Worth all the sweat – The Economist
The commercialization and wholesale of exercising has constituted a recession-proof market no longer tailored solely to the gym rats, protein-shake guzzlers and creepers/lingerers. Soccer moms and weekday ‘hustlers and bustlers’ have long since hopped on the bandwagon and have contributed to the enrichment of this multi-million dollar industry. All accross Manhattan ‘treadmillers’ are practicing their ‘runnin-man‘ exposed as window-shopping, reminding everyone currently not exercising how fat and unattractive they probably are. New research now confirms what doctors have been saying for years, that exercise is the be-all, cure-all Ponce de Leon was looking for, the catch-22 lying in the potential unattractiveness of having to make an effort to acquire it. So turns this cruel world. The magnitude of learning that exercise can not only avert such neurological degenerative diseases as Alzheimer’s but also serve to elongate one’s life span can only be expressed in the fact that there finally seems to be a broader significance to working out than simply getting laid.
The phenomenon has been ongoing for little more than a decade in Europe, more precisely sweeping every country except France which prefers to listen to and exaggerate the ‘glass of red wine a day’ thing. In Germany, a new form of muscle electrode stimulation is garnering increasing success. The company responsible boasts that a single 20-minute session can amount to the equivalent of 8 visits to the gym. The exercise consists in contorting one’s body while the electro-stimulation applies increasing pressure on the muscles, rendering it all the more difficult to move. This blogger tried it out, and could hardly take a seat afterwards, sore ass and all.
Does the future lie in the ‘scientifying’ of exercise? In alternatives to the ‘lonely’ and non-interactive aspects of benching and cycling? Could it potentially lead to biological manipulation and the subsequent simulation of exercise? As the positive results of exercising become increasingly tangible with time, will it finally beckon the remaining straggling Frenchmen (and women) who reserve their exercising for Sundays on the soccer field? Consider me convinced. Cerebral health and Yoda-like endurance supersede the ‘getting laid’ factor, as even with a flabby gut and skinny legs, one can always find ways to get ahead in that department.
Note-worthy: “Most intriguingly of all, it seems that it can slow the process of ageing. Biologists have known for decades that feeding animals near-starvation diets can boost their lifespans dramatically. Dr Levine was a member of the team which showed that an increased level of autophagy, brought on by the stress of living in a constant state of near-starvation, was the mechanism responsible for this life extension.”
Le Razor's Edge 