"Spirit" comes from the Latin word "to breathe." What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word "spiritual" that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science. On occasion, I will feel free to use the word. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

-The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Paperback – by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, 1997

Breathing Podcast

S2 E18: Start With Breathing - Movement Podcast with Gray Cook & Lee Burton - YouTube

 

Take A Deep Breath | Functional Movement Systems

 

Movement Podcast on Apple Podcasts

 

US Open tennis balls serving up controversy, and players injuries (usatoday.com)

 

 

 

Our Shoulders and Elbows Began as Brakes for Climbing Apes

September 5, 2023

 

Study introduces ‘downclimbing’ from trees as a driver in early-human evolution.

The rotating shoulders and extending elbows that allow humans to reach for a high shelf or throw a football with friends may have first evolved as a natural braking system for our primate ancestors who simply needed to get out of trees without dying.

Dartmouth researchers report in the journal Royal Society Open Science that apes and early humans likely evolved free-moving shoulders and flexible elbows to slow their descent from trees as gravity pulled on their heavier bodies. When early humans left forests for the grassy savanna, the researchers say, their versatile appendages were essential for gathering food and deploying tools for hunting and defense.

The researchers used sports-analysis and statistical software to compare videos and still-frames they took of chimpanzees and small monkeys called mangabeys climbing in the wild. They found that chimps and mangabeys scaled trees similarly, with shoulders and elbows mostly bent close to the body. When climbing down, however, chimpanzees extended their arms above their heads to support their weight, holding onto branches like a person going down a ladder.

Luke Fannin, first author of the study and a PhD candidate in the Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society program in the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, says the findings are among the first to identify the significance of “downclimbing” in the evolution of apes and early humans, which are more genetically related to each other than to monkeys. Existing research has observed chimps ascending and navigating trees—usually in experimental setups—but the researchers’ extensive video from the wild allowed them to examine how the animals’ bodies adapted to climbing down, Fannin says.

“Our study broaches the idea of downclimbing as an undervalued, yet incredibly important factor in the diverging anatomical differences between monkeys and apes that would eventually manifest in humans,” Fannin says. “Downclimbing represented such a significant physical challenge given the size of apes and early humans that their morphology would have responded through natural selection because of the risk of falls.”

“Our field has thought about apes climbing up trees for a long time—what was essentially absent from the literature was any focus on them getting out of a tree. We’ve been ignoring the second half of this behavior,” says study co-author Jeremy DeSilva, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology.

“The first apes evolved 20 million years ago in the kind of dispersed forests where they would go up a tree to get their food, then come back down to move on to the next tree,” DeSilva says. “Getting out of a tree presents all kinds of new challenges. Big apes can’t afford to fall because it could kill or badly injure them. Natural selection would have favored those anatomies that allowed them to descend safely.”

Flexible shoulders and elbows passed on from ancestral apes would have allowed early humans such as Australopithecus to climb trees at night for safety and come down in the daylight unscathed, DeSilva says. Once Homo erectus could use fire to protect itself from nocturnal predators, he says, the human form took on broader shoulders capable of a 90-degree angle that—combined with free-moving shoulders and elbows—made our ancestors excellent shots with a spear (apes cannot throw accurately).

“It’s that same early-ape anatomy with a couple of tweaks. Now you have something that can throw a spear or rocks to protect itself from being eaten or to kill things to eat for itself. That’s what evolution does—it’s a great tinkerer,” DeSilva says.

“Climbing down out of a tree set the anatomical stage for something that evolved millions of years later,” he says. “When an NFL quarterback throws a football, that movement is all thanks to our ape ancestors.”

Our field has thought about apes climbing up trees for a long time—what was essentially absent from the literature was any focus on them getting out of a tree.

JEREMY DESILVA, PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Despite chimps’ lack of grace, Fannin says, their arms have adapted to ensure the animals reach the ground safely—and their limbs are remarkably similar to those of modern humans.

