Move Your DNA by Katy Bowman

Summary

If you think that finding the correct biohacking regimen will make you a better person, this book will relieve you of that pressure. You don’t have to do so much, you don’t have to try so hard. Wellness is not a race; there is no finish line, there is no medal, and there is nothing at the end of this inquiry but death. Wellness is just another name for living. It is the things that keep us alive.As we cure diseases of the past, we are seeing a rise in what some researchers call affluent ailments, diseases that are thought to emerge due to lifestyle choices, like access to tobacco causing lung cancer, the rise in metabolic disorders from exercise changes, and heart disease caused by diet choices. Modern humans sleep in plush beds, walk to our cars in memory foam insoles, and drive to work in a little bubble, totally isolated from the environment around us, but the sedentary nature of modern lifestyles creates health problems in bodies that were not created for so much leisure and comfort. There has been so much advancement in the quality of our daily lives, so why are health and wellness still so elusive?

“Despite our great fortune to live in a time when we aren't at great risk for communicable diseases, we are, in fact, dying slowly, in bits from our natural tendency to do as little as possible. Our unquenchable desire to be comfortable has debilitated us. Ironic, as there is nothing comfortable about being debilitated. This paradox that advancements to make our lives less physically taxing have taxed us physically is profound and has led to an emergent scientific hypothesis: Perhaps the only way out of our poor physical state, created by our culture of convenience, is a return to the behaviors of our ancestors."
Katy Bowman

About the Author

While observing this phenomenon, biomechanist and author Katy Bowman realized that these diseases are not isolated to affluent communities; they are also present in poverty-stricken communities where there is no abundance of resources to blame. She realized that it wasn’t affluence causing the issue; the societal values of comfort and convenience were only making life feel more unbearable and difficult. Bowman’s message is clear: Our bodies are made to move, but modern life has trapped us in a cycle of immobility — stuck behind desks, driving cars, and endlessly chasing an unrealistic ideal of perfection in circles around a track or literally in place on a treadmill. We don’t actually get anywhere with those methods.

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