Chronic Illness – Sam Kelly Fitness

November 6, 2024June 8, 2025

Are we suffering from a light deficiency?

An interesting change happened within the built environment over the past few decades. Along with major changes in our food environment and movement patterns our light environment completely changed. Perhaps this may be a part of the puzzle in what has caused the increase in chronic illnesses over the past few decades? There will be multiple factors but the current research particularly on red and near infrared light is fascinating and certainly worth following to see where it goes.

What do I mean by our light environment changed? Well gradually we removed full spectrum light from our indoor environment and our lives overall limiting it to predominantly blue light. A combination of factors caused this, firstly our move to life mainly indoors and secondly a desire to make lighting more energy efficient.

Due to the energy saving potential incandescent light bulbs were gradually replaced by LED bulbs which only use the visible spectrum. In other words wavelengths of light that we can actually see. However there are numerous wavelengths of light radiating from the sun, many of which even if we cannot see them interact with the body. Two of the spectrums we lost from our indoor lighting are red and near infrared (NIR)

Previous NIR exposure over the last 200 years [1]

Add to this double glazing and glass that filters out UV light and less time spent outside and we might all be suffering a light deficiency.

This is a reasonably recent issue, in the past we were exposed to full spectrum light from sunlight, firelight, candles, oil lamps and incandescent bulbs. Essentially if a light source produces light and heat it likely will also be producing near infrared and red light also. Near infrared and red light can now also be found in light panels created deliberately to emit these frequencies. In the past decade photobiomodulation has become an expanding area of research with researchers from diverse backgrounds including medics, engineers and NASA scientists all looking at different areas. Discoveries so far include:-

1. **Wound Healing and Tissue Repair**:
NIR light has been shown to accelerate wound healing and tissue repair. Research indicates that it can stimulate cellular regeneration and reduce inflammation, which aids in faster recovery.[1]

2. **Pain Reduction**:
Studies suggest that NIR light can alleviate pain by reducing inflammation and promoting blood flow to the affected areas. It is particularly effective in treating musculoskeletal pain.[2]

3. **Cognitive Function and Brain Health**:
NIR light therapy has been investigated for its potential neuroprotective effects. It can enhance mitochondrial function, reduce oxidative stress, and improve cognitive performance in neurological conditions like dementia.[3]

Tissue specific processes that occur after PBM and benefit a range of brain disorders. BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor; LLLT, low level light therapy; NGF, nerve growth factor; NT-3, neurotrophin 3; PBM, photobiomodulation; SOD, superoxide dismutase. [2]

4. **Skin Health**:
NIR light therapy promotes collagen production and improves skin elasticity, which can reduce signs of aging and enhance overall skin health. It is also used to treat conditions like acne and scars. [4]

5. **Improved Circulation**:
NIR light can enhance blood flow and oxygenation, which is beneficial for cardiovascular health and recovery from injuries. [5]

6. **Production of melatonin within the cell** NIR light it looks like produces melatonin at a cellular level. This melatonin is believed to be used as coolant by the mitochondria. In turn this reduces inflammation within the cell.[6][7]

7. **Reduction of symptoms in COVID19**

Fascinating work by an intensive care doctor found that used red and NIR light significantly reduced the symptoms of seriously ill patients. [8][9]

8. **Reduction of post prandial blood glucose**

A double blind study found that after meals red light being shone upon the lower back reduced blood sugar levels significantly. This is believed to be due to the cells working more efficiently at up taking the glucose hence there was less left in the blood stream.[10]

Post glucose blood levels red light intervention compared to placebo [3]

9. **May increase collagen production**

Research appears to indicate that controlled exposure to NIR and red light increases collages and reduces wrinkling in the skin.[11] NIR may also prepare the skin for UV light reducing the damaging impact of UV light.[12]

The areas that particularly interest me are the improvement in the function of mitochondria, efficiency with blood glucose, and the impact on the brain.

So what do we do with this information? It’s not practical to spend 50% of our time outdoors as our ancestors would have done unless you work outdoors and it will likely be a long time before the indoor light environment changes again. Research can take decades to filter through to action.

A first step would be to spend as much time outside as is practical for you and at minimum aim to get out into daylight most days ideally for some form of movement. Full spectrum bulbs are available and a good consideration if you spend most of your time indoors as are (if it’s within your budget) red light devices. However full spectrum bulbs although they release red light they do not have NIR. If there are rooms you spend a large amount of time in, it and NIR devices it might be worth considering switching back to the more efficient incandescent bulbs. In the US there is a bulb manufacturer making bulbs that are a LED plus a NIR filament combination which I would love to see available here. Interestingly because our mitochondria communicate with each other we don’t need more than a small amount of skin exposure to red light to reap some of the benefits.

