SITTING TOO MUCH CAN NEGATE THE BENEFITS OF
EXERCISE- RESEARCH
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ost of
us know that we need to be more physically active. Only 20% of American adults
get the recommend amount of physical activity—150 minutes of the moderately
intense aerobic kind—each week.
But simply moving more isn’t enough,
according to a new report published
in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The benefits of exercise can be blunted if you also spend most of the rest of
your day sitting.
Dr. David Alter, a heart expert from the
University of Toronto and senior scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation
Institute, and his colleagues found that sitting too much—even among people who
exercise regularly—led to higher rates of hospitalization, heart disease and
cancer, as well as early death.
You’ve already heard that sitting
is the new smoking. Now, scientists reveal exactly how it hurts the body—and
novel ways to undo the damage (without clocking hours at the gym). You might
want to stand up for this.
We like to think we’re a stand-up species.
After all, that’s what drove our evolutionary march away from many of our
four-legged ancestors. But everywhere we go are invitations to sit down.
Hop into
your car and what’s there? If you’re lucky, a plush bucket seat designed with
just the right tilt for your back. On the subway to work? A less comfortable
seat, to be sure, but you’ll grab one if you can.
Once at
work, an office chair. At home, your favorite fauteuil. But all that
hospitality, all those opportunities to give your feet a break, are doing
untold things to the rest of your body.
From standing desks and fitness trackers to
groundbreaking pilot experiments in high schools in several cities, the
movement to sit less and stand more is gaining momentum. Which is a good thing,
because new evidence suggests that the more than eight hours the average
American spends sitting every day could be exacting a serious—and previously
misunderstood—toll.
In the latest look at the benefits of getting
on the move — and the dangers of sitting still — researchers found that an hour
of moderate activity, such as brisk walking, can offset the harms that sitting
for eight hours can have. And there is also data showing that exercise benefits
aren’t just for middle-aged and older people but for younger people as well.
Andrea Chomistek from Indiana University and her colleagues found in a study
published in Circulation that women aged 27 to 44 years old who
were more physically active lowered their risk of heart disease over nearly 20
years by 25% compared to women who didn’t exercise. The results bring the
dangers of inactivity to a relatively new group — younger women — who normally
aren’t at high risk of things like heart disease or diabetes.
It wasn’t how often the women exercised that
mattered, but the fact that they did; any activity, including brisk walking,
was beneficial.
Studies have long connected sedentary
behavior to poor health, including heart disease, diabetes, obesity and
hypertension. But doctors thought those problems could be traced to the fact
that people who sat more were probably just not working out very much. The
public health messages were in step with that thinking. “Let’s Move!” became a
national mantra.
But while exercise is critical, it alone
can’t make up for the ills of idleness. New research shows there’s a big
difference between exercising too little and sitting too much. That’s because a
standing body uses energy altogether differently from a sedentary body—and also
from an exercising one. We burn calories at a different rate, store them in
different ways, and our brains function differently, too. While data is still
emerging, one experiment with high school
kids found that standing in class instead of sitting improved their test scores
by 20%.
All of which has doctors and health experts
calling for a paradigm shift. “In the same way that standing up is an oddity
now, sitting down should be,” says Dr. James Levine, director of the Mayo
Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative and probably best
known as the inventor of the first treadmill desk. “My argument is that
whatever building it is—a movie theater, airport, arts complex—a fundamental
part of our thinking has become that people who enter that space will need to
be seated.” And that’s what got us into all this trouble in the first place. READ MORE
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