The Missing Link Between Workouts and Results: Use the SHMEC Principle to Optimize Strength Gains and Overall Health
When it comes to building muscle strength, we often focus intensely on the workout, but the truth is that keeping our hormones balanced and optimizing exercise recovery is the key to the results you seek. Dr. Jade Teta is a naturopathic doctor who specializes in metabolic health and optimizing hormones for building and maintaining strength gains while also supporting overall health. He is a proponent of working with your body and hormones by using a powerful framework called the SHMEC Principle that ensures you don't compromise your overall health while working towards your strength and fitness goals.
Strength training 2-4 times a week is scientifically proven to be one of the best activities you can do for your overall health. It works by improving muscle mass, boosting bone density, supporting cardiovascular health, and decreasing the risk of chronic disease, all while optimizing sleep and regulating mood and hormone function. Exercise is termed a hormetic stressor—a beneficial stress that leads to greater resilience and health benefits when exposure is brief or moderate. However, there can be too much of a good thing. Overtraining, or stacking too many stressors at once (intense demands of our fast-paced lifestyle, poor sleep, or hormone changes) can overwhelm the nervous system, create metabolic dysfunction, and undermine health. Females are also more sensitive to stress, cortisol and insulin changes and can be more sensitive to overtraining. This raises the key question: How do you know if you are overtraining?
As the long days of summer fade, we feel a natural pull back towards routines and structure. Last month, we learned how to reclaim time from our devices and spend it on things that truly matter. Now, with fall's arrival, it's the perfect opportunity to use that reclaimed time to re-inspire your healthy habits.
We've all felt it: that moment when you look up from your phone and realize a significant chunk of time has vanished. Whether it's a deep-dive into social media, endless shocking news alerts, online shopping, or just mindless scrolling, our phones have become a constant companion. This isn't a surprise, and I believe we can all feel how connected and addicted we are to our phones and tracking devices. But have you ever stopped to consider what that constant connectivity truly costs you? 
In our fast-paced modern world that is full of artificial lighting, limited daylight exposure and blue light from devices, maintaining healthy sleep can be challenging. It's easy to lose touch with the natural rhythms that govern our bodies. Consider how we've evolved as a species, it was not that long ago that as the sun went down, humans would cook by the light of fire and read in candlelight. This shift from daylight to low amber light signaled the brain to produce melatonin and to get ready for sleep. Today, it's common in our homes that we have bright overhead lights, blue lights from televisions and phone screens (often displaying stimulating or stress-inducing content) that disrupt our evening wind down routine and impact our readiness for sleep. 
Every January, millions of people set ambitious New Year's resolutions: lose weight, move more, eat healthier, stress less. Yet by late January or early February, many of these well intended health goals have fallen to the wayside. 
The Blue Zones, regions with the highest concentration of centenarians, offer valuable insights into the secrets of longevity. One of their core pillars, Build Strong Social Connections, underscores the profound impact of human connection on our well-being.