Exercised: The Science of Physical Activity, Rest and Health

by Daniel E. Lieberman

English convicts (among them Oscar Wilde) were condemned to trudge for hours a day on enormous steplike treadmills.2

Westerners such as Americans and Europeans constitute only about 12 percent of humanity

made all the more pleasant by exercise schadenfreude. Yes, I do think my eggs

Oscar Wilde once quipped, “I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing,”

we pathologize a lack of physical activity, and we prescribe particular doses and types of exercise to help prevent and treat disease.

During NREM sleep, specialized cells throughout the brain expand the spaces between neurons by as much as 60 percent,

150 minutes of physical activity per week, twenty-five grams of fiber per day, and eight hours of sleep per night.

alcohol, which can initially induce drowsiness but disrupts neurotransmitters that maintain sleep.

a human body stores in toto only about a hundred grams of ATPs at any given moment.

if a picture is worth a thousand words, then action is worth even more,

In the mid-1960s, a Japanese company, Yamasa Tokei, invented a simple, inexpensive pedometer that measures how many steps you take. The company decided to call the gadget

Manpo-kei, which means “ten-thousand-step meter,” because it sounded auspicious and catchy. And it was. The pedometer sold like hotcakes, and ten thousand steps has since been adopted worldwide as a benchmark for minimal daily physical activity.