Instead of twelve hours of screen time, my days were filled with sun, warm Indian Ocean air, simple coastal seafood, and the smiling faces of the Swahili and Giriama people.
(Most of all — I did not hear the letters A or I once on my whole trip!)

Before I left I was feeling quite off for several weeks
→ I frequently woke up with night sweats at 3 am.
→ I would then proceed to beat myself up with ruminating thoughts about life.
→ My C-reactive protein — a marker of inflammation — had climbed to 1.4 (an optimal level is closer to 0.1–0.2).

It took about five days for my sleep to return to normal after I landed.
And a week for my mood to follow suit.

I love going there.

Kenya restores my gumption.

I come back feeling like my cup is full.

As I discussed before in various essays, gumption is not an infinite resource. When you have it, you have to protect it. Otherwise it leaks!
And when it leaks, you have less capacity to solve your problems, less ability to maintain your health, and less grit to pursue big dreams.

If, like me, you live in America right now then…you have to understand this.
While I love and believe in this country, America is full of gumption vampires. Act accordingly! Protect thy gumption!

The more I live from a place of gumption — and the less fear I have about money, success, and fame — the more I realize something: the future belongs to those who understand emotional regulation.

That’s the entire premise behind the Human Dash coaching programs.

Health is so easy if we live in the right environment surrounded by the right people, and it is incredibly hard if we don’t.

Inflammation is a normal response to abnormal, maladaptive conditions.

Here’s something many people in health won’t tell you about stress and inflammation.
Not because we are lying to you,
but because we forget.

If you’re facing continuous stress — fast-paced jobs, heartbreak, major life changes — inflammation may be exactly what your body needs to be doing.

The research shows that:

• High-pressure, fast-paced jobs with low autonomy are associated with increased stress and ill health)

• Job insecurity or fear of job loss can instigate disease, even after accounting for stress-related behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and eating.

• Poverty, political displacement, and racism constitute uncontrollable factors that cause disease and can’t be addressed by “working harder”.¹

These are all biological triggers, not personal failures. Sometimes you have to leave the environment you’re in to let your body heal.

If you follow enough longevity podcasts, you’ll start to believe inflammation is simply a personal optimization problem — something to fix in you, not in your environment.

Do enough workouts. Take enough cold plunges. Optimize your sleep.

One day you’ll be strong and rich like them.

As I said, we forget.
We forget what we are optimizing for.

But this whole ‘change the world by changing yourself’ bullshit was for the 80s and 90s — back when we had time to rewind a cassette tape with a pencil.

Remember that?

In today’s fast paced currr-aziness, we barely have time to take a shit without sending a text or an email. The world will change you. It will change your thoughts, and your thoughts will change your biology.

Nowadays it happens faster than you can say ‘Tiktok’ or ‘AI’!

The way it does, is via inflammation. More on the science of that in a second.

In the last decade, inflammation has topped our “Biology We Hate” chart. It has far surpassed many of our all time top features such as Carbohydrates, Cholesterol, Gluten, and good’ ol Dairy (may they all rip).

Now Inflammation is public enemy number #1 (along with its evil terrorist cytokines).

Meanwhile, actual criminals rule the world.

Look, I don’t want to dampen your mood, but…

The wars, the genocides, the human-made climate disasters, the racial bias exaggerated now by AI, the extraction of resources from other countries, the terrorizing of local citizens, and the maddening uncertainty of jobs, stocks and when the strait of Hormuz will be shut, all continue.

Never mind that we are setting up the world ablaze, alongside our own institutions.

No. No. You are just inflamed because you are not doing enough saunas and breathwork.

That is the problem!

You are the problem.

Indeed

• Medicine blames inflammation for most of our chronic diseases.

• Therapeutic companies are rushing to halt immune system responses within our bodies.

• Doctors prescribe steroids and aspirins to reduce its impact on the body, and

• Wellness & longevity gurus swear by saunas, fasting, supplements and sleep hygiene techniques that will reduce it.

