Katy Bowman - Move Your DNA: The Difference Between Exercise and Movement (and Why It Matters)

This lecture is part of the IHMC Evening Lecture series. We are currently experiencing a pandemic of sedentarism. This sedentarism is an entirely new, entirely unprecedented environment for the human body, which does not cope well with a lack of mechanical input. We’ve been told we need to “move more,” but what does that mean, exactly? What counts as moving more? Regular movement doesn’t only affect our body composition and the state of our heart and skeletal muscles; through a process called mechanotransduction, our cells’ behavior changes when they’re moved. Movement influences the expression of our genes. Animal bodies, including humans’, do not require exercise—they require movement. In order to be fully moved, humans need the almost constant, widely varied movement conditions in which human bodies evolved. Currently our society is almost entirely movement-free while our bodies’ need for movement is very high; thus we are experiencing an evolutio