NASA, Gravity & Movement Paradox - A Chiropractic Perspective

In this training, everything you’ve learned about exercise is dead wrong! I’m going to look at what NASA discovered about our sedentary lifestyles and how it surprisingly is similar to the gravity-free lifestyles of astronauts in space. In space, astronauts’ health rapidly deteriorates outside of gravity’s pull.

Nutrition is remarkable in its ability to have people with completely opposite views saying they have science to support completely opposite views. Frustrating isn’t it? What are we supposed to believe? NASA, gravity, and movement (NASA astronaut Jerry Ross with Dr. Matt Hammett. Ross is a veteran of seven Space Shuttle missions, making him the joint record holder for most spaceflights and the one person who has lived through the devastating effects of Gravity Deprivation Syndrome the most.) Ross has over 1,393 hours in space, including a previously held record of 57 hours and 55 minutes on nine different spacewalks. Loss of mechanoreception stimulation or movement stimulation is the big reason why NASA scientist Joan Vernikos tells us that an astronaut’s health depreciates when they leave Earth. She found it’s all about the force of gravity and body loads moving against their cells. Because most cells in our bodies and our brain have specialized equipment to sense the mechanical environment which is responsible for charging the brain and cells of our bodies, again in space health deteriorates.  

In this training, were going to look at what NASA discovered about our sedentary lifestyles and how it surprisingly is similar to the gravity-free lifestyles of astronauts in space. In space, astronauts’ health rapidly deteriorates outside of gravity’s pull. When we live in a sedentary environment, our health eludes us down a spiral path toward sickness. Without gravity and mechanical loading of cells, NASA astronauts in space muscles become weaker; immune systems become suppressed, and their sleep is disturbed. When they return from space, they have less stamina, they shuffle their feet when walking, and have lost their sense of balance. They often have to be carried out in stretchers when they return to earth from space. Why? Keep listening as I explain the Dynamism Biohack, NASA, gravity, and movement paradox.

The answer is simple. When an astronaut goes into space, he or she obviously leaves the gravitational pull of life on planet Earth. There is no loading on joints without gravity, and their mechanoreceptors which charge the brain and cells of the body are not properly activated. NASA scientists found that “nothing speeds up brain atrophy like immobilization. And here we are, an entire population voluntarily immobilizing itself with its sedentary, comfort-oriented lifestyle. Gravity can’t help us when we’re immobile. And when we are immobile, our joints aren’t moving and we're not firing off mechanoreceptors which in turn charge our brain, cells, and tissues in our body. So, they found that without movement and proper mechanical loads on the body quick atrophy of basically every health measure occurs. NASA calls this effect “Gravity Deprivation Syndrome,” and that sitting all day, immobilizing joints, every day has similar effects on us here on Earth. When we’re sitting all the time, gravity can’t do its thing because the mechanoreceptors in spinal joints which are required to move a lot aren’t firing off an input into the brain and cells of the body. As a result, we age way faster than we should and make ourselves vulnerable to all the diseases we don’t want to get. You see, MOVEMENT IS NEAT.

James Levin, a world-renowned exercise physiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, coined the term non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). Levin’s concept of NEAT parallels with NASA’S research in space and gravity-related research. Regarding our total body’s energy expenditure, NEAT explains a much greater component throughout a typical day. Conventional methods like high-intensity exercises such as walking, running, bicycling, or working out in a gym do not account for the total body’s energy expenditure. NEAT is defined as the small, brief, yet frequent muscular movements one makes throughout the day, of which changing positions is the most efficient way. Dynamic movements like standing, sitting, lying down a certain way, bending over to pick up something, squatting, stretching upward to take something off a shelf, changing your clothing, playing a musical instrument, and practicing sign language or dancing are great examples of changing position. In fact, NASA researcher Joan Vernikos adds “even movements as small as crossing and uncrossing one’s legs, waving one’s hands while talking, and fidgeting is helpful. It is these types of small movements and activities that do not happen enough when a person is habitually inactive” or when spinal joints are not moving properly due to subluxation of the spine. Levine found that people who move around a lot all day, even if they don’t go to the gym or engage in intense exercise burn up much more calories than people who are sedentary. What was striking to the scientist was they even expend more calories than those who do go to the gym, but then spend the rest of their day sitting around.

NEAT research today is well-known for its role in identifying sitting with obesity and metabolic diseases like diabetes. For example, if you do CrossFit exercises 2 hours a day 6 days a week, but then sit at a desk all day; the CrossFit exercise does not compensate for the time you spent immobile and sedentary. But, check this out. People who don’t exercise at all, but don’t have sitting jobs; have jobs that require them to move all day long. They spend more calories than those who exercise and then sit all day. Here is what you need to understand. Movement is not the same thing as exercise. Movement transcends and includes our exercise. If you eat a poisonous mushroom out in the wild, that is a toxin, it will kill you; despite what your nutritional and fitness habits are. I don’t care if your Mr. Fitness, if you eat something poisonous, it will kill you. What you need to understand is that there is no exercise or nutritional product you can take to compensate for poison. It’s poison. Immobility is a poison, it always taxes our health despite how much we exercise. That is what you need to take from today’s training. Scientist like Katy Bowman who are studying epigenetics (the effect of our environment on the expression of our genes) is creating a grassroots approach exposing what we now know is the most important variable if we want to optimize our well-being, movement.