But top researchers on Stress and the Cortisol Awakening Response now know that: Inflammation is a normal response to abnormal, maladaptive conditions.

Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist, Robert Sapolsky puts it bluntly (and best):

“...the more disastrous a stressor is, the worse it is to believe you had some control over the outcome because you are inevitably led to think about how much better things would have turned out if only you had done something more.” (Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers p404)

“The built environment is designed, intentionally or not, to cause depression, cognitive decline, dementia, and other illnesses - all mediated by inflammatory cytokines.” says renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author , teamed up with the physician and explores this idea in her bookInflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.

Studies also show how Climate change events such as fires, air quality, and temp rises impact our bodies

also writes a great deal about reclaiming our bodies as part of social and justice movements in The Politics of Trauma.

“What we tend to think of as individual traumas... are not so individual when we look at the numbers and the social conditions in which they are happening”

Inflammation is a result of a thought process (usually triggered by our environment)

One month ago, in Part 1 of Inflammation Nation, I shared with you the story of a client that got to a suicidal point after an argument with an ex triggered her. We realized later she had a lot of unaddressed thyroid inflammation.

So let’s break down how her environment might have aggravated that.

How exactly does our environment translate into inflammation inside the body?

A well studied field of medicine called Psychoneuroendocrine Immunology (PNEI for short) has risen over the last decade, with research that uncovers how Triggers → Thoughts → Hormones → Disease, via the inflammatory response.

Which means that what my client from Part 1 was experiencing was the following:

• External Work and Relationship Pressures→ Triggered deep childhood fears. (Psycho-)

• These old deep fears then → activated her Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems (Neuro-)

• That Nervous system awakening → released stress hormones and inflammatory molecules. (Endocrine-)

• And these hormones then prioritize a state of fight and flight → depressed the less urgent proteins needed to regulate immune function (immunology!).

• and the release of cytokines → further drove her towards depression and suicidal ideation (More Psycho- again)

  

But How can we control our thoughts when our national policy is driving the Inflammation?

Attempting to heal oneself with therapy, medications, or even spiritual practices while experiencing external factors can (and will) backfire.

If the source of inflammation is external then you have to escape it first before you heal

→ Talk to others, start organizing with others experiencing the same
→ observe your environment, and if none of that is available then
→ plan an escape from the relationship, the job, the toxic boss first.
→ Or learn how to stand up for yourself.

Do not try to solve systemic issues with Meditation and Yoga. This comes later.

Once you are out of the environment that is wearing you down long enough, you can try out all the science-backed tools to reduce inflammation and return your body to a healthy state.

I called her and she pic…

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If you’ve been carrying stress for too long, and looking to start off the new year fresh, I hope today’s piece reminds you that sometimes feeling better begins with a change in environment.

Today the healing Mongolian yurt turns 1 year old, and I would like to celebrate its very meaningful …

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The only reason I’m living my life this way is because my brain has dis-ease.
I am tortured by my own volition—a perturbation of thought that numbs my sense of danger, curb…

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Isolation, internal emotional bleeding, and..ughh…impotence.

I hated depression with a deep passion.
If only I can surgically excise it from my brain, then I’d finally be the person I want to become.

I tried to cauterize it with Prozac. It was a definite meh.
Then I tried to amplif…

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Could anxiety be the threshold to freedom?

Could the current medical establishment — with its mandate to eradicate the “disorder” of anxiety — be eroding our collective willpower?

Tod…

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Esther Perel famously asked that question to longevity expert Peter Attia, who reflects on this in the very last chapter of his book “Outlive”.

After 300 pages of VO2 optimization, metabolic regulation, and sleep hacking, Peter v…

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It hurt.

It hurt a lot.

It hurt in my lower back.

It hurt between my shoulder blades.

It hurt just like when other kids rejected me on the playground.

