Exercise will make you more fit, but that's only a small part of the story, according to Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. "Humans are designed for much more physical activity than most of us get," says Dr. Goscienski, author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, "and every cell of the body benefits from it. Barely 20 percent of Americans are physically active enough to enjoy those benefits."
The 80 percent of us who savor the soft life now will have to endure a hard life later, he says. The human body evolved under conditions that involved lots of activity for so many thousands of years that it depends on moderate physical stress in order to function well.
"If we don't stress our bones with fairly heavy lifting, carrying, pushing and throwing, those bones will become thinner. After all, why should the body maintain a strong, heavy skeleton if it doesn't need it to support a lot of muscle? Thin bones are fragile, a condition we all know as osteoporosis." That's a pretty obvious example, but there are lots of subtle ones.
Most people would be surprised to learn that there is a connection between exercise and gallbladder disease. The more you exercise, the less likely it is that you will ever have to undergo surgery to have your gallbladder removed. In a study of more than 60,000 women, those who exercised 2 or 3 hours a week had 20 percent fewer gallbladder operations than their inactive counterparts.
Calling someone a musclehead is no compliment, but if you maintain your muscle mass with exercise, it's a good bet that your brain will work better, too. Exercise not only improves short-term memory, it will improve your mood and protect you against depression. Persons who are physically active throughout their lives are less likely to suffer from stroke or Alzheimer's disease, so that their last decades truly become their golden years.
Ever notice that athletic individuals don't get colds as often as couch potatoes? Regular, moderate exercise powers up the immune system. That becomes a life-and-death matter in the elderly, few of whom get much exercise. Inactivity results in loss of muscle mass, which diminishes our reserves of protein, a nutrient that we need to form infection-fighting blood cells and antibodies. It's no wonder that hospital-acquired infection is so common among the senior population. By retiring from physical activity as well as their jobs, they lower their resistance to germs that younger, fitter persons are able to overcome.
You can lower your chances of getting several forms of cancer – breast, prostate and colon – by exercising throughout life. The reasons are not yet understood, although women who accumulate fat by being inactive raise their estrogen levels, which increases the risk of breast cancer.
From middle age onward, poor sleep patterns and arthritis become annoyances that interfere with lifestyle. Both will improve with regular exercise. Persons who exercise with moderate intensity, such as walking for at least 45 minutes several times a week, fall asleep more quickly and average about one hour more of total sleep than persons who never exercise. Osteoarthritis, which affects more than half of the elderly population, is less painful and limiting among those who engage in exercise that is appropriate for their age and condition.
We haven't even discussed obesity and type 2 diabetes, but as Dr. Goscienski points out in Health Secrets of the Stone Age, these have now become frank epidemics in Western societies. Both conditions are totally absent in present-day hunter-gatherer populations, whose lifestyle is identical to that of the Stone Age. He notes that the 4-fold increase in the level of obesity in children since the early 1970s can be accounted for entirely by their lower expenditure of calories, not by their increased food intake. Type 2 diabetes is now so common among children that they are suffering from its complications before they reach the age of 30.

About The Author

Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is a pediatric infectious diseases specialist with a 45-year career in clinical and academic medicine. Dr. Goscienski has written for the Saturday Evening Post and Currents, the national newsletter of the American Heart Association and is a featured writer for North San Diego County Magazine. He has drawn on his interests in biology, anthropology, paleopathology and physical fitness to develop Better Life Seminars, a series of presentations in which he explains how our most distant ancestors lived, and how we can apply this knowledge to extend our healthspan and avoid the major chronic diseases of our age. His book, Health Secrets of the Stone Age is based on his seminars, and on the most recent findings in medical and anthropological research. It is scheduled for a January 2005 release date. You can visit his web site at www.stoneagedoc.com.