“It’s the template that we came from—going down was probably far more of a challenge for our early ancestors, too,” Fannin says. “Even once humans became upright, the ability to ascend, then descend, a tree would’ve been incredibly useful for safety and nourishment, which is the name of the game when it comes to survival. We’re modified, but the hallmarks of our ape ancestry remain in our modern skeletons.”

The researchers also studied the anatomical structure of chimp and mangabey arms using skeletal collections at Harvard University and The Ohio State University, respectively. Like people, chimps have a shallow ball-and-socket shoulder that—while more easily dislocated—allows for a greater range of movement, Fannin says. And like humans, chimps can fully extend their arms thanks to the reduced length of the bone just behind the elbow known as the olecranon process.

Mangabeys and other monkeys are built more like quadrupedal animals such as cats and dogs, with deep pear-shaped shoulder sockets and elbows with a protruding olecranon process that make the joint resemble the letter L. While these joints are more stable, they have a much more limited flexibility and range of movement.

The researchers’ analysis showed that the angle of a chimp’s shoulders was 14 degrees greater during descent than when climbing up. And their arm extended outward at the elbow 34 degrees more when coming down from a tree than going up. The angles at which mangabeys positioned their shoulders and elbows were only marginally different—4 degrees or less—when they were ascending a tree versus downclimbing.

“If cats could talk, they would tell you that climbing down is trickier than climbing up and many human rock climbers would agree. But the question is why is it so hard,” says Fannin’s adviser and study co-author Nathaniel Dominy, the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology.

“The reason is that you’re not only resisting the pull of gravity, but you also have to decelerate,” Dominy says. “Our study is important for tackling a theoretical problem with formal measurements of how wild primates climb up and down. We found important differences between monkeys and chimpanzees that may explain why the shoulders and elbows of apes evolved greater flexibility.”

Co-author Mary Joy ’21, who led the study with Fannin for her undergraduate thesis, was reviewing videos of chimps that DeSilva had filmed when she noticed the difference in how the animals descended trees than how they went up them.

“It was very erratic, just crashing down, everything’s flying. It’s very much a controlled fall,” Joy says. “In the end, we concluded that the way chimps descend a tree is likely related to weight. Greater momentum potentially expends less energy and they’re much more likely to reach the ground safely than by making small, restricted movements.”

Joy, a trail runner who was president of the Dartmouth Outing Club when she worked on the study, knew the pained feeling of inching down an incline in short clips instead of just hurtling down the path with the pull of gravity, her legs extended forward to catch her at the end of each stride.

“When I’m moving downhill, the slower I’m going and restricting my movement, the more I’m fatiguing. It catches up to me very quickly. No one would think the speed and abandon with which chimps climb down from trees would be the preferred method for a heavier primate, but my experience tells me it’s more energy efficient,” she says.

“Movement in humans is a masterpiece of evolutionary compromises,” Joy says. “This increased range of motion that began in apes ended up being pretty good for us. What would the advantage of losing that be? If evolution selected for people with less range of motion, what advantages would that confer? I can’t see any advantage to losing that.”

 

Functional Movement (webador.com)

 

 

Podcast: When I'm Healthy I Get Hurt

Overuse Injuries and Burnout in Youth Sports Can Have Long-Term Effects 

The American Medical Society for Sports Medicine Releases New Clinical Report-2014

LEAWOOD, KS — As an emphasis on competitive success in youth sports has led to intense training, frequent competition and early single sport specialization, overuse injuries and burnout have become common. Given these concerns, the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) has released a new clinical report that provides guidance to physicians and healthcare professionals who provide care for young athletes.

“Not only are overuse injuries in young athletes likely much more common than is realized, these injuries can require lengthy recovery periods, and in some cases, they can result in long-term health consequences,” says lead author John P. DiFiori, M.D., Chief of Sports Medicine and Non-Operative Orthopaedics at UCLA, and AMSSM President.