Substack lets you remove the notifications of p…

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In the fog, we can work on and on and on.
In the sun, we soften. We get playful—or just too tired to stare at a screen all day.

As David …

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Kenyan Arabica coffee from Trader Joe’s.
I brew it in a French press and work on my book. These days I’m busy rewriting my novel (Rafiki) to prepare it for….whatever is next.

Daily rejections from editors for my nonfiction book The Human…

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It’s like blaming a sailor for not speeding up while the wind howls against them and the current drags the other way.

Pushing ourselves harder under those conditions isn’t just unkind—it’s unwise. High-intensity exercise when the system is already overloaded often leads to injury, more stress, and worse sleep.

Some of us may feel that way int he current political climate as well.

Before we talk about doing more, we need to pause—and ask: What’s actually going on below the surface?

What do we need to less of?

Let’s examine the triad of stress, sleep, and movement—and how our inner narratives can keep us trapped in a cycle that harms more than it heals.

Exercise, Stress, and Sleep: The Triad That Keeps You Afloat

Exercise, stress, and sleep are like three fingers pulling on the same rubber band. If you stretch one too far in any direction without relaxing the others, the band snaps.

Take burnout or a rough breakup, for example. You're under emotional stress, and your sleep is suffering. If you pile on high-intensity workouts during this period, you might get a dopamine boost—but at the cost of spiking your cortisol, raising sympathetic nervous system activity, and further delaying your recovery and repair¹.

Balance is key. When sleep is poor and stress is high, gentle movement, such as brisk walks or neck muscle stretches (see the Habits section), is far more supportive than pushing into HIIT or heavy lifting.

The Sailing Metaphor

Imagine your body like a sailboat. At any given time, three elements determine your direction and speed:

• Wind = Stress: It’s the external condition you feel most clearly in your daily life. It determines how fast you can realistically go.

• Ocean Current = Sleep: Less visible but profoundly influential. Like sleep, it often operates outside of your awareness, yet silently governs your capacity for energy and resilience². Even elite athletes prioritize recovery. Ask them their secret beyond talent and training, and they’ll say: sleep, massage, and nervous system care³.

• Sail = Exercise: The one thing you can control. You can choose to open up, tighten, or even add sails—if the conditions allow.

The Role of Data & Wearables in Understanding the Conditions

Modern wearables like Garmin, Fitbit, and Oura use "readiness scores" to guide exertion. Although many of these algorithms are notorious for being inaccurate, you can create your own navigation system by measuring the metrics underneath them which are:

• Heart Rate Variability (HRV): A measure of how well your autonomic nervous system is adapting to stress. Low HRV = high stress load⁴.

• Sleep Data: Including total sleep, REM, and deep sleep cycles.

• Recovery Biomarkers: Lab tests like C-reactive protein (CRP), Homocysteine, and Urine Cortisol are strong indicators of systemic stress and inflammation⁵.

We’ll cover these in detail in the data portion of the book. Subjective metrics such as self-compassion scores and burnout indices add crucial psychological context.

When sleep is adequate, stress is low, and compassion is high, your system is aligned. These are the ideal conditions for high-performance exercise. You can open up your sails and brace the open seas!

When the Boat Won’t Move

Many clients come to me feeling guilty for not exercising “enough.” But often they’re sleeping poorly, feeling overwhelmed, and experiencing internal stress. Expecting yourself to push through that is like blaming a sailor for not speeding up when the wind is against them and the current is pushing the wrong way.

This is where discernment matters more than discipline.

Learn to distinguish between external stressors and internal blocks like self-judgment, shame, or perfectionism. Telling yourself you’re lazy won't help. Listening to what your body actually needs will.

Exercising hard when your system is already under strain often leads to injury, which reduces movement, increases stress, and disrupts sleep—creating a vicious loop.

This is why we must ask: What is the real cost of overexertion under stress?

As Hippocrates reminds us in medicine: "First, do no harm." Yet our culture encourages us to override our limits in the name of productivity and aesthetics.

