Eat Meat And Stop Jogging: 'Common' Advice On How To Get Fit Is Keeping You Fat And Making You Sick (10 page)

“I j
ust want to get toned.”

The reality is, getting
toned is a combination of muscle building and fat burning.  Unfortunately, prolonged cardio sessions results in the opposite.  What most are unaware of, is that testosterone is both anabolic (tissue building) and androgenic (masculine characteristics).  Fortunately exercising to build muscle will only lead to increases in anabolic testosterone for women.  Although testosterone is generally regarded as a male hormone, maintaining a favorable T:C ratio is just as important for women, as research suggests they are more impacted from cortisol secretion during exercise.

As our body ages there’s a gradual shift from fast (type-2) muscle fibers to slow (type-1), diminishing testosterone levels and consistent muscle loss.  Based on the evidence I’ve supplied, one could argue that chronic cardio accelerates the aging process.

Cardio = Inefficient

The actual practice of prolonged aerobic exercise not only favors muscle breakdown, but its time lost when you could have been building muscle.  Moderate intensity jogging, cycling, or riding the elliptical for 1-2hrs is extremely time consuming when performed several days a week when equal or better results can be achieved in considerably less time.  For example:

H
igh-intensity sprints produced better fat-loss results and equal performance improvements compared to moderate-intensity jogging, with 1/18th the time commitment.

Most mention doing cardio to improve stamina or endurance c
apacity, but high-intensity interval training (HIIT) has proven more effective at improving aerobic power, lactate threshold, and Vo2 Max. From an efficiency perspective, it makes no sense to spend 1-2hrs on something that can be done in 20min, and without the potential for muscle loss and fat gain.

Half of the time spent running could have been invested in weight-training or interval training producing more metabolically active muscle, burning more fat, raising beneficial hormones (testosterone, GH, IGF-1), and avoiding the accumulation of cortisol.

As cortisol levels rise steadily throughout a workout, te
stosterone levels peak at around 20min.  Suggesting that the longer the exercise bout, the more unfavorable the T:C ratio.  Increases in cortisol from endurance training produce equivalent reductions in testosterone, while short and intense workouts favor testosterone increases.

When you workout to build muscle you burn more energy throughout the day, as this new muscle needs additional fuel to operate.  Meaning you will burn more without additional exercise. Aerobic training, on the other hand, does not produce positive changes in muscle and the intensity and duration must continue to increase in order to experience additional burning.  Longer distance and higher intensities means more cortisol and muscle loss, and less testosterone.  The characteristics normally associated with aging are accelerated from chronic cardio, including a shift from type-1 to type-2 muscle fibers.  As I’ll illustrate next, this stressful environment not only impacts your body composition, but it raises your risk of the various diseases of degeneration.

“If w
e went out for a run right now and you ran hard… by 60 minutes something starts happening… the free radicals blossom, and it starts burning the heart. It starts searing and inflaming the inside of your coronary arteries.”

―
Dr. James O’Keefe

Mistake #10

D
oing Cardio To Stay Healthy

When we hear the word ‘cardio,’ most of us think of
jogging, biking, swimming, or anything that gets your blood pumping at a reasonable rate.  As already illustrated, these activities produce negative consequences in body composition by supporting muscle damage as opposed to growth, and fat storage as opposed to removal.  When it comes to your long-term health, less muscle and more fat is obviously not favorable.  However, the biggest issue with moderate-to-high intensity aerobic exercise is that it results in an overabundance of free radicals.

Our body produces it’s own antioxidants to counteract free radicals, and can naturally increase its level to maintain balance or homeostasis.

However, if
free radicals continuously outnumber antioxidants, damage ensues.  I tend to understand free radical production best, when I think of it like inflammation.  Acute inflammation is necessary so that our body can go to work on fixing whatever issue we’re encountering that trigged the response (ex: cut on arm).  However, when this response is chronic (ex: gut irritation) and out of balance with our anti-inflammatory levels, there is a problem. The same can be said with respect to oxidation. Acute and infrequent free radical production is necessary for adequate cell function (like facilitating energy production in mitochondria), but if free radical accumulation is chronic and out of balance with our antioxidant levels, there’s a problem.

