At NorCal Strength & Conditioning our mission is to help you achieve your personal goals, be they on the field, the court, the mountain or just keeping up with the kids and grandkids. We safely build a foundation of movement skills beginning with a client’s bodyweight only, and progressing to loaded external objects such as barbells, dumbbells and medicine balls.
Our program is intentionally stratified into beginner, intermediate and advanced classes which allow us to meet the needs of all of our clients. Using this method we slowly increase both movement complexity and exercise intensity to optimize client results. We strike a balance between performance, health and longevity by integrating sound nutrition, smart training and the benefits of a community oriented fitness approach. This may sound technical, but it’s not. It’s just safe, effective and FUN!
Exercise Is Not Optional
Exercise and gene expression: physiological regulation of the human genome through physical activity
Frank W. Booth*, Manu V. Chakravarthy and Espen E. Spangenburg*
* Departments of Biomedical Sciences and Physiology and the Dalton Cardiovascular Institute, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO65211, USA and the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 100 Centrex, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
The current human genome was moulded and refined through generations of time. We propose that the basic framework for physiologic gene regulation was selected during an era of obligatory physical activity, as the survival of our Late Palaeolithic (50 000 10 000 BC) ancestors depended on hunting and gathering. A sedentary lifestyle in such an environment probably meant elimination of that individual organism. The phenotype of the present day Homo sapiens genome is much different from that of our ancient ancestors, primarily as a consequence of expressing evolutionarily programmed Late Palaeolithic genes in an environment that is predominantly sedentary. In this sense, our current genome is maladapted, resulting in abnormal gene expression, which in turn frequently manifests itself as clinically overt disease.
PHYSICAL INACTIVITY
- Failure to maintain homeostatic signaling of gene expression at the Paleolithic level
- Genes requiring physical activity are also disease-susceptibility genes
- Inhibition of health-promoting proteins and activation of disease-promoting proteins
- Alteration of intracellular homeostasis, i.e. changing of the evolutionarily conserved Paleolithic set points for metabolism
- Manifestations of pathophysiologic state of overt clinical symptoms such as hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, dyspnea, angina and exercise intolerance
- Exceed threshold of physiological significance
We speculate that some of these genes still play a role in survival by causing premature death from chronic diseases produced by physical inactivity. We also contend that the current scientific evidence supports the notion that disruptions in cellular homeostasis are diminished in magnitude in physically active individuals compared with sedentary individuals due to the natural selection of gene expression that supports the physically active lifestyle displayed by our ancestors. We speculate that genes evolved with the expectation of requiring a certain threshold of physical activity for normal physiologic gene expression, and thus habitual exercise in sedentary cultures restores perturbed homeostatic mechanisms towards the normal physiological range of the Palaeolithic Homo sapiens. This hypothesis allows us to ask the question of whether normal physiological values change as a result of becoming sedentary. In summary, in sedentary cultures, daily physical activity normalizes gene expression towards patterns established to maintain the survival in the Late Palaeolithic era.