It’s an interesting and relatively new field within health but maybe in a few years it will be as commonplace as discussions of any other health need. Perhaps we need to think of light as a nutritional need in the same way as water and food? It will be interesting to watch this area!

Due to all of the potential benefits of red and near infrared light I have a light panel installed on the gym wall. The NIR aspect is running throughout training sessions. For any clients who I feel will benefit from red light they have the opportunity to spend 5 minutes with their back to the panel after their session has finished. This is free of charge.

If you would like to have personal training in a private gym in Alnwick Northumberland please get in touch.

Or perhaps you would like to work with an online fitness coach competent in working with health issues and injuries.

[1] Mechanisms of low level light therapy. Hamblin, M. R., & Demidova, T. N. (2006).

[2] Efficacy of low-level laser therapy in the management of neck pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized placebo or active-treatment controlled trials. Chow, R. T., Johnson, M. I., Lopes-Martins, R. Â. B., & Bjordal, J. M. (2009

[3] Shining light on the head: photobiomodulation for brain disorders. Hamblin, M. R. (2016).

[4] The photobiological basis of low level laser therapy (LLLT). Calderhead, R. G. (2007).

[5] Red/near infrared light stimulates release of an endothelium dependent vasodilator and rescues vascular dysfunction in a diabetes model. Keszler A, Lindemer B, Weihrauch D, Jones D, Hogg N, Lohr NL. (2017)

[6] Melatonin: Both a Messenger of Darkness and a Participant in the Cellular Actions of Non-Visible Solar Radiation of Near Infrared Light. Tan DX, Reiter RJ, Zimmerman S, Hardeland R.

[7] Melatonin and the Optics of the Human Body. Zimmerman S, (2020)

[8] Light-Based Therapy: Novel Approach to Treat COVID-19. Azadeh SS, Esmaeeli Djavid G, Nobari S, Keshmiri Neghab H, Rezvan M. (2023)

[9] A geographical approach to the development of hypotheses relating to Covid-19 death rates. Margaret Skutsch,Roger D. Seheult,Jaime Loya. (2022)

[10] Light stimulation of mitochondria reduces blood glucose levels. Glen Jeffery. (2024)

[11] [11] Effects of Infrared Radiation on Skin Photo-Aging and Pigmentation. Lee JH, Roh MR, Lee KH.(2006)

[12] The effects of infrared radiation on the human skin. Luke Horton, Joshua Brady, Colin M. Kincaid, Angeli Eloise Torres, Henry W. Lim. (2023)

Image references

[1] Melatonin and the Optics of the Human Body. Zimmerman S, (2020)

[2] Shining light on the head: photobiomodulation for brain disorders. Hamblin, M. R. (2016).

[3]Light stimulation of mitochondria reduces blood glucose levels. Glen Jeffery. (2024)

[4]Melatonin and the Optics of the Human Body. Zimmerman S, (2020)

October 5, 2024June 8, 2025

Have we been dangerously wrong about the sun?

I have as a pale person been a life long sun avoider. I thought that doing so was the right thing. That it was the best path for health. I may well have been wrong!

Most people are aware that during COVID those who in the early days prior to vaccines had a higher level of vitamin d had a higher chance of surviving. This was regardless of age. So much so that vitamin d pills were recommended wide scale. Except pills turned out to do next to nothing. It seems more likely that the higher vitamin d levels were a proxy for sun exposure.

Maybe we are wrong about being able to get vitamin d (which is actually a hormone) of a type that is bioavailable enough to prevent anything other than severe deficiency from supplements or food. Oral vitamin d certainly doesn’t seem to work to modulate the immune system the way our own vitamin d made from sun exposure does.

What else are we wrong about when it comes to sun exposure.

According to two studies one which originally set out to prove sun exposure in Swedish women increased their risk of death due melanoma and did pretty much the opposite and the other the UK biobank study.

Both show strong and it really seems to be very strong evidence that sun avoidance is linked to a higher risk of all cause mortality. In other words sun avoiders were just more likely to die.

I’m going to add a few excerpts from journal pieces and articles along with the relevant links and then discuss.

