Q & A: Is there really such a thing as “exercise in a bottle?”
A: This might surprise you, but, yes. After decades of failure, modern technology has actually made it possible to get all of the age defying, life enhancing benefits of exercise in a bottle.
Before we get to the how, let’s re-cap the why:
· Exercise makes you younger. Cellular aging can be measured by the lengths of something called telomeres at the end of your chromosomes. When you run out of telomeres that cell can’t divide anymore, so when that cell dies it will not be replaced. Exercise adds length to your telomeres.
· Exercise keeps your immune system younger. With age (and sedentary living) our immune system accumulates incompetent immune cells. Exercise tells your body to kill these useless immune cells and make new ones that can actually go kick some ass.
· Exercise boosts your immune system now and later. When we train hard we push the business end of our immune system into places where tumors and pathogens are likely to accumulate, and we give the body a better chance to get the jump, and a assist if it is already in a battle.
· Exercise makes you harder to break and kill. I don’t mean you need to go get into street fights, I am talking about one of the most dangerous events for humans as we age – falling. Strenuous, load bearing and/or impactful exercise keeps your bones and tissues strong so they are less likely to break, or at least not catastrophically, from a fall. Just as high school football players lift weights to survive their collisions with their opponents, part of why adults lift weights to survive collisions with the Earth.
· Exercise helps you heal faster. Getting hurt is an inescapable fact of life. We can avoid some excess risk such as motorcycles, hang gliders, and pick up basketball, but it is not impossible to avoid all risk without incurring even more risk… in other words, you can avoid dumb stuff, but past that avoiding risk over here is a trade for risk over there. We have tradeoffs, but no solutions (or true avoidance). Exercise before the inevitable boo-boo means that your immune, lymphatic and cardiovascular systems are up to the task of healing. Exercise during healing helps the tissues regenerate and/or repair faster, stronger and with fewer complications.
How to get exercise in a bottle
There are 2 different ways to get all of these benefits inside of a bottle.
Option #1 is using a graphical editor to superimpose of bottle around you while exercising. This is the cheapest and easiest option due to the advances of technology, and the free apps available to do this with.
Option #2 is ordering an enormous, plastic bottle. This is 10 times cheaper than it was a decade ago because of advances in logistics and production, but it is still pricey. If you go with option #2 please make sure you have air holes, and a way to get out.
Bottom Line
Perhaps you have guessed that this is an April Fool’s post, and I guess there’s not fooling you. The 5 benefits above are 100% real. Also, exercising inside of a bottle is just as effective as outside of a bottle so long as you have air and a way to dissipate heat out of that bottle. You don’t want to be inside a greenhouse of sweat and body odor… or maybe that’s your thing.
The real takeaway is that anytime you see a headline that says “like exercise in a pill” or whatever, remember that things that sounds too good to be true usually are. Nobody likes to hear Captain Buzzkill say “ there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” but the Cap is actually right.
Happy Saturday and Happy April Fools!
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