Research shows that exercising during periods of high stress and poor sleep can worsen inflammation, increase injury risk, and impair immune function⁶.

Before trying to “optimize” anything, ask yourself what’s driving the stress in the first place. You may not need to train harder—you may need to rest more deeply.

Because sometimes the best move isn’t to push forward. It’s to adjust the sails.

Ready to stop blaming yourself and start navigating with clarity?

If you’ve been pushing through stress and poor sleep wondering why your workouts aren’t helping — it’s time to pause and reassess.

Take the free Human Dash Health Assessment to understand how stress, sleep, and movement are interacting in your life — and get personalized insights to help you realign.

👉 Get the assessment here

The Human Recovery Lab blog + podcast is made possible by individual supporters. As a thank you, paid subscribers get all the research links to dive deeper, have their work promoted with us, and get printed versions of my books on trauma, health and clinical data.

If you like these posts, please consider supporting us!

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🗓 Sunday, May 18th @ 1 pm
📍 Point San Pablo Harbor, Richmond, CA

You’ve heard me talk about the farm and all its magic. Last year, I was a lost soul at Point San Pablo Harb…

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Today’s top…

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What a timely choice! (Check the bottom of today’s essay to vote for my next deep dive topic and find more resources).

Also, welcome to all of you new subscribers! Glad to have you here, where I write …

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I sometimes wonder why we look up to …

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Coming back from a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat—arguably the best way to escape the chaos of the past three weeks—I was met with your thoughtful comments and suggestions on my last poll. They truly filled my heart with joy.

Thank you.

Catching up on global headlines, I found myself wondering if I should do a quick U-turn and go back to being a monk for 4 years.

(By the way you could listen to these essays and take me with you on a drive or walk by downloading the Substack app)

Join The Nothing Revolution

So I’ve been doing more nothing, keeping the meditation alive day and night, going to the gym, working like mad on my book which I will share a snippet of with you today, and now doing health mentoring work that I love. Life is beautiful. I am immersed in it.Yet, I keep falling into a dark spiral. While there is always more I can do to tend to my own wounds, the heaviness I feel is not related to my circumstances.

The heaviness is in the world. The heat is rising. The suffering is exponential. America has beef with all its neighbors and most of its allies. Israel is on a six front war, with Egypt and Jordan getting weary of these antics. Everyone is adjusting, and even the best of us realize that we are hanging by a thread.

There is a harshness to the soil of humanity right now.

It feels dry af, man.

I isolate, I search for weed, or porn, or sugar, or Instagram, or anything to numb the painful existence.

So today, I explore with you

1. where we are in terms of collective health

2. what our potential could be in this new Maga-death era we’ve entered, and

3. what the two things that keep me from despair are.

In the meantime, I am hosting a four-part free online health workshop series every other Thursday, starting March 6th at 6pm PST.

I will cover:

• The new scientific health paradox about 1st and 2nd gen immigrants who work in science, tech or engineering fields.

• How to navigate a toxic environment and how it impacts your health

• How to excavate identity through intergenerational trauma techniques.

• How trauma relates to health behaviors and habits and how to break the cycle

• How to measure health to have meaningful comparisons with your own baseline rather than comparing to others.

• Conversations, Exercises and Demonstrations!

Please share this with that friend of yours that isolates rather than asks for help. This information saves the lives of many.

Register to get the recordings as well, or even better, join us and be part of the discussion!

The New Health Playbook Workshop Series

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Ok now let’s get into todays topic.

Where was I?

Oh yes…

I was saying that we are entering…

A Strange Sick Techno World

The trumpets play a sad song, bids farewell to good ol’ corporate oligarchy (the devil you know, and love to hate).
They welcome a new era of billionaire oligarchy (the devil you thought you knew). As Yanis Varoufakis puts it, “Capitalism is dead, and what we have now, Technofeudalism, is way worse”. His 2-year-old book is eerily on the nose.