For the 44 million U.S. children and adolescents between 6-18 years who participate in some form of organized athletics1, youth sports can be an enjoyable and beneficial experience, offering opportunities to increase self-esteem, peer socialization and general fitness. However, an emphasis on competition, collegiate scholarships and elite-level success has led to increased pressure to begin high-intensity training at young ages, often in only one sport. Consequently, overuse injuries and burnout are affecting many young athletes.

In light of these issues, the AMSSM convened an expert writing group of seven sports medicine physicians to review the latest data and provide recommendations for the sports medicine community.

The full report, entitled, Overuse Injuries and Burnout in Youth Sports: A Position Statement from the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, was developed through a systematic literature search initially yielding nearly 1,000 articles, followed by author analysis. The findings reveal that the current literature, which reports overuse injuries comprise 50 percent of sports injuries, underestimates the burden of these injuries, since many do not result in time loss from sport.

In addition, this new report highlights several specific higher-risk overuse injuries that may result in prolonged recovery and have the potential to endanger future participation. Although infrequent, some may lead to long-term complications.

The paper also emphasizes that there are several unique risk factors for overuse injuries and burnout in children and adolescents. Social, emotional, cognitive and physical factors all play a role.

“Children grow and mature at different rates, making chronologic age a poor barometer for parents and coaches to set expectations and gauge progress,” said Dr. DiFiori, Head Team Physician at UCLA. “Understanding this can be critical to a child’s self-esteem and motivation to continue participating.”

Other notable findings and recommendations include:

  • A history of prior injury is an established risk factor for overuse injuries that should be noted as part of each injury assessment, and pre-participation examination.
  • Adolescent female athletes should be assessed for menstrual irregularity as a predisposing factor to bone stress injuries.
  • Early sport specialization may not lead to long-term success, and may increase risk for overuse injury and burnout. With the possible exception of early entry sports such as gymnastics, figure skating and swimming/diving, sport diversification should be encouraged at younger ages.
  • Limiting weekly and yearly participation time, limits on sport-specific repetitive movements (e.g. pitching limits), and scheduled rest periods are recommended.
  • Careful monitoring of training workload during the adolescent growth spurt is recommended, as injury risk seems to be greater during this phase.
  • Pre-season conditioning programs and pre-practice neuromuscular training can reduce injury rates.

The full statement is available at http://www.amssm.org/Publications.html.

The extensive review provides a comprehensive analysis of overuse injuries and burnout in youth sports including these key aspects:

Injury Prevalence
Risk Factors 
Readiness for Sport Participation
Sport Specialization    
High-Risk Overuse Injuries
Prevention

The AMSSM hopes that this information can assist parents, coaches and healthcare professionals as they provide care for young athletes.

An infographic of the review’s findings is available at http://bit.ly/1bDRsB8.

About AMSSM: AMSSM is a multi-disciplinary organization of 2,500 sports medicine physicians dedicated to education, research, advocacy and the care of athletes of all ages. AMSSM members serve as team physicians at the youth level, NCAA, NFL, MLB, NBA, WNBA, MLS and NHL, as well as with the US Olympic Team. By nature of their training and experience, sports medicine physicians are ideally suited to provide comprehensive medical care for athletes, sports teams and active individuals www.amssm.org

 

Fewer sports injuries with digital information

14 March 2023

Anders Törneholm

The number of injuries in youth athletics is significantly reduced when coaches and parents have access to digital information on adolescent growth. It also takes twice as long for the first injury to occur. This is shown in a study from Linköping University published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The researchers noted that the clubs given access to the information showed significantly lower injury incidence and that it took twice as long for the first injury to occur.

Many promising athletes have had their careers ruined because of injuries. One thing that almost all events in athletics have in common is a high load for a short time, as in jumping, throwing and running. This leads to overuse injuries such as groin pain and sore shoulders but also sudden injuries such as ankle sprain and hamstring tear.

Jenny Jacobsson is a physiotherapist and visiting researcher at the Athletics Research Center at Linköping University. She has worked as a medical coordinator for the Swedish national athletics team for many years and has seen the impact of injuries on athletes.

“Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, we saw many injuries in our national team and tried to figure out why. At the time, no survey had been done of injury incidence in athletics athletes. But we wanted to find out what was happening among our elite athletes from age 16 and up, including adult elite athletes,” says Jenny Jacobsson.

Health platform

The survey of injuries in Swedish athletics showed that one of the main causes of injury was prior injury. This means that the earlier an athlete is injured in their career, the higher the likelihood that they will be injured later and more frequently. But causes of injury in youth sports is a complex matter, associated with everything from training amount and load to equipment, and even sleep.Jenny Jacobsson is a physiotherapist and visiting researcher at the Athletics Research Center. Privat

Together with her colleagues at the Athletics Research Center, Jenny Jacobsson has developed a digital health platform containing information for parents and youth coaches on adolescent growth and how this is affected by training, with a focus on athletics athletes aged 12–15.

To investigate whether this type of platform can prevent injuries, the researchers carried out a study where 21 athletics clubs with athletes aged 12–15 were randomized into two groups: an intervention group and a control group. For four months during the early season, the intervention group parents and coaches were given access to the digital information platform, which at the time was not open to outsiders (but is now open to anyone). They were also regularly encouraged to log in and explore its content.

Greater effect in larger clubs

The researchers noted that the clubs given access to the information showed significantly lower injury incidence and that it took twice as long for the first injury to occur. Moreover, the effect was greater in large clubs. The results, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, can point the way to more injury-free athletics.

“We haven’t investigated the mechanism leading to change, but we can see that digital information works when it comes to injury prevention. If coaches and parents learn to recognize the problems, it’s possible to reduce the training load in time. Medically we know what is happening in growing bodies, but getting the information out to those who can benefit from it has been a challenge. This platform may bridge that gap,” says Jenny Jacobsson.

The study was financed by the Swedish Research Council for Sport Science (Centrum för idrottsforskning). 

Article: Universal prevention through a digital health platform reduces injury incidence in youth athletics (track and field): a cluster randomised controlled trial; Jenny Jacobsson, Jan Kowalski, Toomas Timpka, Per-Olof Hansson, Armin Spreco, Örjan Dahlstrom (2022) British Journal of Sports Medicine, Published online on 23 December 2022. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2021-105332

Facts: The digital health platform tested in the study is friskfriidrott.se, which is aimed mainly at youth sports coaches and parents of athletes aged 12–15. More information for other age groups has since been developed. For the duration of the study, the platform was not open to outsiders. It is now open to anyone. Visit friskfriidrott.se.

 

If exercise is healthy, why do so many people avoid doing it? If we're born to be active, why is it so hard to keep your New Year's resolutions about exercise? On this episode, learn about the powerful instincts that cause us to avoid exercise even though we know it’s good for us. Dan Lieberman, author of the new book Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding, tells the story of how we never evolved to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health, and helps us think about exercise in a whole new way. This is a video from our audio-only podcast, Origin Stories. If you want the audio version, look for Origin Stories on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. About our guest Daniel Lieberman is a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, a member of The Leakey Foundation’s Scientific Executive Committee, and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity. His research is on how and why the human body looks and functions the way it does. He has long been fascinated by the evolution of the human head but his main focus is currently on the evolution of human physical activity. He is especially interested in how evolutionary approaches to activities such as walking and running, as well as changes to our body’s environments (such as wearing shoes and being physically inactive) can help better prevent and treat musculoskeletal diseases. To address these problems, he integrates experimental biomechanics and physiology in both the laboratory and the field with analyses of the human fossil record.