Cardio Increases
Oxidative Stress

Other th
an polyunsaturated fatty acids and environmental pollutants, free radicals are produced from muscle contractions during physical exercise.  This production depends on the mode, intensity, and duration of the activity.  Nearly every workout type - aerobic or anaerobic, high-intensity or low-intensity, isometric or isokinetic - produces free radicals, but the amount generated varies based on the workout design and delivery. Some argue that more oxidative stress from exercise is beneficial because it increases the body’s internal production of antioxidants. Supposedly this promotes higher anti-oxidant levels to deal with increased amounts of free radicals and oxidative stress.  However, similar to cortisol, research suggests that problems arise when the free-radical accumulation is extremely high (2hr run), or extremely frequent (running 5 days/wk).  In this case, instead of continuing to increase its threshold in the presence of elevated free radicals, the cells will become damaged or even destroy themselves to protect the rest of the body.

Clearly, there’s a safe level of exercise, and frequent cardio sessions for extended periods of time surpass that level when it comes to oxidative stress.  During low intensity duration protocols, such as walking, antioxidant status matches free radical accumulation. However, free radicals exceed antioxidants when intensity is raised or duration increased.

Cardio Increases
Injuries

Ask any rehabilitation specialist (physio, chiro, massage therapist), and they’ll tell you how detrimental chronic repetitive movements can be on muscles, joints, bone
s, ligaments, and tendons.  At first glance, moderate intensity endurance exercise may seem like it’s easier on the body than weight training or interval training, but it’s not.  The same consistent impact for hours at a time causes hip pain, knee pain, or ankle pain, and overall inflammation. Even worse is that individuals doing this as a weight loss strategy are generally putting higher loads on their ligaments and joints.

Exercising at a slow pace for a long time is extremely unnatural.  Our hunter-gatherer ancestors would probably laugh watching us run, bike, or swim for hours to burn calories. Back then, energy was conserved, and you either walked to get somewhere, or you ran really fast to get away from something. Even when hunter-gatherers developed organized hunting, they relied on their brains and other resources to track and trap animals, not chase them around for 3hrs! One could imagine what a huge waste of energy it would be if a 3hr persistence hunt was unsuccessful.  Furthermore, recent findings provide evidence that the earliest form of human was not designed to run because the conical shape of the ribcage made it difficult for them to swing their arms.

“They probably couldn’t run over longer distances, especially as they were unable to swing their arms, which saves energy.”

We can even forget the hunter-gatherers for a minute, and take a look at children playing to determine what’s ‘natural.’  When kids are playing outside at the park, they unknowingly move in short bursts followed by ample recovery. 
Oddly, there was a study done on this exact scenario.  Researchers determined that children naturally exercise in intervals, as opposed to moving at a consistent speed. Either way, running for distance as a consistent form of exercise is extremely unnatural.  Looking at the medical records of most Cardio Kings and Queens, it’s not surprising that they’re frequently injured.  The irony in the term ‘stress fracture’ is almost laughable when you think of the cortisol and oxidative stress one can expect from chronic and prolonged aerobic training.

Cardio Oxidizes Muscle

When the original free radical theory was revisited it evolved into what we now know as the mitochondrial theory of aging.  Scientists realized that mitochondria were producing a fair amount of the free radicals during exercise.  The higher the oxygen requirement during exercise, as is the case with cardio and other consistent movements longer than 45-60sec (aerobic), the larger the production of free radicals within mitochondria.

With exercise that is predominantly aerobic, oxidation takes place inside the mitochondria, while with anaerobic exercise oxidation takes place outside the mitochondria (as oxygen is not needed to produce energy/ATP).

The increased oxidative stress produced from muscle contractions during aerobic exercise produces consistent damage to the mitochondria, leading to eventual cell death.  Muscle cells are essentially ‘oxidized’ from frequent and extended endurance exercise. Unfortunately, once these muscle cells are destroyed they CANNOT be replaced through cell division.

