Statistics say that only in Europe are living 80 Mio people with an allergy, more than one 3rd are unhappy with treatment options. Are you belonging to these? Recent evidence from basic research suggests that allergies are not caused by allergens, but are due to an imbalanced immune system.

Right at the beginning I want to underline, that I am not taking the position of a psychologist but more of a biologist. »The word motivation comes from the Latin word for moving=movere and motus= movement. It describes the state of an organism that influences the direction and the energy load of the current behavior. By direction especially the focus on goals is meant. The energy load means the physical forces which drive the behavior.« Source: wikipedia Is motivation grounded in biology or psychology? Or both? "The significance of the immune system for motivation", was the headline of an article I was going to write about a few months ago, when I sent my topic list to an editorial office where I use to publicise. Back then I had a rather vague idea, on how I was going to tackle this interesting subject. When the date of publication came closer and I finally began to think about this topic in greater detail, I quickly realized that I was to going move towards an intersection of different sciences and thought models connected with the most controversial and antagonizing viewpoints. In the following article I don't intend to explain the different methods of motivational training but want to elucidate in greater depth the biological background and coherences that characterize a state of motivation.

Training intensifies and increases neural muscular impulses

Every muscle requires an impulse from the central nervous system for contraction. These stimuli determine how many muscle fibers are activated. You will be surprised to hear that only about 20% of the muscle is activated in the stage of high strain. The muscles need stimuli from the central nervous system to move. With the feeling of fatigue and exhaustion emerging a decline of the frequency of impulses to the muscles goes along. Exhaustion and fatigue are thus triggered by the central nervous system.

Don't forget our brain demands energy and recovery. Proper brain function consumes 25% of all available energy. That's quite a lot. At the end of a long season we hear many athletes say: "My head is so empty and lacking energy, even worse than my body." A race in which we have competed at full throttle can affect an athlete more mentally than bodily. Studies have shown that pronounced body strain, especially when getting close to the own limits, is leading to an increased activity of the brain too. The energy demand can exceed the energy supply during periods of extreme neuron activities.

Or about the art of finding out what it means to really feel good Just recently I spoke to Chris McCormack about this topic. He puts it like this:” My body is my work place. To release a really great performance, I have to feel really good.” It sounds simple, but is not. All of you who train regularly I am sure, can confirm this statement. It is not easy to find out what it means to feel great. Most of the time you don’t know until afterwards when you can put the delivered performance into relation with the perceived condition you were in.

In the following I would like to discuss some of the different concepts on which a training plans can be based on. It is most likely an individually adapted concept mix that will most suitably lead you to your goal of a peak performance. Here are the main models which are building the base for the logic of training plans, mostly these model are infiltrating the plans of coach on an unconscious level, which I think should not be the case.

The Cardiovascular-Anaerobic Training Model

Anybody who has to do with sports is familiar with the story of acidic muscles terminating exercise. Once the muscle has gone acidic – meaning it has slipped into an oxygen deficit – nothing can help resuming the work-out. We all know that, and do we ever doubt this fact? And now all that is supposed to be wrong? Correct. But why? Read on if you like. At this point two models of training physiology get mixed: the cardiovascular-anaerobic model and the energy supply model. The consumption of oxygen VO2 (max) and the lactate level are parameters that are said to define the performance limits. If they do so at all, they do this indirectly. Both measures are part and parcel of complex regulatory processes, but they are not determining your condition, and they don't set the performance limit.

The muscles' energy supplies are not the bottleneck that's cutting you off from increasing your endurance The Energy Supply– Energy Deficiency Training Model This model is another scientific effort to explain performance limits. In this model the goal of each training is considered to be the adaptation of the energy supplying systems in the body to the demands of the sport. The better our body is trained, the more economically energy is converted into muscle movements, performance is thus optimized. The carbohydrate metabolism which is independent from oxygen and the carbohydrate and fat metabolism that depend on the oxygen, all belong to the metabolic paths which must be trained to increase the yield of high energy phosphate compounds.

The previous article dealt with the difficult and scientifically insufficiently defined term of body perception. This article is about biomechanics. When hearing the word mechanics, it mostly evokes a feeling of clarity and science. Here and now we are going to trace down this clarity and its limits. Biomechanics – The best athletes are the most economic ones! The core proposition of biomechanics is that a muscle does not need to produce as much tension while contracting, if its ability to store elastic energy is higher.

The survey is now closed, thank you for participating. The winners are going to hear from us by next week. Lactose intolerance is an illness many people are complaining about. A few weeks ago I wrote the article "lactose an overrated disease concept?" on this blog I would like to refer to in this place. With this survey we would like to encourage you to test Biestmilch*, which is known for its gut protecting effects. If your lactose intolerance is caused by inflammatory processes within the mucosal lining, Biestmilch may help to improve your intolerance symptoms.