Human Performance & Health

Your body is the one system every other part of your life runs on. At GoldBlock Workshop, Human Performance & Health has a single aim: helping you become harder to break and more capable every year. This pillar collects what researchers and public health agencies have published about how the body works and what affects it, with the source beside each claim.

It starts in the cell

Two reviews in Cell frame this pillar. López-Otín and Kroemer (2021) note that “Health is usually defined as the absence of pathology” and propose instead to define it “as a compendium of organizational and dynamic features that maintain physiology.” A companion review (López-Otín and colleagues, 2023) proposes twelve hallmarks of aging, among them genomic instability, loss of proteostasis, disabled macroautophagy, mitochondrial dysfunction and chronic inflammation (sources on The Biological Foundation).

The science of how cells produce energy, how they repair and clean themselves, and what damages them lives in the guides beneath this page.

How the pillar is organized

The pages are grouped in three layers:

• The foundation: how the body works at the cellular and system level.
• The inputs: what you eat, how you move, how you sleep and recover, and the supplements people take.
• The outputs: physical performance, cognitive performance, metabolic health, recovery and long-term healthspan.

One idea from the research runs through several of these pages. Calabrese and Mattson describe hormesis as “adaptive responses of biological systems to moderate environmental or self-imposed challenges,” with a modest benefit at low doses and harm at high ones, and they list exercise among their examples (The Biological Foundation).

What lives under this pillar

Each area below opens into deeper guides, and the map will keep growing over time.

The foundation: how the body works Start with The Biological Foundation: cellular energy, building blocks, repair and cleaning, damage and defense, and how genes and environment interact. Deeper guides for each system open from there.

The inputs

• Nutrition: protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber, micronutrients and water
• Fitness & Movement: strength, cardiovascular fitness and mobility
• Sleep & Recovery: sleep stages, timing, environment and recovery
• Energy & Fatigue: causes of fatigue, caffeine, and when to see a clinician
• Supplements: what the NIH and FDA say supplements can and cannot do

Stress and mental state, and the environment you live in, join this list as their guides are built.

The outputs Physical performance, cognitive performance, metabolic health, recovery and repair, and long-term healthspan. (Guides in progress.)

How we approach it

Each page states what a named source found, with a link to it. Where sources disagree or the research is still under way, the page says so and gives each finding with its date. Pages are corrected when a source changes or an error is found.

How to use this

GoldBlock Workshop is educational. We explain how the body works and what published research shows. We do not diagnose, treat, or give personal medical advice, and nothing here replaces a qualified professional who knows your situation. For decisions about your own health, symptoms, or medications, talk to a doctor or the right specialist.