Adapt: can the body change when pushed?

I was speaking to an audience of entrepreneurs recently. My thesis has always been balance or homeostasis.

Mid sentence explaining balance, one listener asked me, “can’t we push the boundaries of balance?”

It was an excellent question. The answer is an unequivocal yes. But the answer comes with riders. Let us explore both.

The human body is extremely resilient and adaptive. So it will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain the status quo.

However, when pushed, it will change the limits under which it can operate.

To give you an analogy, think of your car being forced to run at 400 miles an hour for a few generations and then magically being able to. That is the extraordinary quality of the human body.

There are obvious examples around you.

Some of us have narrow eyes to protect from harsh sunlight. Some of us have dark skin, others light skin.

Yes, you guessed it, these are all adaptive responses of the human body to external circumstances. So your body can change through a process known as allostosis.

So what is the catch?

In the short run, the body can adapt to load. Increase body temperature to compensate for a cold plunge, for example.

But true change takes time. Generations even. You cannot change the limits of the human body overnight.

If you push too hard, you can break the human body. Refer to my article recently of older people running marathons.

But if an entire race in the mid fourties ran marathons, after being unfit for years, perhaps in a few generations, the body could adapt to this.

So what should you do?

If there is a particular capacity that you wish to change, work on it. Slowly, but consistently, your capacity will change. Do it at a pace that does not break your body.

Reach out to me on twitter @rbawri Instagram @riteshbawriofficial and YouTube at www.youtube.com/breatheagain