My Healthy Code

3 Performance Advantages in Endurance Exercise

Dr. Agu Sergius Alex — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:10:56 GMT

Have you ever noticed that seasoned athletes seem to push further than an average fit person would? They glide through long runs or rides, while others hit the wall. That gap isn’t just for their mental toughness. It’s biochemistry. And they earned it over time.

Understanding what happens at the molecular level during endurance exercise — and how food choices play into it — can transform how you train, eat, and recover. Let me explain it in a way you will never forget it.

Remember these three explanations; they are the cheat codes for those who have them.

Fuel Source

Most of us are carbohydrate-dependent. And even then, all carbs differ in their glycemic index (GI). GI is a measure of how quickly a carbohydrate food raises blood glucose after eating. High-GI foods spike blood sugar quickly like rocket fuel — until about an hour later, when blood glucose crashes and suddenly, you’re famished and fatigued.

On the other hand, the low-GI foods release glucose gradually, offering a steadier energy supply that supports sustained activity, better weight management, and more stable health over time.

Endurance athletes know that choosing low-GI foods before and during long sessions is the difference between finishing strong and hitting the wall too early.

Glycogen Storage

You should know that the muscles and brain prefer glucose during moderate to high-intensity exercise. But your body doesn’t rely solely on what you’ve just eaten — it draws on stored glucose in the form of glycogen, held primarily in the liver and muscle tissue.

Another interesting part of it is that the liver can store between 350 and 500g of glycogen, while your muscles hold around 100g. With endurance exercise, these numbers can improve, and most people do not know it.

Consistent training and greater muscle mass both increase your storage capacity.

It is the reason a well-trained athlete can sustain intensity longer without fuelling mid-session. Their tank is bigger. It also explains why depleting glycogen stores through carbohydrate restriction or prolonged exercise without adequate fuelling leads to severe exhaustion and rapid performance decline — sometimes called “bonking” in endurance sports.

Consistent Training Raises Your Biological Ceiling

Every time you exercise, especially at or near your current limit, your body adapts. Over time, this produces measurable physiological changes, including improved oxygen efficiency, better fat utilisation, enhanced glycogen storage, and a more resilient cardiovascular system.

Now you see why regularity beats intensity for long-term endurance. Someone who trains consistently over months will outperform a sporadic high-effort trainer, even if the latter seems to push harder in individual sessions.

The body learns to tolerate and recover from metabolic stress — and that learning compounds. It’s not the only factor in endurance performance, but it’s one of the most trainable ones.

Starting an endurance fitness journey is genuinely harder at the beginning, not because something is wrong with you, but because your body hasn’t yet established the metabolic system that makes sustained effort feel natural. Give it time, stay consistent, and refuel smartly.

If there is anything to take away from this, it’s to choose low-GI foods to avoid energy crashes during training. If you don’t, the crashes make you eat more and sabotage the fitness goal. In addition to the food choice, you have to build and protect your glycogen stores through consistent nutrition. Again, train regularly to increase your body’s capacity to perform — the advantages compound over time.

What it means is that the gap between beginners and seasoned athletes isn’t just fitness; it’s metabolic adaptation built through repetition and smart habits.

Join us at MHC and embrace the opportunity to receive free health e-letters every Thursday, brimming with essential tips for a vibrant, healthy life and the promise of longevity.

The Disease That Never Really Paused

Dr. Agu Sergius Alex — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:33:54 GMT

Every year on World Tuberculosis Day (March 24), the world pauses—briefly—to remember a disease that never really paused. It is not just a medical condition. It is a story of science, lifestyle, misconceptions, suffering, and unfinished victory.

Today, let’s step into a few of those stories.

On March 24, 1882, the German physician Robert Koch stood before a roomful of scientists and declared that he had identified the cause of tuberculosis. He called it Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

At a time when TB—then called “consumption”—was killing 1 in 7 people in Europe, this wasn’t just a discovery. It was hope, finally given a name.

Before then, TB was a mysterious thing. It’s uncertain whether to call it an illness or beauty in disguise.

People believed it was hereditary or even romantic.

Yes—romantic. And I will explain. In the 19th century, TB had a strange cultural identity. It was associated with pale skin, weight loss, and a fragile beauty. You know the same air of bias toward slimness and body fashion that still exists today. It was typically associated with some rebound artists and people suffering from TB, and the People called it “the artist’s disease.”

But behind that illusion was something brutal

relentless coughing
haemoptysis (coughing up blood)
wasting away
isolation

TB didn’t just take lives—it gave them time and took them slowly.

Before antibiotics, the “treatment” for TB was… fresh air.

Patients were sent to sanatoriums—often in the mountains—where they spent months or years lying outside in the cold, believing clean air could heal them. Some improved. Many didn’t.

One famous survivor was George Orwell, who later in life battled TB while writing 1984. His struggle influenced the bleak realism of his work.

