So you’ve got the great diet now! Been to the Naturopath, talked to the nutritionist. Started raw foods, making your own green juices, delighting in grass fed organic meats, eating lots of wild fish and taking your expertly selected supplements. But you still feel down and out?

Try exercise! All the good nutrition in the world will not prolong your life and provide good health if you don’t get up and shake it around!

Now, good nutrition has limited results unless you use your body the way nature intended. Back in the old days people had to work for a living. I mean really work. Not press keys at a computer, shuffle papers around or walk from one boardroom to another. I mean work. Unthinkables like tilling the field, digging the rutabagas, washing the clothes by hand, grinding the corn. You know. All those awful tasks that we, thank God, don’t have to do anymore. But what have we replaced those tasks with? Television, prepared foods, Internet searches, and a multitude of jobs that require little or no movement of the body. In reality, those tasks that our ancestors did may have lengthened life not shorted it as we like to presume. Our ancestors had exercise built into their daily regimen. It was mandatory that they do it to survive.

If yester year’s tasks were combined with today’s exceptional knowledge in nutrition we would be living longer and in superior health.

Lets look at what they did and what it can do for you.

Chopping wood – builds upper body mass and increases oxygenation
Hauling water – weight bearing exercise that will increase bone mass
Digging rutabagas – stretches ligaments and promotes flexibility
Hanging laundry – stretches long torso muscles, exposes skin to sunlight, lungs to fresh air
Horseback or carriage riding to market – jostles the lymphatic system and encourages toxins to move
Walking to market – aerobic exercise with a weight-bearing component on the return trip.
Washing clothes – aerobic activity. Probably reduces stress when angry also!
Baking whole grain bread – gets you off the couch and moving. Kneading dough provides upper body exercise with a mild aerobic component.
Stoking the wood stove – also gets you off the couch.

Our ancestors benefited in the following ways just by doing the everyday tasks that life demanded. Those tasks provide for the following:

1. Relieves stress
2. Promotes oxygenation
3. Increases circulation
4. Stimulates lymphatic flow
5. Stimulates the digestive tract to peristaltic action
6. Boosts the immune system
7. Burns calories and reduces weight
8. Increases muscle mass
9. Promotes and maintains bone density

I’m not saying that you should give up your car and plant a rutabaga patch but what you need to do is start walking everyday, incorporate activities that include body action like baking bread, or planting in the garden and raking your own leaves instead instead of hiring someone. 15 minutes on a mini trampoline will do what the horse and carriage did without all the extraneous activities we would mostly prefer to avoid.

Most poeple who tell you to exercise don’t understand fully why it is so beneficial. Yea, building muscle mass, burning calories. All the same stuff we’ve heard for years. But here’s the real reason: Thixotrophy!

Thixotrophy tells us that certain colloids within the protoplasma of the body have a tendency to form a solid gel. In this gel are a multitude of things like starches, minerals, vitamins, and physiological toxins. When this gel is shaken thrixotrophy occurs and the gel becomes a solution, capable of transport again. So if you spend your time gellen in a chair or on the sofa you are literally solidifying your protoplasma. When you get up and move it around, literally shake it, it transforms into a solution again and becomes physiologically available for transport. These directions of transport are varied. It could be sugars being made available for combustion in an intercellular chemical reaction, it could be minerals trying to move in and out of a cell, it could be toxins moving through the lymphatic system on their way to the skin, the kidneys or the portal vein for removal. Nutrients may not bet getting to where you need them most. If you don’t shake all this stuff up they move real slow, causing toxic buildup and all kinds of congestion throughout the body.

For those cold stormy days when outside exercise seems to be the insurmountable task get on a mini trampoline for about 15 m minutes to keep from gellen.

When you exercise you'll find that the benefits of your super nutritional program will start to take effect in ways you could not anticipate. You'll be stronger, clearer and happier because the nutrients are being better assimilated, transported and utilized and toxins will be better circulated out of the body. All those antioxidants you are now taking will truly be creating a cleaner and healthier internal environment.