142 - Caveman Logic

In reading another book I just finished "The Comfort Crisis", I was once again reminded of a very basic and utterly silly assumption baked into much of the current thinking about human health. The benefits of exercise and building muscle and endurance are well-established in the research literature, but most people still manage to miss the obvious.

The obvious fact is that exercise isn't really the cause. Exercise triggers epigenetic adjustments, which cause muscles to be rebuilt stronger than before, directing more of the human body's resources to the task, reinforcing the body's ability to transport oxygen to those new tissues, and so on. Exercise is nothing more than a biological wall full of light switches, and it is the control system behind that wall where everything actually happens.

Tearing up muscle tissue just so that it will regrow stronger than before is a very indirect and incredibly wasteful process. Humans evolved for this process because they needed to use those muscles anyway to survive, so it was efficient for modern humanity's ancient ancestors.

It may be the only process that evolution offered humanity, but new options have emerged with the sequencing of the human genome, the massive reduction in the cost of genetic sequencing, and the steady flow of studies working out each genetic and epigenetic mechanism at work. The human body and biology, in general, are also very fault-tolerant and adaptive, so even triggering a handful of the epigenetic changes that various forms of exercise do could trigger the genome to complete the rest of the corresponding sequence of changes through a pre-programmed association.

Yes, sitting in chairs is bad for you, as is trying to cram all of your exercise into a half hour and working at a computer for the rest of the day, but that is because your body doesn't have any instructions to prevent the muscles you aren't currently using from being weakened. Epigenetics, gene therapies, and microbiome optimization are each hyper-complex problem domains, but the technology to tackle them is near-term, and vastly more efficient than doing your best caveman impression.

Longevity and improving health in general don't mean a return to prehistoric tendencies, that is simply idiotic. Health and fitness were achieved in the absence of technology and scientific understanding through such means, but that doesn't make them the future. The future is a place where such absurd assumptions are cast aside, and recognized for being the cognitive biases that they are. Only then can these processes be improved.