Thrive in 2023 practice #10: Move more to live longer and better

“Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.” — Charles Duhigg

Welcome to the Wells Performance Newsletter for October 2023. This year our focus will be on helping you to get flourishing and thriving by sharing health, wellbeing and peak performance science and strategies that you can easily add to your life!

Movement is perhaps the most powerful stimulus to build and strengthen our mitochondria. Mitochondria are the energy factories of our bodies and brains. Mitochondria break down the food that we eat to create ATP. Remember that ATP are the energy of our cells.

Consistent physical activity sparks the creation of new mitochondria, increases the size of our mitochondria, increases the density of mitochondrial membranes where energy production takes place, and increases the number of enzymes in our mitochondria that break down the food that we eat to help create more ATP.

What I find most encouraging about our developing understanding about how movement builds and strengthens our mitochondria is that we don’t need to do much to get these benefits. Dr. Amanda Paluch and colleagues from the Department of Kinesiology, University of Massachusetts followed over 2,000 adults for 10 years and found that taking more than 7,000 steps per day was associated with 50–70% lower risk of mortality. Although you may have heard that 10,000 steps is a good goal, current science is showing that we don’t need to get to that threshold to reap the rewards of moving more.

It also does not appear to matter what type of activity you do. Almost any leisure-type activity helps! Data from the decades-long (25 years and counting!) Copenhagen City Heart Study showed that people who participated in 2.5 to 4.5 hours per week of tennis, badminton, soccer, handball, cycling, swimming, jogging, calisthenics, health club activities, weightlifting, and other sports all had the lowest risk for all-cause mortality. This was after adjusting for potential confounders among subgroups of age, sex, education, smoking, alcohol intake, and body mass index.

The key takeaway? Two and a half hours per week is only about than 20 minutes per day!

This month we would love for you to consider how to move for 20 or more minutes most days. Remember any type of activity counts!

If you want to track your steps, physical activity and workouts please check out our VIIVIO app for peak performers! Here’s an article on how you can use VIIVIO to track your activity.

We hope this information helps you get some perspective about exercise and physical activity that can lead you to an upward spiral of wellness!

If you want to learn more about physical activity health and world class mental and physical performance, I cover that topic in the second chapter in my new book Powerhouse: Protect Your Energy, Optimize Your Health and Supercharge Your Performance.

Have a great month!