I can’t comment on RFK’s plan for health just yet, although access to alternative medicine, healthier food, and more non-biased scientific studies all make perfect sense. Believing it however…is a big fucking pill to swallow!

He did eat that McDonald’s Happy Meal on Air Force One after all, so even if RFK Jr’s intentions are as great as he says they are, it will certainly be an uphill battle for him. #justsaying

Jokes aside, the President’s love for highly processed foods is not the only obstacle. If HHS follows suite with DOGE (and the President’s overall policy preferences on cutting costs on services), then we may be talking about a much darker healthcare reality where people are not just very sick, but they can’t access their meds or doctors either.

Let’s hope for more yoga and meditation yes, but also more affordable and universal coverage because that is still what most people need.

Some may say, why not believe in him? He may not know Jackshit about healthcare, but how much worse can it get?

To these people I say, Touche!

Indeed, the new Health and Human Services Head is up against a long sad history of terrible policies that have caused much suffering to the American people.

Let’s discuss that today, and take a pulse check of where we are when it comes to our collective health in America.

The following is an excerpt from the book I’m currently researching and writing a proposal for under the current title: Healthy Humans Sick Society.

For any other thoughts on the title or the excerpt below, please reply to this email or leave a comment and start a discussion about it.

Leave a comment

How the Industrial Revolution Century Shaped our Health

Over the last century, the Western world has engineered an exciting yet strange new reality. While we have inherited a world of magnificent marvels, it is also laden with buried burdens. We live in an era of technological comfort, yet we lack the fundamental rhythms of human health.

We have to ask ourselves:

• Why are anxiety, addiction, and depression at an all-time high?

• Why are more people burning out and quitting their jobs more than ever before?

• How have we become so isolated?

• Why are family relationships so fractured by politics?

• How have metabolic diseases become our biggest predators?

• Why are more children committing suicide now than at any other time before?

• Why are our bodies rebelling against us with autoimmune diseases?

Even more puzzling—why are we getting sicker in an age where we have all the tools to remain healthy? Perhaps the question is no longer: ‘How can we cure cancer?’ but rather: ‘Why is cancer more prevalent than ever before?’

My friend Paul asked a beautiful question after caretaking for a family member that had Non-Hodkin’s lymphoma:

"Is it just a coincidence that, in an age where we are obsessed with ‘Growth’ , the defining disease of our time—cancer—is a pathological, unchecked growth of cells that spirals out of control?”.

Powerful question.

Here are some more:

🔥 Is it also a coincidence that inflammation is now the biggest culprit behind chronic diseases, just as our climate heats up and employees burn out?

📊 Is it possible that our bodies serve as dashboards, reflecting the dysfunctions of our society?

⚠️ Could our bodies be warning us about what our minds refuse to acknowledge?

The current evidence says yes, the mind and the body are two sides to the same coin, and if they are disconnected by distractions then we start developing diseases.

A majority of these diseases are spiraling out of our internal and generational anxieties and work-related stress.

These “Jobs” Politicians Talk About, Suck…

In 2021, a decade after I left medicine, 334,000 physicians and other clinicians left the workforce due to retirement, burnout, and pandemic-related stress. This is not just a medical personnel issue or a COVID-related problem—it’s a societal crisis. You and I are not alone in our struggles with modern ailments largely propagated by stress and stress-related diseases.

While our parents might argue that work has always been stressful, the modern work experience is a completely different ballgame. According to McKinsey’s 2023 report, 51% of the global workforce is either barely managing, drowning in, or overwhelmed by work demands. That is more than half of all jobs in the world!

Gallup’s 2022 survey revealed that 17% of the U.S. workforce is actively disengaged, and this trend is rising. Industries most affected by severe mental health issues include government, transportation, technology, healthcare, higher education, law, and finance.

According to a 2023 survey by Mason Frank and Salesforce, the tech industry has a burnout rate of 44% among full-time employees, with 42% considering quitting their jobs!

