86Thousand400: Pushing through the pain

To steal a quote from one of the clients who trained in the book Spark:

"I found that if I got past a certain point, where it was really uncomfortable, it was as though something would click in my psyche, and I could go on for a long time. I think what the training did for me is it gave me some sense of being in control - something I could do."

Work it out

Employees who exercise regularly have fewer sick days.

Both stress and inactivity - the twin hallmarks of modern life - play big roles in the development of arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and other autoimmune disorders.

In recent years, doctors have started recommending exercise for cancer patients, both to help boost the immune response and to fend off stress and depression.

It all comes back to the evolutionary paradox that even though it's much easier to survive in the modern world, we experience more stress. The fact that we're much less active than our ancestors were only exacerbates matters. Just keep in mind that the more stress you have, the more your body needs to move to keep your brain running smoothly

Pushing through the pain

In a six month follow up of patients with depression, the patients who exercised were the most fit and had the lowest anxiety scores.

There's certainly nothing wrong with taking medicine, but if you achieve the same results through exercise, you can build confidence in your ability to cope.

If we go back to Hippocrates, the wisdom of the day was that emotions come from the heart and that's where treatment should start for maladies of mood. Modern medicine has separated mind and body, but it turns out that, in a very concrete way, Hippocrates had it right from the start.