Deconstructing Dr. Tommy Wood Shows; Beware Liquidating Your Assets! Your Body Will Eventually Turn Against You! (Part 1 Breather)

Inflammation is the root cause of all disease. It's normal and healthy when you have a good workout or twist your ankle, or even when you get stung by a bee, and your body puts up its defenses to heal – inflammation helps with recovery. Chronic inflammation, however, is the body’s reaction to copious stress that leads to a breakdown over the long term which can affect all different parts of your system over time. What starts as inflammation in your gut can lead to depression, anxiety, lethargy, or weight gain, just as an example.   

When Tommy speaks of being careful of liquidating all your assets, he’s referring to the notion that causing absolute burnout to your mind and body will lead to chronic inflammation and a host of other problems over time. As an athlete, I used to be hard into the game in believing in just “listening to my body” and paying attention to my rising levels of cortisol as I was taken hard into fight or flight mode. Push harder your mind and body will figure it out! That’s what instinct is for! The problem is that once your brain is finally listening with cortisol heavily pumping into your system, your training has probably already gone too far, and this leaves your body fighting much harder than it needs to. This had been a puzzle that has repeatedly fooled me - “listening to your body” doesn’t work because what happens when you’re jacked with a wallet full of cash? You go buy a boat and don’t realize the actual cost until the bill arrives a month later. How do you prevent liquidating all your assets? By using instinct PLUS a higher level of reasoning. Be mindful and follow your desire to train with subjective guidelines as Kelly S. points out.  

The Stress of modern life also has us prematurely liquidating our assets if we’re the type of person that gets highly stressed out during a traffic jam. Stress inevitably creates an unbalance, and if it isn’t managed correctly, you’re on the road to a case of unwarranted inflammation. There are those that lead a hectic and high stimulating lifestyle but always approach their day in a relaxed, unhurried pace.  This is the way to keep things balanced even in high-stress situations and a behavior we should try to model. It’s up to you to decide how you’ll react. Dis-ease leads to disease.  

Modern athletic training consists of six times more training than what the busiest hunter-gatherer conducted. I read a triathlete book/article (Ironwar?) which posed the theory that a modern-day elite Ironman triathlete is working harder than any human in the history of humanity! This increases the risk of atrial fibrillation (inflammation and scarring) and CV disease (James O’keefe Ted Talk). These guys training so hard believe they're getting back to their roots, but they’re far exceeding it, in a harmful way, which makes us question the credibility of the paleo and keto diet premise that promises low carb intake of delivering fasting like benefits.