is true. The more technology does for us, the more deliberately we have to seek out movement ourselves. It doesn’t always have to be sport. It can be walking, training, snow shoveling, gardening or some other real effort.

Old truths in practice

How do you apply these ideas in real life? It’s worth starting smaller than your ego would like. If you haven’t been active for a long time, there’s no need to tear yourself to pieces right away. What you need is rhythm. The body believes repetition, not big promises.

• Move in a way that raises your heart rate and deepens your breathing.
• Do it several times a week, not only when you feel like it.
• Use your whole body: legs, back, core, arms and breathing.
• Don’t expect one hard workout to make up for a long stretch of inactivity.
• Keep nutrition simple: less overdoing it, more consistency.

It’s important to understand that stepping out of your comfort zone doesn’t mean punishing yourself. It means giving your body the work it needs. If we want to be healthy, live long and feel good, we have to carry our training load regularly and do our share of huffing and puffing. Whether we like it or not.

Nikolai Amosov is an academician and professor, a doctor of medicine, an outstanding surgeon and a world-renowned scientist.

FAQ: old truths about health

Do you absolutely have to work out to be healthy?

Training is a good tool, but when it comes to health, regular physical activity in the broader sense is what counts. If your body gets enough training load through walking, work, training or other movement, you’re heading in the right direction.

Why doesn’t one hard effort help for long?

Because the body adapts to the load it’s currently under. A single effort has a short-lived impact, but lasting health needs a repeated signal. Regular movement tells your body that strength and endurance need to be maintained.

So is a comfortable life bad for your health?

Comfort isn’t bad as long as you balance it with deliberate movement and moderate eating. The problem arises when comfort removes all physical effort from everyday life.

To be continued…

Author: Janar Rückenberg

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