SHAPE SHIFTERS
It is difficult to believe today but in the relatively recent past, medical experts believed vigorous exercise might be bad for our health and that elite athletes risked an early death.
Ironically, just as it was becoming accepted that we are biologically designed for movement and that physical activity, without overdoing it, is absolutely crucial for our mental and physical health, the human race was starting to become less active.
The constant invention of more labour-saving devices means that now even minor exertions, such as getting off the sofa to change the TV channel or walking around a video store to choose a movie, are unnecessary. We have created what medical journal the Lancet described as a “pandemic of physical inactivity”.
“We are the undermuscled generation,” University of Auckland nutrition professor David Cameron-Smith told the Listener after research at the university’s Liggins Institute three years ago sounded the alarm about “an epidemic of frailty”. “We are puny compared with previous generations.”
One in eight New Zealand adults is active for less than 30 minutes a week.
The loss begins early and for many years we hardly notice. But weakness matters. “It’s staggering how frail some otherwise healthy 50-year-old men are,” Cameron-Smith said. “At some point in your life, the hardest thing you will have to do is get up out of your chair or get yourself up off the floor after a fall, and your maximum strength determines whether you can or can’t do that … or whether you’re stuck on the toilet and can’t get up.
“Weak people at 50 are going to
