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start to take up that sugar in a way that is not effects on how your body manages sugar in the blood.
related to insulin. So we are bypassing the prob-
lem that diabetics have with insulin by exercis- HG: That is fascinating. So adding fat to our diet can help slow down our
ing, and still getting the sugar out of the blood. absorption of sugar and the shock to the body. And then movement can
help. Are there any other tips you can give us on how to address this issue?
HG: Do conventional doctors give this advice?
It sounds great that instead of injecting yourself LW: Eat less sugar. No, really, the idea is basically helping your body
with insulin you could move. manage blood sugar in a way that it is used to. Our bodies have not evolved
to deal with the two-hundred-some-odd pounds of sugar per person, per
LW: Yes it does and I wish more people did it. year, that we are consuming. Our bodies are well adapted to go without
I don’t think it is a conventional treatment plan. sugar. Our bodies evolved to withstand starvation and to withstand the
A lot of what we studied in kinesiology is how lack of fruit in the diet. We have not evolved to deal with too much sugar
we can use exercise prescription as a support in the bloodstream. This is new to our body. Look around at the health
for health and how important it is for doctors statistics and you see that we are paying for it. When we start treating
to talk about not only diet but also exercise as our body like it should be treated, giving it the food it is used to, evolu-
a prescription, as a recommendation to better tionarily, then we are going to be a lot better off long-term.
one’s overall health.
HG: But aren’t there people, even dietitians, who say, “Eat your fruits
HG: I like “prescription” better than “recom- and vegetables”? They are giving a different message than you are. What
mendation” because I think doctors are already do we do with these conflicting messages?
recommending movement and many people say
“not today.” LW: It is such a good question, and I think that most practitioners like
myself encounter this all the time. We spend so much time educating
LW: Exercise prescription is definitely a big our clients and then at the end of the talk, they ask, “Well, to whom do I
thing in the kinesiology world. We are hoping listen, whom do I trust?” We live in this information age where you can
to make a change and improve the amount that google topics and come up with fifteen different opinions on anything
is recommended. I think people think that if related to health. Usually, what I’ll say to those people is, “Don’t listen to
you move a couple times a day for 20 minutes, me, don’t listen to the science where we don’t even know who funded it.
you’ll be great. If people understood not only Listen to great grandma.” Listen to the cultures, to our ancestors and to
the importance of aerobic exercise, but also how traditions. They had wisdom for a reason. It was life or death for them.
important resistance training can be for the body If they were not eating properly, they were not growing up healthy, they
long-term and for this insulin situation, more weren’t finding mates and they were not growing up strong enough to
people would be doing it. fend for themselves. They weren’t healthy enough to feed their families.
They weren’t living long enough to have babies. It was life or death for
HG: So not just cardio, but some strengthening them and when they found something that worked, they put it in their
and toning with resistance weights. songs, in their religious texts and in writing. They told it to everyone they
knew—and that is the type of wisdom that we’ve lost.
LW: Absolutely. When most people talk about Now, we say, “Oh, this has six grams of sugar, therefore my dietitian
improving insulin immediately, we are looking thinks that it is okay for me to eat.” We’ve come so far from listening
at cardiovascular-type exercise—that is the type to the wisdom about what is good food. We are misinformed and gull-
of fuel that your body needs in those move- ible walking down a grocery store aisle and thinking that all the things
ments. But when we are looking at the effects that say “natural” and “organic” are healthy. We fill our carts with total
of training long-term, if you have worked out disregard for what the items look like, where they came from or whether
for twelve weeks, there are significant changes they are even real food.
at a cellular level that can improve the way your
skeletal muscle cells listen to that car alarm. HG: That is such a good point. I went to a foodie conference recently
They start to listen to the car alarm again. Part and every single meal was served in a plastic container. I expected to
of my graduate student research was on how get some pictures of good food and get some good food in my body. I
squatting, resistance training and running or was so disappointed. It wasn’t real food even though the conference was
aerobic training can have long-term positive supposedly focused on nourishing food.

WINTER 2017 Wise Traditions 67