Think about that for a second: The people running our governments, the doctors meant to heal us, the tech engineers holding some of the most coveted jobs, the drivers and pilots ensuring our safety, the visionary entrepreneurs we idolize, and the legal professionals who are supposed to protect us—are all deeply suffering.

Check that. They are dying. Although the media is focused on the CEO that got murdered, 19 other CEOs died on the job in 2024, many in their 40s.

What is happening? Why are we generating all these diseases in an era where we have unprecedented resources to prevent them?

Then there is the ‘Wellness’ Illusion, sold for an additional $5.7Tn dollars

Instead of addressing these pressing questions, society offers us quick fixes: a pill for obesity, a smoothie for IBS, a yoga retreat for those lingering feelings of angst. The $5.7 trillion wellness industry convinces us that we feel this way because we are not doing enough push-ups, drinking enough probiotics, or sweating in enough saunas.

Both healthcare and wellness industries have become bottomless wells of expensive “to-dos,” propagated by a narrative that convinces us we must navigate this world alone. These industries thrive on the same thought patterns that keep us trapped in cycles of stress and sickness. What we fail to realize is that our trauma turns into beliefs, those beliefs turn into thoughts, which turn into behaviors, which solidify into habits, and ultimately manifest as diseases and poor health outcomes.

The 2024 survey by the American Psychiatric Association found that 43% of

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Knowing myself I have probably beat myself up about many marketing decisions I made last year and a lot of costly business mistakes.

As I return to you with (hopefully…

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Fact #1: You are society.

Fact #2: Society has many ailments.

Fact #3: Healing society starts within. (Cliche but true)

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Fun times! Aldous Huxley must be chuckling from his grave. “I told you fools about this a long time ago!”.

As a recovering burned-out physician, I found solace in the gym, where I strengthened my body and mind. I then got a clinical data analytics job, rose in the ranks of corporate America, made more money, and received more promotions.

I also felt compelled to build more muscle, enhance my lung capacity, and run more miles. Through my divorce, I became more lonely, and more susceptible to Hubermans, Attias, and Goggins videos reminding me that I am not enough. I also might have sent a few shirtless photos to girlfriends after a workout, definitely owned crypto before…and yes I did work in tech.

I also did psychedelics to fill the void in my lonely soul.

I am one of these people I speak of.

I am a swallower of culture.

*Gulp*

I am Jack’s disavowed yearning for more.

The Myth of Discipline and Progress

As long as I was productive at work, and my body looked like what ‘a healthy male’ was supposed to look like, I felt that my role in society was safe. There is an unspoken lonely road towards achievement that we are all privy to but seldom speak of.

Nowhere is this road more evident than in a gym in 2025.

Radiohead captured that world of “shoulds” in the eery robotic voice that matches the mechanistic melody and lyrics of “Fitter Happier”.

“Fitter, happier, more productive, Com-for-table,
not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym, three days a week
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries”
Radiohead

Here is an ad from a popular gym in SF notorious for its provocative marketing.

They’re still in business and seem to be growing, so the chord they struck must be deeply rooted in our Bay Area culture.

The stress we feel from the need to perform is transmuted into our yearning for more, which only widens the gap between us and what we want.

Let me elaborate with a few examples:

• You want a tech job with stock options. You get it. All of a sudden you are surrounded by people that have way more stock options than you. Stress rises. Now you want a promotion. You get it. Now you want to be an investor or start your own company. Etc.

• You want to get stronger. You join a gym. You are now surrounded by hot people that are way more fit and can lift more weights than you can ever imagine. You now want to be more like them. You push yourself further.

• You want to run. You join a friend and learn that they are training for a marathon. Running is not enough anymore, you want to run a marathon too. You push yourself to pain.

