Why Humans Evolved to be Active

Humans of all to be much more physically active than our ape ancestors. Typical chimpanzee walks maybe two to three kilometers a day, and they take maybe what, three, 4,000 steps a day. A typical hunter-gatherer takes about 15 to 20,000 steps a day. Per kilo hunter-gatherers spend about twice as much energy per kilo on being physically active per day than our ape cousins. And importantly, that physical activity occurs as we age, right? So Americans are pretty inactive, as we all know. A typ...

 Exercise Creates Structural Stress

Now, the other kind of stress Structural stress from activity that physical activity cause is structural stress. Now, when I was running this morning, for example, my mitochondria were generating all kinds of ATP to fuel my body, but my mitochondria were also spewing out all kinds of reactive oxygen species, which cause widespread damage throughout my body. I was getting mutations in my DNA, those that damage is causing my telomeres at the end of my chromosomes to shorten its damaging cells. ...

 Exercise Prevents Spending Calories on Fat Storage and Ot...

The reason for that is because exercise causes stress and that stress turns on a whole raft of beneficial effects. And there are really two kinds of this stress. Now, the first kind is energetic stress. Like I went for a run this morning, I spent probably about 500 calories running and I can only do so many things with the calories my body has. And if I spend 500 extra calories exercising, that means I'm not gonna spend 500 calories on other activities that my bother body might engage in. An...