“UVR is a skin carcinogen, yet no studies link sun exposure to increased all-cause mortality. Epidemiological studies from the United Kingdom and Sweden link sun exposure with reduced all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality. Vitamin D synthesis is dependent on UVB exposure. Individuals with higher serum levels of vitamin D are healthier in many ways, yet multiple trials of oral vitamin D supplementation show little benefit. Growing evidence shows that sunlight has health benefits through vitamin D–independent pathways, such as photomobilization of nitric oxide from cutaneous stores with reduction in cardiovascular morbidity. Sunlight has important systemic health benefit as well as risks.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022202X2400280X

“Living in locations with higher UV levels, for example Cornwall, was associated with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer – 19 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively – than living in areas with lower UV levels, such as Edinburgh or Glasgow.

Sunbed use was linked to a 23 per cent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 14 per cent lower risk of death from cancer, compared to non-users. It is possible that people who use sunbeds may also seek out greater sun exposure and so this result may reflect broader sun seeking behaviour, the team says.

Those with a higher estimated UV exposure had a slightly increased risk of being diagnosed with melanoma – a type of skin cancer – but their risk of dying from the condition was not raised.”

https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2024/uv-rays-may-boost-health-in-low-sunlight-countries

“Abstract
Background
Sunlight exposure and fair skin are major determinants of human vitamin D production, but they are also risk factors for cutaneous malignant melanoma (MM). There is epidemiological evidence that all-cause mortality is related to low vitamin D levels.

Methods
We assessed the avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor for all-cause mortality for 29 518 Swedish women in a prospective 20-year follow-up of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden (MISS) cohort. Women were recruited from 1990 to 1992 and were aged 25 to 64 years at the start of the study. We obtained detailed information at baseline on their sun exposure habits and potential confounders. Multivariable flexible parametric survival analysis was applied to the data.

Results
There were 2545 deaths amongst the 29 518 women who responded to the initial questionnaire. We found that all-cause mortality was inversely related to sun exposure habits. The mortality rate amongst avoiders of sun exposure was approximately twofold higher compared with the highest sun exposure group, resulting in excess mortality with a population attributable risk of 3%.

Conclusion
The results of this study provide observational evidence that avoiding sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause mortality. Following sun exposure advice that is very restrictive in countries with low solar intensity might in fact be harmful to women’s health.”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12251

In other words those of us living in north of the equator climates where the UV index drops below the point where vitamin d synthesis is possible for months at a time may be harming our health by avoiding summer sun.

Advice that is sensible in higher UV index climates could actually be dangerous in darker climes. Could the health advice we have been given for decades be very, very wrong.

Note I’m not suggesting extreme sun exposure and certainly baking to the point of burning. But as with everything there is a middle ground and maybe the sun advice in the UK needs to find it

If you would like a female personal trainer, yoga teacher or Pilates instructor in Alnwick Northumberland who is well versed in different types of training including working with health issues please get in touch.

October 4, 2024January 6, 2025

When the magic fix no longer feels magic

When someone is feeling less than wonderful it’s common to try something and after a while it’s amazing. They start to feel better. Feel better to the point where yoga, Pilates, weight training whatever it happens to be becomes a passion. They want to tell everyone how fricking amazing Pilates is, how they felt awful beforehand, but now they feel pretty good.

But then it stops working, but that’s ok they try something new. Maybe going plant based or paleo and that becomes the new magic pathway. Then that stops working and so on.

So what gives? Possibly a few things. Firstly there is a very reductionist and polarising attitude towards life at the moment and it’s prevalent in the health and fitness space particularly. People are in particular camps, they are yogis, or weight lifters or runners. You can see fitness folk arguing in the comment sections of social media about which is better and why. Each of the adherents arguing their case as to why they are right, why weight lifting is better for far loss, or runners have the best VO2 max and that’s more important. How yoga reduces cortisol which does xyz.

Reality is we need a bit of all of them. We need some cardio for heart and lungs, strength training to prevent sarcopenia and frailty in later years and yes mobility too. Because what’s the point of the first two if you can’t get off the floor due to zero mobility?

So that’s a possibility, you had a piece of the movement puzzle but not the whole thing which meant that for example if someone was dealing with POTs they made progress through running but needed strength work also to improve blood flow.

Perhaps someone started a program but haven’t progressed. In other words still doing the same exercises again and again without any progressive overload. Without making them harder. When that happens the body responds to the stimulus but then gets to that stimulus, unless it’s made more challenging in order to again introduce stimulus detraining can even occur.

