Vigorous exercise is THE way
GLUT-4 and busy CEOs
The more I look into GLUT-4 the crazier it gets
The more I get convinced exercise is the key for a life with no disease
Especially vigorous exercise like zone 2 or higher
(As you’ll see, easy forms of exercise promise nothing in return. Proper stimulus and discomfort trigger proper adaptation)
According to recent evidence, turns out small amounts of vigorous exercise can be 4, 8, 20 times as effective as long periods of slow to moderate exercise for chronic disease prevention (cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases…)
Big ones include diabetes and obesity, where GLUT-4 comes in to help
GLUT-4 is a glucose transporter present in the skeletal muscle
A lot of people think the liver and insulin are the only organs working on regulating blood glucose levels. Absolutely wrong.
There is a bigger player is the equation, muscle
The more muscle you have, the more glucose you an uptake in the form of glycogen
Skeletal muscle makes sure glucose levels go from the blood to the muscle, keeping those down and controlling the odds of complications
It also removes some weight from insulin
And this effect is way higher during physical exercise
Since your muscles need glucose, they will signal the need for more glucose transporters, so GLUT-4 goes into the cell membrane to access this need
But guess what, the GLUT-4 do not stay in the membrane only during the workout…
It can last for several hours after the workout!
This makes it very difficult to get fat after exercise, because your muscles will be making sure nutrients go into the right place
If we are talking about vigorous exercise, we have more transporters and they last longer, sometimes until the next day.
Besides, the effects of vigorous exercise on decreasing all cause mortality compared to light exercise are very substancial
This also means that there is even less excuses for people not to workout just for the sake of health
Even if you don’t want big muscles and elite strength levels (although you could apply a similar framework of high effort high reward) you can still do your best for longevity
I am talking about nurses, doctors, policeman, busy CEOs…
They don’t have the time to workout with high volume
But they can way better benefits from doing low volume high intensity
These workouts won’t even require showering after. Here some examples:
2-4 minutes of air squats/burpees
50 push-ups
20 pull-ups
Sprinting (4x200m or 400m)
5 min of kettlebell swings
etc…
Edit as you see fit to where you currently are
You can even distribute them across your day as you see fit and no need to do it in a day
The goal is 5-10 minutes a day or every two days, even though it sounds crazy
This is a good step to embrace the dynamic lifestyle - Incorporating exercise and movement in your daily activities through exercise snacks
Dynamic lifestyle is key for fat adaptation and overall longevity
It’s a lot about rejecting sedentarism, which starts to be considered as a disease
But that is for another post
For those interested in a good paper on this topic: DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-63475-2