 

Jay Furst

Stress test abnormalities reveal more than just cardiovascular risks, Mayo Clinic study finds

September 6, 2023

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The treadmill exercise test with electrocardiogram (ECG), also known as an exercise stress test, is one of the most familiar tests in medicine. While exercise testing typically is focused on diagnosing coronary artery disease, a recent study from Mayo Clinic finds that exercise test abnormalities, such as low functional aerobic capacity, predicted non-cardiovascular causes of death such as cancer in addition to cardiovascular-related deaths. These new findings are published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

The exercise stress test is noninvasive, easily available and provides important diagnostic information. In addition to the ECG itself, the test produces data on functional aerobic capacity, heart rate recovery and chronotropic index, the standardized measure of heart rate during exercise that reflects age, resting heart rate and fitness.

"In our exercise testing cohort, non-cardiovascular deaths were more frequently observed than cardiovascular deaths," says Thomas Allison, Ph.D., M.P.H., director of Mayo Clinic's Integrated Stress Testing Center and the study's senior author. "Though this was a cardiac stress test, we found that cancer was the leading cause of death, at 38%, whereas only 19% of deaths were cardiovascular. Exercise test results including low exercise capacity, low peak heart rate, and a slow recovery of the heart rate after exercise test were associated with increased mortality."

The study looked at 13,382 patients who had no baseline cardiovascular issues or other serious diseases and who had completed exercise tests at Mayo Clinic between 1993 and 2010, then were followed closely for a median period of 12.7 years.

The findings suggest that clinicians should focus not only on ECG results but on data in the exercise test results such as low functional aerobic capacity, low chronotropic index and abnormal heart rate recovery. Patients should be encouraged to increase their physical activity if these results are atypical, even if the ECG results show no significant cardiovascular-related risk, Dr. Allison says.

###

About Mayo Clinic Proceedings
Mayo Clinic Proceedings is a monthly peer-reviewed journal that publishes original articles and reviews on clinical and laboratory medicine, clinical research, basic science research, and clinical epidemiology. The journal, sponsored by Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research as part of its commitment to physician education, has been published for 97 years and has a circulation of 127,000.

About Mayo Clinic 
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and to providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.

Media contact:

Pontzer Lab – Evolutionary Energetics & Ecology (duke.edu)

Podcast: Evolution of human intelligence from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, through today

Woman the hunter: The physiological evidence

First published: 04 September 2023

 

Abstract

Myths of “Man the Hunter” and male biological superiority persist in interpretations and reconstructions of human evolution. Although there are uncontroversial average biological differences between females and males, the potential physiological advantages females may possess are less well-known and less well-studied. Here we review and present emerging physiological evidence that females may be metabolically better suited for endurance activities such as running, which could have profound implications for understanding subsistence capabilities and patterns in the past. We discuss the role of estrogen and adiponectin as respective key modulators of glucose and fat metabolism, both of which are critical fuels during long endurance activities. We also discuss how differences in overall body composition, muscle fiber composition, the metabolic cost of load carrying, and self-pacing may provide females with increased endurance capacities. Highlighting these potential advantages provides a physiological framework that complements existing archaeological (Lacy and Ocobock, this issue) and cultural work reassessing female endurance and hunting capabilities as well as the sexual division of labor. Such a holistic approach is critical to amending our current understanding of hu(wo)man evolution.

Abstract

The Paleo-fantasy of a deep history to a sexual division of labor, often described as “Man the Hunter and Woman the Gatherer,” continues to dominate the literature. We see it used as the default hypothesis in anatomical and physiological reconstructions of the past as well as studies of modern people evoking evolutionary explanations. However, the idea of a strict sexual labor division in the Paleolithic is an assumption with little supporting evidence, which reflects a failure to question how modern gender roles color our reconstructions of the past. Here we present examples to support women's roles as hunters in the past as well as challenge oft-cited interpretations of the material culture. Such evidence includes stone tool function, diet, art, anatomy and paleopathology, and burials. By pulling together the current state of the archaeological evidence along with the modern human physiology presented in the accompanying paper (Ocobock and Lacy, this issue), we argue that not only are women well-suited to endurance activities like hunting, but there is little evidence to support that they were not hunting in the Paleolithic. Going forward, paleoanthropology should embrace the idea that all sexes contributed equally to life in the past, including via hunting activities.