Or maybe once someone has an exercise routine sorted their body starts to change and needs better nutrition, more sleep. Other pieces of the puzzle.

If this has happened to you think of the following

What is the quality of your sleep like?

How much daylight do you get each day?

How many steps do you take a day?

How much blue light are you exposed to?

Do you have time away from blue light before sleep?

How much of your diet is real food? Doesn’t matter what your preference is but looks at how much is something that would have existed before processed food.

Do you have time to relax? Are you genuinely de-stressing?

Are you too comfortable all the time? Do you ever deliberately get out of breath, too hot, too cold or hungry?

Weirdly the body responds to adversity the rule of hormesis. In other words the biological phenomenon where a low exposure to a potentially harmful agent, like a toxin or stressor, can have beneficial effects on an organism. At a low dose of course.

Obviously I’m not saying try and do all these things at once, a total life overhaul is unsustainable BUT if you found an exercise routine that is working or a dietary pattern that helps you but you feel you are no longer getting results. Don’t stop what was working and do something entirely different, maybe tweak it. Make the exercise tougher or add in cardio/strength and then look at sleep or steps. Then after a few months add something else.

The reality is for optimal health we eventually need to look at all of it. Rather than expecting a magic bullet we need to accept that the human animal needs to eat well, move regularly, get daylight and sleep effectively. Any single piece of the puzzle missing can leave you feeling less than awesome.

If you would like to have a personal trainer with a holistic approach working out of a private home gym in Alnwick Northumberland get in touch!

June 12, 2024October 5, 2024

Exercise and increasing your daily capacity/energy

This is particularly for those of you who are struggling with energy limiting disorders that generally are helped by exercise.

An example would be uncontrolled Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. With POTs the uncontrolled heart rate spikes and dysautonomia means that a person’s body is working twice as hard just to exist.

These are two heart rate graphs of a client with uncontrolled POTs one shows a POTs attack while sleeping, the other a day at university. No exercise was done the heart rate spikes were due to sitting up.

If your body is working as hard just to exist as someone’s body would do when undertaking a busy athletic day add in anything on top and it is simply exhausting.

The good news is a combination of strength training and low heart rate cardio can reduce symptoms to the point where the body works close to a normal person. An increase in muscle strength and efficiency helps blood flow work more effectively particularly when pooling. Cardio conditioning increases the stroke volume of the heart. This in turn reduces attacks helps the heart regulate when tachycardic moments hit.

Overall exercise has been found to expand blood volume and plasma volume and increase cardiac muscle mass and heart size. These in turn have been associated huge with improvement in symptoms.

Above is after 6 months of training, you will notice the heart rate is lower here during exercise than it previously was just during sitting. It is also lower and more uniform across the entire day.

More importantly they now are able to live a life close to the one they want. They make plans without worrying about crashes and spend a day busy yet still have a little energy left over.

Although it’s a different (often related) condition hypermobility spectrum disorders can also have a similar impact of daily energy.

Here the lack of functioning connective tissue leads to a general instability within the body. Connective tissue is not limited to the joints but throughout the entire body. When it doesn’t function joints are loose and the entire body lacks structure.

Again this means simply existing is exhausting. However strength training and muscle development can help counter balance the lack of structure.

In both situations the end result is an increased energy capacity and an ability to undertake a normal day/life without utter exhaustion.

You can’t cure underlying health conditions, but with the right help there is a strong chance that you can control them. A regular routine of movement designed to be suitable for your body might allow you to regain your life.

June 12, 2024October 5, 2024

Life update

Well it’s been a while since I updated here and wow what a 6 months it’s been!

There have been plenty of awesome things for example my eldest married his beautiful fiancée

We have had days out a plenty. One of which was comic con

So much fun! A trip to Athens with my eldest which was lovely to spend some time with him before he officially became a married man!

There have also of course been downs. I had a pancreatic cancer scare. Thankfully all ok! My daughter had a precancerous breast tumor removed. Her tumours are always terrifying as she has PTEN harmatoma syndrome which means she grows tumours both benign and cancerous. She lost her thyroid to cancer at 10 years old. Thankfully after surgery she is ok although her chronic fatigue was quite bad afterwards.

All of the various ups and downs led me to overdo and after 6 months of 14 hour days I was exhausted, had a never ending sinus infection and then a chronic fatigue crash.

I am picking up now and later in the week will write about my experiences with having a crash after symptoms were under control for years and what it taught me.

That’s about all for now!

February 17, 2023January 6, 2025

What are the benefits and risks of fasting?

