Exercise and health

Twice a year the city of Paris is center stage of the marvellous world of haute couture. It’s origine lie in the nineteenth century where a Frenchman called Charles Frederick Worth started showing his bespoke artistic designs for a selected public. Serving the rich and royal Worth presented made-to-measure garments executed by the most skilled individuals. What he actually did, was not only creating high fashion for the prestigious, but also making the designer or the couturier as someone to be admired and lifted their status as a whole. Some of the fashion houses that followed in Worth’s footsteps still exist today, such as Chanel, Christian Dior and Valentino.

Left is shown Megan Markle’s Givenchy wedding gown, to the right is shown Kate Middelton’s Alexander McQueen wedding gown.

Wedding gown

Today haute couture is as vibrant as ever. Although only a select group of wealthy customers can afford the ten thousands of dollars costing garments; a single wedding gown can go up to a hundred thousand of dollars.

Being a discrete service (many clients don’t like to talk about their lavish spendings on couture and like to remain anonimous) wedding dresses such as those from Queen Maxima of the Netherlands and the Dutchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton are said to be costing in between a 100.000 and 434.000 dollars.

Identity

Couture is like a dream.

Reality is that couture doesn’t bring profit for the fashion house. Instead it generates revenue in the form of publicity. A fashion house such as Chanel creates profits from sales from cosmetics and accesoiries because of the luxury and mystery surrounding haute couture.

It’s like the halo-effect: you want to have Chanel, but when you cannot afford couture you still can afford that bottle of perfume bearing the name and  luxurious feeling of the house of Chanel. In the end these are all vessels of identity.

Mechanotransduction

Being a marketingtool I propose to use haute couture as a metaphor. Couture indirectly enhances revenue and this can be used as a metaphor for the relationship between exercise and health. Exercise on it’s own doesn’t make you healthy.

It’s the neuro-endocrine respons from your activated muscles that set a myriad of complex networks in motion. These networks basically shape the communications between cells, tissues and organs. And eventually it’s this communication that keeps your body healthy. The neuro-endocrine respons is also referred to as mechanotransduction, and part of mechanobiology.

Examples of intra-and extracellular communications are activation of insulin receptors on the muscle cells in order to attract carbohydrates as fuel for the cells. Another example is the positive effect of exercise induced accelerated blood flow on the elasticity of the veins and arteries. Recent research targets on bone cells being like a weight sensor (sedentary behaviour could result in bones not feeling enough bodyweight and negatively inflencing hormones of satiety) and on a better bloodflow in fat tissues resulting in less leaking of triglycerides in the blood. The collection of Margiela Artisanal shows this indirect effect of exercise on health: unwearable and even unbearable designs meant to increase the profits on cosmetics and accesoiries. And yes, exercise can be bearing and grinning it all...

Healthy mind

But the proces of mechanotransdution also keeps your mind healthy. The sheer pressure of exercise on the central nervous system allows a proliferation of neurotransmitters to all kinds of parts of the body.

And that is the ‘neuro’ part of the neuro-endocrine respons of exercise in the body. An example is the creation of new neurons and synapses in the brain, so called neurogenesis.

That’s what I see looking at the futuristic collections of Dutch based designer Iris van Herpen; she creates new textiles and shapes using 3D-printing and moulding plastics.

Happy mind

Keeping the mind healthy is part of the equation. Keeping the mind happy is another part of the equation.

An example is exercise mediated stressrelief and surpression of anxiety on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.

Also Dutch based designers Viktor and Rolf have shown this throughout their work in couture.

Amplified memes on huge dresses bring a smile to your face, don’t you agree?

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Couture

Christian Dior and his team during a fitting.l

I’d like to propose a comparison. A comparison between the art of haute couture and scientific evidence. There are more similarities between couture and evidence than there are differences between them.

Just as making haute couture requires skilled artists, time and effort and taking distance, it is the same with reading, analysing and interpreting scientific evidence.

Health workers

I think it’s very important to make this statement. Increasingly I see, hear and read health workers making incorrect statements about health. Health workers, whether they’re doctors, nutritionists or personal trainers, they all work with evidence. Evidence is the science or the scientific results that are the foundation of protocols and guidelines with which all health workers work.

As a nutritionist I have several protocols and guidelines for different kinds of diseases and or nutrition related problems for clients. These protocols and guidelines are necessary in order to work in a unified way as professionals.

Evidence

The problem I’m referring to is the daunting task of asking yourself whether the evidence supporting your treatments is still accurate and even more, is it true?

Science has the particular problem of constant new insights, that’s what research is all about. Taking the effort of keeping up with new evidence requires constant reading and following colleagues who do the same. It takes practice and lots of time.