When anxiety rises in the short term, we become activated like hungry hamsters squirming for a snack, and if the hamster wheel that we are on keeps us in fight or flight forever, we ultimately become depressed. (More on learned helplessness in a future essay)

I am Jack’s newly acquired wisdom

Something changed when I got laid off in 2019 and decided to go out on a limb and ask myself the right questions:

As I became certified in functional medicine, learned about the different ways one needs movement, and understood the relationship between stress, sleep, and exercise, I started making exercise work for me, rather than having to work for it. It is not another thing on my to-do list. It is something that offers what I need in a way that makes sense to the context of my life.

An Ultra-brief History of Gyms

The gym dates back to ~3000 years ago in Ancient Egypt and Persia. However the word “Gymnasium” was coined by the Greeks. (Fun fact: it means exercising naked, as was frequently the case. How fun!).

It was developed for Olympians, professional competitors, and military personnel.

Regular people did not go to the gym. That is worth noting for later.

“At the peak of Greek civilization, fitness was seen as critical to martial prowess (i.e., fighting), restorative capability (i.e., healing of the body, mind, and soul,) and educational (introduced into the post-secondary education system).”

How gyms have evolved through the ages

Here is a depiction of what the first YMCA (aka “The GrandDaddy of US Gyms) looked like inside. (Can you spot the guy walking on the wall? What about the people doing the strange knee-on-knee dance?)

What do Gym Bros, Tech Bros, and Crypto Bros all have in common?

I’ll give you a clue: it’s not a life of calm contentment.

Two months ago, as I settled back in San Rafael, I decided to join a gym for the first time in 5 years to add swimming and weight lifting to my routine.

Boy have things changed.

Three observations struck me as major shifts since I was last in a gym.

1- Flex selfies (I call them flexies) are the norm. Bros now walk towards the mirror, take their shirt off, and snap that flexie. No shame.

2- Everyone has headphones air-pods on. No one is talking and nobody is listening. The gym sounds like a machine eating itself alive.

3- There are signs to remind people to work out rather than doomscroll.

If we compare the three notions behind the original idea of a Gymnasium (Martial Arts, Recover, and Education/Socialization), to how we use the gym today, we can see the sickness in our society.

The comparison to others, the envy we hold in our chest, the low self-esteem we drown in, the distractions of our scattered brains, and the loneliness… can all be noted in any modern-day gym.

While these dynamics used to exist before, one can argue that all of these elements of our collective psychology have risen over the past decade.

High-intensity training (like HIIT) activates your stress machinery

Watching people watch their phones, made me think of how we have taken our addictions to the gym. While some forms of exercise do reduce stress, high-intensity workouts increase stress.

While weight lifting or running are regarded as “good stress”, if you are burned out, exhausted, and trying to just get back on your feet, then I would argue that any stress is bad stress.

When we get our heart pumping hard, this may help our metabolism and heart health, and it may feel good due to endorphins, but it also raises the level of stress we have. It does that via both the hormonal (cortisol) and nervous (sympathetic system) of our stress response.

It is therefore critical to assess why you are exercising, rather than simply going from your high-intensity job to a high-intensity workout without understanding what kind of movement can support you the most.

Couple these with our comparison to others, our inherent feelings of “not being good enough” and you have a cortisol cocktail that may drive you towards more anxiety, less sleep, and potential injury.

No wonder we are resorting to our favorite dopamine hits at the gym and getting lost in our screens as we have all become accustomed to…

So as you choose your next exercise, perhaps first ask yourself:

• How am I doing on Stress these days? What kind of exercise do I need?

• How is my sleep?

• How has my recovery from exercise been? Am I ready for more?

And if you are looking for exercises that are proven to reduce stress…then here is today’s research and actionable insights for you.

Try one of these three research-backed exercises instead, which do not need a gym or any kind of equipment

My research compilation and actionable insights are for paid members. Be the first to get them, as well as special invites to online health workshops and early access to my book once it is out by upgrading your membership.

Today I share 3 exercises and summarize and link six research articles proven to reduce stress rather than jack it up.

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