Use it or lose it!!

You must have heard it so many times - Shopping, rewards, airline miles, and what not. So, why does it figure in my blog? Simple, this rule applies even more prominently in running. If you don't run, you lose your running ability. Well, you can take it even beyond. Any part of your body you don't exercise, you lose - be it a muscle, brain.

Here is why. When you run, you exercise quite a group of your body muscles. And because you exercise, you build their ability to do more - your lungs, your heart, your torso muscles, your leg muscles, everything. Lot of first times complain of injuries, knee problems and so on. Sure, there are injuries. When you run long distances, there are micro-tears in your muscles and so on. So running is not really injury free. So, why should you run?

It's not what happens during running that is important. What is important is what happens after running. After the run, your body starts to recover. (That's why a good diet is important for recovery). When your body is recovering, it is actually working to re-generate the parts of the body that got hammered, got torn. And this is an essential important step. This is when the stem cells in the body are turning into your leg muscles or heart muscles or lung muscles depending on the micro-injuries in your body. Your body is using your stem cells to heal itself.

Once again, it is the same principal - "Use it or lose it". If you keep your body safe (or rather exercise free), unlike machines, you are not using your stem cells which give your body the healing ability. And when you are not using your stem cells for a long time, your body will start losing its ability to generate stem cells. And when it does, every injury will be equally harder to recover from.

Of course, as an infant, as a kid, you always had many folds more stem cells than as an adult. You are growing, the stem cells are in constant use. Your body is fresh and clean so blood pumps easily, cells get energy and oxygen easily, and toxins get passed out quickly. You are active, and you like activity and run around even when you are not consciously thinking about it. Until your late twenties, you keep growing and without doing anything your body parts need repairs consistently to support growth. Your body is consistently using the muscles and body parts.

And then one day, your growth is over. Your metabolism slows down, your body may have grown some layers of fat on the blood vessels and your body no longer needs to use the stem cells on a regular basis. You become a little lethargic and soon one thing leads to another and you find a layer of fat around your tummy. Exercise seems harder and so does losing fat. And if you don't get up and run or exercise regularly, soon your body feels uncomfortable to do so. It starts to lose its ability to provide food and oxygen to body parts or take away toxins/waste out. If you don't push it for a while, it doesn't have much to repair and so your stem cells are getting wasted and soon you lose the ability to generate stem cells.

One day when you get up and start running, sure enough your body feels pains. Why? Because now you are causing all the micro-tears that your body needs to repair and it wasn't ready for such a workload. It's regenerating capacity is short of the effort needed. Hence you get pains, specially in more vulnerable parts of the body. I have gone through it and so did my lovely wife when we both started to run long distances. But, if you persist, eat right foods, you will soon see your body improving its ability to heal. And with that, those pains will also go away.

Now, this doesn't happen in a day so you better be patient and consistent. You do want to give your body enough material (proteins, vitamins) and time to repair those injuries (just short of undoing all the efforts you put in). You don't want to get to a point where it is all pain and no fun. And if you keep consistent, you would have won a battle against time, snatching back your body's healing powers and with that slowed down the aging process itself, if not stopped it outright.

So, remember, "use it or lose it!".