This is what the leading world-renowned biomechanist has to say about movement and genetic behavior. “If you don’t move, your cells don’t get fed, they die. So now we have yet another reason movement is not optional! In addition to creating loads and modifying genetic behavior, the movement is an essential step in the process of oxygen delivery.” This research from Katy Bowman has nothing to do with chiropractic care and at the same time has everything to do with chiropractic care and the reason we have primary care or first portal doctors who assess the movement of your spine and joints of the musculoskeletal system, chiropractic care.

Just like how a dentist is the only one who diagnoses and corrects cavities from teeth. Subluxation of the spine is only diagnosed by a Doctor of Chiropractic. Subluxation or loss of spinal joint function diminishes brain function and cellular function due to the faulty or lack of stimulation of these mechanoreceptors of the spine where they are most numerous. The adjustment charges and amplifies the brain and every cell in the body. Again, we just confirmed this from the world’s leading experts in neuroscience, biomechanists, and NASA. In fact, the research I have just shared is evident enough to bring Doctors of Chiropractic mainstream as first portal movement doctors. The interesting thing, not one of the research I have pointed out has anything to do with chiropractic care! Interesting, isn’t it? In our story so far, we are combing through the newest research from multi-various scientific sources that have nothing to do with chiropractic. From these sources, we understand that movement charges the brain and cells of our bodies due to the activation of sensory input throughout our body which activates during movement. We also learned that the most numerous areas of these sensors are located in the joints of the spine. We are also learning that exercise is movement, but movement is not always exercise.

Movement transcends and includes our exercise. It includes things like getting up from our desk, doing some jumping jacks, stretching, walking, changing our posture, spinal adjustments and improving alignment, and a ton of other little things. A major point here is that Bowman says “tiny movement count” because tiny spinal joint movement charges the brain which in turn charges the mechanical equipment in almost every cell in the human body. If we hit the gym for an hour in the morning and then sit for the rest of the day, our DNA suffers. Although exercise is excellent and super important, we need to move more in tiny ways especially our tiny spinal joints. How much more? Funny question, because most of my patients whom I talk to who are excited about cranking out 300 minutes of exercise per week think they are far ahead of the pack and optimizing their health and wellness. Maybe they get that excited because they have been misled by rat science and sickness/crisis intervention experts. (Again, another reason we have to be careful when we use rat science as a measure of human health.)

When you compare human scientific data with our hunter-gatherer ancestors which serve as better qualitative research for health promotion, our ancestors moved a lot. In fact, our hunter-gatherer ancestors would move 8 -10 miles a day or around 3,000 minutes per week or at least 15,000 steps. That is ten times more movement than the local “gym rat” who comes in to see me wondering why their spine and health are suffering. You see the problem with our backs is not about pain. The problem with our backs is about movement, and you can’t feel that movement between spinal joints. Only a Doctor of Chiropractic is trained to locate specific spinal segments not moving properly and adjust them back into motion turning on the essential mechanoreceptive input; and again, generating the charge for the brain, mitochondria, and cells of the body.

Let me illustrate this with the story of the orca. Our current non-movement lifestyle contributes to subluxation of the spine and may impair the sensory input that charges the brain and our cells. The example of the orca or killer whale in captivity provides an interesting explanation. If you visit Sea World and have an opportunity to see a captive killer whale, you will notice they have a nearly collapsed dorsal fin. This phenomenon is not found on a killer whale in the wild. When you keep them in a tiny enclosure never allowing them to plunge into the breadth and depth of the ocean they’ve evolved to swim in, this fin collapses. It is collapsing due to the sedentary lifestyle the killer whale is forced into. The fin collapsing is not a sign that the fin is no longer needed. The fin collapsing may be compared to every other organism that is forced outside its natural environment; remember the astronaut? These are signs of a stressor causing a mal-adaptation and introducing disease due to the inability to feed its genes the necessary essential nutrient requirement for movement.

The example of the astronauts and the Orca can be used to explain how maladaptation causes stressors to all of the Five Pillars of Dynamic Health. Which of course we can measure by how well we eat, move, think, connect, and cope with stressors in our daily life. As soon as we put an animal in captivity, it stresses every animal when we force it into a lifestyle outside the natural ecosystem of that animal it has evolved from. Humans are no exception. Humans are now living in captivity and guess what? Our genome is built as wild primate animals, requiring the wild; and modern civilization is holding us captive just as it holds the zoo animals and the Killer Whale captive! The whale loses its fin, the human gains chronic disease. Do you see the connection? Bottom line, we need to tap into our Inner Aborignee and move often every day. I'm Dr. Matt Hammett reminding you to lighten up, move better, and live fuller.