A model developed in 1992 by M.B. Reid suggests that free radical production is necessary at low levels to preserve normal muscle performance, but higher concentrations produce negative effects.  During strenuous exercise free radicals are generated faster than any buffering agent can handle which impairs performance and force output.

His model implies avoiding full fatigue,
favoring moderate free radical accumulation that favors increased performance and promotes a natural antioxidant response in balance with the free radical concentrations. Above the optimal threshold, oxidation outnumbers antioxidants, and thus harmful oxidative stress will prevail within muscle leading to muscle dysfunction and loss, damage to protein, lipids and even DNA.

Cardio Produces Acidic pH

The other potentially harmful substance generated during aerobic exercise is lactic acid.  Again, this substance is produced during exercise based on intensity and duration, and is an important consideration as an exercise stressor because it lowers pH. Simply running for a few minutes, drops our normal pH of 7.4 to 7.0.  Continuing or repeating the same activity can lower it to 6.8, which is considered the lowest tolerable survival pH. As we discussed earlier, many mistakenly think that cancer can only grow in an acidic environment and attempt to blame food for that, yet conveniently forget that their 2hr run that same morning puts them in a more harmful state of acidosis (low pH).  The buffering systems (to bring pH up) we have built-in to handle an acidic-food are not as effective during exercise.  For instance, the kidneys regulate pH after an acidic meal by excreting more or less bicarbonate.  This is unfortunately an ineffective regulator for dealing with the pH stress from exercise, as it can take several hours to react. Additionally, research that supports correlations between cancer and pH focus on increased acidity (low pH) in blood and other fluids.  Our diet cannot alter the pH in blood, whereas our exercise habits can.

Large amounts of lactic acid are produced during exercise that’s beyond a certain intensity or duration that increases oxygen and acidity (lowers pH) inside and outside muscle cells. Accumulation of lactate depends on a balance between production by the working muscles and removal by the liver and other tissues. If exercise is continuous, lactate production persists while removal declines. This lactate build-up not only adds to the stress put on our cells, but arterial pH disturbance alone has been associated with life-threatening rhythmic disturbances of the heart.

One of the reasons endurance exercise is more damaging than other forms of exercise, such as weight training, is because intense oxidation and acidity occurs in all ‘active’ muscles.  For instance, diaphragm muscle is continuously stressed throughout an endurance bout, meaning that free radical and lactate accumulation is consistently produced for the entire 45, 90, or 120min bout.  With cardio, the same muscles are experiencing the same high stress and low pH during the entire duration, with no time to recover until the activity is over. This concentrated overload is what causes damage, as opposed to a properly designed weight training program that stresses a single muscle or group of muscles for a short period of time followed by ample recovery.  Furthermore, most involved in weight training allow ample recovery (72hrs) between muscle groups, as opposed to cardio where it’s very common to returns to the pavement, bike, or pool the very next day!

Cardio Decreases Immunity & Reproductive Health

Inflammation and oxidation are 2 of the biggest factors in determining whether or not you develop a life threatening disease.  Both are necessary in acute and infrequent doses for survival, but when experienced chronically, the biological clock starts ticking.  Endurance training promotes cortisol secretion and discourages anabolic hormones.  This creates inflammation in the brain, reproductive system, intestinal tract, and heart. The other factors supporting inflammation are oxidative stress and chronically elevated insulin, which are both characteristic of the long distance runner, cycler, or swimmer. This is likely why:

T
he elevated inflammatory markers experienced after aerobic exercise are much higher than those tested after alternative forms of exercise.

This inflammation and oxidative stress from
extended duration aerobic training facilitates immune suppression and a decrease in reproductive function.  Specifically, endurance athletes are at a higher risk of upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) and face reductions in overall immune function.  This is very similar to what one would experience from over-training or too much stress. Again, we see a positive correlation with longer training durations: