We Love The Relaxing Feeling Of Lying In Bed

Everything was created to support the processes of life and survival. Living creatures continuously changed to become more complex and sophisticated. As they emerged out of the water, life hedged its bets with gravity. Then, as with dinosaurs, larger life forms evolved stronger bones and musculature that could resist the pull of gravity for hours at a time, enabling them to stand off the ground on four legs and to run faster than amphibians. Eons later, humans began to engage gravity more directly by balancing erect on our hind legs and walking about. Throughout its evolution, life has therefore had to develop, adjust, and adapt to gravity. Our body was designed to live in gravity as a perpetual motion machine. Branley, Astronomer Emeritus and former chairman of the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium. Then, because of the momentum you had built up, on the other side of the center, you would fall up and away from the center, slowing down until the force of gravity overcame your momentum and you stopped. You would be almost in the Indian Ocean, but not quite only just. Now you would fall back toward the center of the earth. You would go faster and faster, right past the center.

Feet in the Clouds

But you would not quite reach your starting point. Back and forth you would go. Each time, you would go a shorter distance past the center. Back and forth, back and forth. Gravity would make you fall toward the center of the earth. When you moved past the center, gravity would pull you back again. After a long, long time you would stop moving. You would stay at the center of the earth. In fact, this adaptation to lower gravity stimulation takes place within hours. We love the relaxing feeling of lying in bed, curling up on the couch, or floating in a swimming pool. We dislike the effort it takes to rise out of bed, climb out of a car, or carry a bag of groceries into the house. At some point in our 30s or 40s, we look in the mirror and see that our facial muscles and certain contours of our body are not quite as firm and buoyant as we remember them being when we were younger.

Trouble No More

A friend told me how, at 30, she noticed that the shape of her hips suddenly had a lower curve to it. Although she described this as not bad, just different, it is the kind of bodily change that throws some of us into a panic. We think of gravity as the enemy that makes everything go south. And, sure enough, it will drag us down if we let it. So we are advised to exercise, to be active. And, to a certain extent, this advice is correct. This test is structured to build up in increments to maximal effort, and it is pretty unpleasant for most people. Now, imagine keeping up the same pace for 15 minutes. The key here is that only intensity seems to reset the cardiovascular system, or kick it into gear. But it is not easy to pedal as hard as you can for 15 minutes, and it’s certainly not the sort of thing one would choose to repeat every 24 hours. One Russian cosmonaut did come back from a space voyage in good shape. Well, he quarreled with a fellow cosmonaut and was so angry that he spent a good part of his entire day, every day, on the treadmill so that he would not have to interact with his crewmate.

A Haunted Heart

He exercised for as much as eight hours every day! Best thing he ever did. But aren’t you glad we live on a planet with gravity so that we can stay in shape without having to do that much work? Movement is valuable, but the presence of gravity is crucial for it to be effective. However, if we are fortunate enough to avoid an early death and grow old chronologically, will we inevitably suffer the deterioration of our bones, muscles, and nervous system that are traditionally associated with aging? How old do you want to be before you lose the ability to ski or ride a bicycle? How old do you want to be before you lose bone density to the point where a fall on the sidewalk could result in a hip fracture? How old do you want to be before you have to wear special undergarments because you no longer have good bladder control? Most of us have seen older people whose posture is stooped, who walk unsteadily, too weak to sit down or stand up without help. When one reaches this stage of physical decline, it becomes difficult or impossible to live independently, and it is the loss of independence that people approaching their retirement years hate to contemplate. In one study, researchers in the Finnish Centre for Interdisciplinary Gerontology followed more than 1,000 older adults for a period of eight years. My friend said, I want to be healthy and independent till I drop dead, and I agree with him! If reaching the risk zone means losing my health and independence, I want to drop dead before I reach that stage. We all want to postpone reaching the risk zone as long as possible. From the age of 20, you lose 1 percent bone density a year under normal ambulation circumstances, you will likely hit the risk zone in your 80s. If we are not careful, we can start to suffer changes in balance as early as the 20s, as can happen when young women wear high heels and go down a flight of stairs looking at their feet and holding onto the railing. Working with colleagues from University, they showed that 12 weeks’ training with weights increased muscle strength and endurance, and even restored bone density. This is what I am talking about when I say that the use of gravity determines how fast we age, not in years, but at what age we hit the risk zone.