"Health is a life lived intentionally, morally, with acceptance of what is, with compassion, with personal meaning and connection to other people, and thoughtful attention to one’s body, mind, spirit as well as to one's community and the world."  Ofer Zur

Good health is more than freedom from disease.  Optimal health is the full development of one’s physical and psychological potential.  Science tells us a lot about how we age and what it takes to maintain health.  Nutrition, exercise, and a balance between stress and regeneration-relaxation need to be an integral component of health care for all persons.  Humans have always physically interacted with their environment to find nourishment to survive, thrive and produce healthy generations.  Exercise and optimal nutrition are still the most important things you can do to reach and maintain maximum physical health and well-being.  One can argue that the mental states of contentment, conscious awareness, a sense of meaning and purpose, and interpersonal connectedness also are fundamental to health, and I agree.  Doesn’t having an optimally functioning body facilitate these states? 

Strength training is the foundational stimulus for a viable exercise program.  The role of strength training programs have become quite diverse: athletics, healthy aging, disease treatment and prevention, rehabilitation, and healthy body composition (a better muscle to fat ratio).  When an individual increases strength and muscle mass, he or she can better withstand the stresses of any physical activity, from athletic to maintaining proper posture at the computer.

Most of the empirical evidence for effective strength training programs comes from competitive athletes.  We are now seeing research being done on other populations.  We are all athletes in the in the sense that we need strategies to help us adapt to the stresses we encounter in how we live.  We need to eliminate unnecessary stresses (wasted energy) and prepare ourselves for necessary stresses.  The athletic goal can be everyone’s goal: efficient use of our energy actualized in movement.  Be it running, sitting, standing or thinking, we need a fine tuned coordination of energy production and movement.  Maintaining muscle mass as we age is the true fountain of youth.  There are striking similarities when looking at side by side charts of the physiological effects of being bed ridden (effects of atrophy and de-conditioning) and the physiological effects of aging.

We get our energy, and building and repair materials from food.  Most people are only concerned with food insofar as it tastes good and relieves hunger.  We need to add to this that food needs to supply us with all the nutrients our bodies need.  Optimal nutrition has many benefits: more mental acuity/alertness; positive attitude/outlook; increased resistance to infections; more stamina, and extending years of healthy living.  You would think that something so natural and fundamental as eating would need no further explanation.  We are living at a time when most modern peoples have lost connection with traditional methods of procuring, choosing and preparing food. We don’t think twice about eating a highly processed food, stripped of nutrients. Sugar, refined flour, and high heat processed oils being the worst culprits.  I feel that learning to apply nutrition as a therapeutic and prevention-oriented modality will increase health benefits for my clients and myself.  The same nutrients and supplements that can build a powerful athlete can help us all as we age...powerfully.

The body adapts to the stresses applied.  The stresses are the blue print.  Food is the building material.  When exercise is the blue print and the best nutritional building materials are provided, we are on our way to optimal health.  Please check out the Services, Exercise and Nutrition pages for more information.

To your health,

Ken Niehoff