TB was no longer romantic. It was exhausting, isolating, and deeply human.

Then came 1943.

A scientist named Selman Waksman helped discover the first effective antibiotic against TB. It was called streptomycin. And for the first time, TB was treatable. There was hope again as death rates dropped, and hospitals felt they were once more in control. It felt like the story was coming to an end. But it wasn’t.

Fast forward to today.

TB is still here.

Over 10 million people fall ill each year
Over 1 million people die annually
It remains one of the leading infectious killers worldwide

And now, we face new challenges

Drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB, XDR-TB)
TB-HIV co-infection
Social determinants - poverty, overcrowding, malnutrition

TB didn’t disappear.

It has adapted and is thriving. It ought to be a disease of the past in high-income countries, but we can only wish it were. It is still present.

It’s still present

A young mother in Lagos, Nigeria, has been coughing for months but is afraid to seek care.

A construction worker in Mumbai is losing weight but still working to feed his family.

A refugee in Europe, screened at a border clinic.

TB thrives in silence.

And that’s what makes it dangerous—not just biologically, but socially as well. If you have or know anyone who is showing the suggestive symptoms, be kind enough to or encourage them to present to the hospital.

Why World TB Day Still Matters

It is not just about awareness.

It is about urgency because TB is

preventable
treatable
curable

Yet it is still killing people.

People who think they are just getting into shape, while they are suffering from one of the chronic diseases, like TB. Unexplained weight loss is a red flag.

You need to know how TB spreads

through airborne droplets when an infected person coughs.

And once inhaled, it can

Stay latent (asymptomatic, non-infectious)
Become active TB (symptomatic, infectious)

Other Classic symptoms

Chronic cough
Weight loss
Night sweats
Fever
Haemoptysis

Treatment requires months of multiple antibiotics, which is why presentation, investigations and treatment adherence are critical.

TB is one of the oldest diseases known to humanity. It has shaped history, literature, medicine, and public health. And yet, in 2026, we are still talking about it.

Rethinking Why Three Meals a Day Don’t Fit Everyone’s Metabolism

Dr. Agu Sergius Alex — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:39:28 GMT

Fasting isn’t just about skipping meals. And that is one of the first things people get wrong about dieting. The other thing, if I ask it as a question, is how often an adult should eat in a day? The most common answer would be, ‘three times a day’. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It sounds orderly, reasonable, and popular. But it is one of the big costly assumptions in human nutrition.

We often assume that everybody functions the same way. That every person is doing the same level of activity and expends energy at the same rate. That appetite, availability, hunger, routine and habit are valid indicators of time to eat.

The when and how often we should eat should never have been a one-size-fits-all prescription. The clock on the wall is important, but not as important as tailoring nutrition to a reasonable balance between energy intake and energy expenditure.

Imagine four empty containers, each capable of holding 2 litres of water. Each drains at a different rate. And three times a day, you have to pour a handful of water into each of them. One drains quickly. Another slowly. The third hardly drains at all.

Over time, the container that drains slowly will overflow and collect in the gutter on the floor. The container that drains quickly will run dry and become deficient, while the slow-draining one remains fairly balanced. The difference isn’t in the amount poured into each container, but rather in what is needed based on usage. We should consider this when discussing food intake.

Some people are more active and burn energy quickly, while others are more sedentary and tend to store excess energy. Many individuals can conserve energy more efficiently due to their environments and the facilities available to them. Yet, modern eating patterns completely overlook these differences. Nowadays, people wake in a midnight-fed state, still constantly replenishing energy that hasn’t yet run out.

The result is a predictable overflow of energy, which I will call energy dumping. Excess energy is stored, primarily as fat, and waits for a period of shortage (fasting), and then the body can use it. That day never happens with the three-times-a-day eating pattern. Over months and years, this accumulation becomes obvious, contributing to obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and even cognitive decline. Global health data from organisations such as the World Health Organisation continue to show rising rates of these metabolic diseases. It is not a problem of what we eat. It is a problem of not knowing ‘how much energy we truly require’ and ‘how often we should eat’.

You might be wondering why all this information is important. A period of not eating is actually a form of dieting, not just a gap in your diet. Various terms have been used to describe this practice, including time-restricted eating and intermittent fasting. These approaches aim to maximise the benefits we receive from food. You would agree that travelling with excess luggage you don’t need can make the journey stressful. In contrast, carrying a lighter load will make life sweet. Among the benefits are increased insulin and leptin sensitivity; reduced body fat; elevated ketone levels; reduced resting heart rate and blood pressure, and increased heart rate variability; and reduced inflammation.

Let’s conclude by acknowledging that three meals a day isn’t science. It’s a habit deeply rooted in modern traditions passed down to us. Our metabolism does not respond positively to these practices; instead, it reacts to demand, and anything outside of these established patterns may negatively impact our well-being.