What are the benefits and risks associated with fasting? Fasting over the past few years has become pretty mainstream with various iterations featured in books that grace the shelves of high street shops. Popular versions include 16/8 where you don’t eat for 16 hours and limit your intake to an 8 hour window, 18/6 same but longer restriction period, 5/2 this is 5 days of normal eating and 2 days of 5 to 800 calories. The eat fast eat methods all come under the umbrella of intermittent fasting. Then there are the longer or prolonged fasts and fasting mimicking plans such as Prolon which is a scientifically designed very low calorie plan.

Claims made by proponents of fasting include:-

Improved fat burning

Improved weight loss

Reduced risk of cancer

Optimized hormone levels

Improved cholesterol levels

Improved body composition

Better blood sugar regulation

Reduced risk of heart diseases

Increased activation of stem cells[1]

All sounds pretty amazing doesn’t it? Especially if it’s just a case of skipping breakfast! Except the science is not yet behind the idea of intermittent fasting, in fact a year long study disputes the majority of the claimed metabolic benefits[2][3]

That is not to say there are no benefits and that if you personally find it helps with weight loss, calorie maintenance or feel it suits your lifestyle that you should give it up. The science is also not entirely conclusively against intermittent fasting, for example a study of breast cancer survivors found that those who had more than 13 hours between the last time they ate in the evening and the first time they ate in the morning was associated with a 36% reduction in the recurrence of breast cancer.[4] It would seem that our bodies being constantly bathed in calories is not long term good for us. It needs periods of rest and recovery.

However, it looks unlikely that some of the really interesting aspects such as autophagy take place over such short periods of restriction. Autophagy translates as self eating, in this process when the body is not taking in enough calories in particular it seems proteins it will scavenge it’s own system in order to find the necessary proteins. In particular damaged cellular matter is broken down first, this makes sense, if we face financial hardship we will mend or repurpose damaged items while leaving new perfect goods alone.

It is the process of autophagy where the real magic of fasting lies, through this process we can reduce inflammation, reduce our risk of tumors, delay the aging process and increase the production of tumor killing cells.[5]

When fasting is combined with chemotherapy it seems according to some studies reduce the risk of side effects by sending the healthy cells into a protective state while leaving the fast growing mutation cells open to attack.[6]

It’s all pretty exciting stuff really and a great deal of research is currently going on looking at various medical applications of both fasting and fasting mimicking diet. The fasting mimicking diet is the brain child of Professor Valter Longo and allows for a small almost protein free intake of calories over the fasting period.[7]

The caveat in all this is that it takes at least 2 to 4 days for this to take place and not the few hours of restriction we were all hoping for.[8] The ideal period of fasting is around 5 days.

It should be noted that autophagy can also be triggered by long periods of calorie restriction which may be a more suitable path for many, in order to trigger autophagy a restriction of 40% of normal intake is necessary, so for example if your intake is 2000 a day reducing it to 1600 for a few weeks will result in a degree of autophagy[9]. I will likely write a separate post on this another day.

Such longer term periods appeal to me less purely because at the moment training is very important to me which means I eat at or slightly above maintenance calories which supports my energy and post training recovery. Fast and hard is my preferred method (pun intended) to this and many aspects of life.

I have used Longo’s fasting mimicking plan a few times now, 4 maybe 5 times I can’t quite remember. The last time was nearly 9 months ago! I had planned on before Christmas but family responsibilities, social engagements etc meant I kept having to bump it forward. I set a specific date for Feb, which is next week, put it in the calendar and turned everything that tried to crop up down other than a couple of non-negotiable appointments for my daughter!

I prefer during fasting weeks to turn life down, I did during my first one attempt to train and live as normal and by day 4 I felt awful. I mean really really awful. After that experience the next attempts were undertaken a little more sensibly. I take the week off work and focus on nurturing myself and allowing for rest while I push my cells into a repair cycle. I think it’s reasonable to allow myself time to do this and as it’s 2 to 3 weeks in a year maximum stepping back a little is no bad thing. It’s also one of the many benefits of being self employed! Plus if it gives me chance of

Of course it is necessary to mention that fasting and fasting mimicking plans are not without risk, during the 5 days it is possible to experience fatigue, dizziness, feeling cold and of course hunger. As I mentioned earlier when I pushed too hard I did feel genuinely dreadful and learned my lesson. The biggest risk however is something called re-feeding syndrome which can be deadly

“Refeeding syndrome can be defined as the potentially fatal shifts in fluids and electrolytes that may occur in malnourished patients receiving artificial refeeding (whether enterally or parenterally). These shifts result from hormonal and metabolic changes and may cause serious clinical complications.”[10] It is rare but necessitates that the two days after fasting involve a gentle re-introduction of food rather than rushing to McDonalds for a big mac. It is less likely with the fasting mimicking plan due to the very small caloric intake keeping the digestive mechanisms running. However they still recommend a slow return to nutrition.

