4 Ways to Build Resilience
Our modern world has become easy. We live in climate controlled houses, get in our climate controlled cars, and climate controlled offices and gyms. Over time, this makes us fragile. Ever notice that kids seem to be immune to swimming in cold water yet you get sick every time you travel? We have “endpoints” that our bodies get used to and if we don’t expose our bodies to difficult things, those endpoints narrow and then when we have to do something difficult, the body will let you know that it’s too much. Maybe you get sick, or maybe you develop pain. Whatever system in your body is most vulnerable, it shows up like a canary in a coal mine.
Our bodies strive for homeostasis, or balance. We have 4 main homeostatic regulators; pH, CO2/O2, blood glucose, and temperature. The good news is that through systematic and progressive training, we can train our endpoints. This will make us antifragile, or resilient.
Here is an example:
What is interesting is that if you improve the endpoints in one of these categories, it confers benefit in the other categories. Cold water immersion can improve your blood glucose control for example. Here are some tips to improve resiliency:
1. pH
This refers to your body's acidity/alkalinity in the bloodstream. It’s a 14 point scale, 0 is acidic and 14 is alkalinic. Our body rests at 7.4 and can typically swing between 7.35 and 7.45. You may have heard of the alkaline diet. Turns out it’s hard to have a large effect on pH through diet. The best way to affect pH is through breathwork. When you inhale, O2 goes up and it makes you more alkaline. As CO2 builds up in your bloodstream, it makes you more acidic. You can take advantage of this by doing things like breath holds while walking or Wim Hof breathing.
Also, when you exercise, the muscles demand oxygen, that’s why you breathe heavier. The muscles also need fuel. Now, the body can use either fats or glucose for energy. Fats are more energy dense, but harder to break down whereas glucose is the opposite. So the harder you are working, the more glucose you are using. Glucose breaks down to lactate, which is the real fuel source, and hydrogen ions, which is acid. That is the burn you feel when you work out, literally acid. The more you can tolerate, the more you can exercise and the more resilient you become.
2. CO2/O2
Again, this comes down to breathwork. When CO2 builds up, there are sensors in our bodies that tell us to breathe to clear the CO2. CO2 has classically been described as a waste product, but that’s not accurate. The more it builds up, the more it scrubs oxygen off of the hemoglobin and delivers it to the muscle tissue. This is called the Bohr effect. So once again, the more CO2 we can tolerate, the harder we can work.
3. Blood Glucose
This is tightly regulated in the body as high levels of glucose in the blood can be very damaging. In a healthy individual, there is on average about a teaspoon of glucose in the blood. When glucose is high in the blood, insulin is secreted to deliver the glucose to the muscles and the liver in the form of glycogen. As blood glucose decreases, glucagon is released to do just the opposite.
With our traditional standard American diet, we eat way too much processed sugars and this leads to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. If you eat an excessively high carb diet (and we mean glucose, not just bread/pasta), your system gets adapted to burning glucose for exercise and burning fats become downregulated. If you get “hangry”, this is a sign that you have become metabolically inflexible and your ability to burn fats has decreased. You can improve this by running the “backup generator”. In other words, condition your body to burn fats from time to time. This can be done by exercising in a fasted state. Or you could consider a low carb/paleo diet. We don’t think there is one “right diet” for everyone. We advocate that you experiment and find the diet that works best, but it’s a good idea to sometimes focus on using fats for fuel to improve your metabolic flexibility as a strategy to become more resilient.
4. Temperature
As stated earlier in the article, most of us live in a climate controlled environment. By intentionally seeking out cold and hot environments in a systematic way, we can improve the window of temperature swing that our body will tolerate before breaking down or getting sick. For starters, you can take a cold shower. Or exercise outside if you are in a warm or cold climate. You can use saunas and do cold water immersion. Cold plunges are all the rage now and for good reason. There are tons of benefits, but this is one of the big ones. We know that it upregulates the immune system, helps convert white fat into brown fat (which is more metabolically active), improves blood glucose, and reduces stress. Many people with hypothyroidism have poor cold tolerance. There is now emerging evidence that this is a 2 way street; if you improve cold tolerance, you may be able to improve thyroid function. Regardless, temperature is yet another homeostatic regulator that can be modified through graded exposure to make you more resilient.
Building your resiliency is also called “physiologic flexibility”. This is a term coined by Dr. Mike T. Nelson and we are big believers in this approach. If you are interested in learning more and getting guidance on how to improve your physiologic flexibility in a systematic way, we’ve built a program for you. Click on the link below to learn more.