Couture

A couture or made-to-measure outfit starts with creating a toile, or mockup. This toile is created in a simple muslin, just to see how the silhouet will be and whether the design works. In most cases designers start with sketches and than they get into trouble once they try to visualize it. Therefore the skills of a patternmaker is required. They tend to work well between twodimensional (flat pattern) en threedimensional thinking (garment).

Apart from construction matters, there is also the matter of fabric. What fabric will create the best silhouet? How will the fabric work and how to manipulate it? You can work with interlinings and doubling the fabric with other fabrics for support. It’s all about listening to the fabric and knowing how to stretch its boundaries. That’s where other skilled workers come in. The so called petit mains know how to work with different fabrics, techniques and shapes. They create magic just as the patternmaker and designer do. What they all have in common is not so much passion for what they do, but more the ability to know when to take distance from their work. During the proces of designing and creating a couture or made-to-measure outfit it is vital to take distance. The team can than take a look, contemplate and take action. This is vital, because otherwise they get lost in the details. And in the end it’s all about the results.

Reading, analysing and interpreting

As described above, the proces of reading, analysing and interpreting scientific evidence is mostly the same.

It requires skilled people, who have experience in the different fields of science, who know when and how to take distance from the subject in order not to get lost in details.

These skilled people can be followed on Twitter for example. They present their knowledge on several scientific topics and most importantly the sources.

Recent scientific articles can be locked away behind paywalls from international scientific publishers such as Elsevier and others. Luckily there is a Russian lady who has made a hack into the perverse system of paid-to-read scientific articles (sci-hub.tw).

Passion for science

But in the end, it all starts with a good designer or health professional, who is willing to invest time and effort into their business.

Are you that passionate?

Amsterdam Pride 2018

Courtesy of Jeroen Ploeger

Since 1996 the first saturday of august has been reserved for the Canal Parade in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

An unique display of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual community, parading the canals of Amsterdam in 80 decorated boats.

The Canal Parade has become a day for showing who you are and for others to party.

Courtesy of Jeroen Ploeger

Discussion

There has always been debate about the purpose of the Canal Parade. At first Dutch people were offended by the display of dragqueens, butch lesbians, men in leather or not dressed at all.

Today the LGBTQIA community is offended by the commercial aspect of the Parade and straight people being gay-for-a-day. Of course the LGBTQIA community feels discriminated and they are.

That being said, women also feel discriminated in a world dominated by men. The same goes for ethnic minorities. You can even extend this line to institutional racism.

Necessary

Serving it’s purpose or not, one event showed exactly why the Pride is necessary. When the last party ended on sunday 5th of August, Amsterdam’s well known dragqueen-with-a-beard Jennifer Hopelezz was refused for a ride home in a taxi. Friends filmed the refusal of the cabdriver and miss Hopelezz filed a complaint with the taxicompany.

This incident has been the talk of the town, especially because many other queens and nonbinary persons have experienced this behaviour. So far, this part of the story about the brush-off of miss Hopelezz.

Readily accepting

A couple days later, the story continued.

Miss Hopelezz met with the taxi driver who refused her, his boss and representatives of the Department of Discrimination (DoD). I just think this assembly in itself is wonderful! Both the driver and director of the taxicompany showed sincere apologies about the event, and miss Hopelezz readily accepted. The DoD will be preparing a meeting with all the directors of the taxicompanies in Amsterdam to in future ensure LGBTQIA friendliness.

Transman in the city at COC's Shakespeare Club; courtesy of Jeroen Ploeger

Different sides to one story

I’ve used this story to highlight the trouble people have with their perception of health. It’s almost identical.  

The Canal Parade is just one part of the equation, called the Amsterdam Pride. This is an 8-day during event, where different cultural aspects of the Pride are shown. Celebration is, although very important, just one aspect. Education is another one. Throughout the city different kinds of events are organised to make people aware of the presence of a LGBTQIA community. Unfortunately the Canal Parade receives most of the attention.

Preference for negativity

The incident with miss Hopelezz showed one of the troubles this community still endures in one of the so called most tolerant countries in the world.

Nevertheless the media coverage failed to highlight the happy ending of the story. Of course we know the media loves negative stories.

 

 

Health and Disease

But there is so much more than just negativity.

Every story has at least two or more sides to it. The same applies to health. Because of breakthroughs in DNA research people tend to think all is known about health. However, the puzzle which forms health just got bigger and more complicated with recent knowledge about DNA.

And besides that, there are so many people, laymans and professionals, who know it all. They can tell you all about health and make it easy to understand. Contradicting stories about health make it even more difficult to grasp this topic. We have a body that works in several complex ways, with interacting systems, not only within the body but also in contact with the outside. As long as we haven’t mapped these interaction, the so called systems biology, we should be aware of the shortcomings in our knowledge of health.

Special thanks to Stichting Amsterdam Gay Pride and photo's by Jeroen Ploeger!