There are a number of scientists working in the realm of aging and longevity all with different ideas and methods, however one area in which they all seem to agree is that short periods of fasting (5 days for full benefits) are one of the most reliable methods of reducing disease risk and promoting a longer healthy life. Nothing in life is guaranteed, but if a short period of discomfort can shift the odds in my favour I’m all for it! See you on the other side!

If you would like to work with a personal trainer in a quiet setting in Alnwick Northumberland get in touch!

[1] https://www.doctorkiltz.com/16-8-intermittent-fasting/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/health/time-restricted-diets.html

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-022-00638-x

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982776/

[5] https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(15)00224-7

[6] https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108(16)30265-3

[7] https://www.valterlongo.com/fasting-mimicking-program-and-longevity/

[8] https://www.medicinenet.com/how_long_do_you_need_to_fast_for_autophagy/article.htm

[9]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950580/#:~:text=Calorie%20restriction%20(CR)%20and%20CR,initiation%20of%20the%20autophagy%20process.

[10]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440847/#:~:text=Refeeding%20syndrome%20can%20be%20defined,may%20cause%20serious%20clinical%20complications.

February 7, 2023January 6, 2025

Last picked for every team

Some people excel at sport and athleticism from an early age, it is woven into their DNA. They take to any physical activity they try with ease and grace. The kind of people who won every race at sports day and captained every team. Then there’s those like me who were quite literally picked last for every team in PE, I swear to god if my classmates could have chosen the school bench over me they would. To be fair it would have probably done a better job at the time.

I was skinny, knock kneed, had an undiagnosed hypermobility spectrum disorder and the serious lack of muscle tone that goes with it. As is often the case when we are awful at something I avoided it like the plague, I don’t know if things have changed but in my day PE teachers had no interest in those without natural athleticism never mind the reasons why.

To be entirely honest my experiences at school with regard to fitness were not just negative they were actually traumatic. I was openly bullied for my lack of physicality and knock knees and viciously name called. I’m not sure though out of the laughter or the pity clap I would sometimes get coming in dead last for something…again which one was worse. I still won’t even so much as take part in a 5k race in public as a result, the idea of any type of competition fills me with horror to the point where I actually feel physically sick.

Why am I telling you this? It’s not for pity or sympathy, I am honestly quite fine. The past is the past. I want you to read this if you like me had no natural ability and let you know that it does not and never did exclude you from looking after yourself physically. No matter how rubbish you were at PE you can still benefit from various forms of movement. Heck you might even enjoy it. I certainly do, in fact I can’t imagine a life where I don’t get up and exercise pretty much every day. I am so grateful that I discovered first yoga and Pilates in my 20s which I found I actually quite naturally built for and being the antithesis of competitive sports allowed me to tune in with my body and learn to love moving it. It was this love of movement I took into CrossFit and strength training, the difference being in that situation I was pretty rubbish to begin with. However many years later of keeping at it I am actually

pretty strong and certainly fit.

That for me is the important aspect, being fit and healthy, being strong enough to squat down to the ground with a heavy back pack and stand back up, being able to walk briskly up hills without losing my breath, being limber enough to fold into my legs with no discomfort, being able to lift heavy suitcases over head for other passengers on trains. These are the things that matter to me. That and the sheer love of movement, oh heavens it is simply glorious to just move, there is a delight in using your body that is with language almost inexpressible. As though different movements all have their own flavor and to engage in more than one is like a banquet for the body. Plus as a result I honestly feel better at nearly 50 than I did my entire adult life.

Don’t let a perceived idea of not being athletic dictate to you that exercise isn’t for you, it is for everyone from those like my husband who are naturally talented in a particular field (running) and thrive in competition to those like myself who myself who had to work at it. In fact I think those of us who are not naturals potentially benefit even more as there are often underlying conditions that make us that way which are improved by movement.

Exercise is for all of us and is certainly one of the keys to health and longevity.

If you would like to work with a personal trainer in a quiet setting in Alnwick Northumberland get in touch!