Sitting Disease - News That Is Not New
Sitting disease
is not a new phenomenon. It is just one that has acquired a new name
recently. It was first mentioned in 2013 in the Dallas Business Journal,
directed at business people who spend too much time sitting. Now it
seems that almost everyone else is sitting too much, too.
Dr.
James A. Levine, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale,
AZ, leads the research on this topic. He has stated that, "there are 34
chronic diseases and conditions associated with excess sitting." The
big ones include some of the usual suspects: cardiovascular disease,
obesity, type 2 diabetes. The list also includes cognitive decline
(Alzheimer's Disease, dementia), disability in people over 60, and death
from cancer. Not just getting cancer... death from cancer.
The
icing on this sedentary cake is life expectancy. Excessive sitting
drops about 2 years off of your life, on average. A few experts have
been referring to sitting disease as the 'new smoking' due to the
similarities in their respective negative health consequences.
No
wonder that Dr. Levine has come so far in his work on the topic that he
now confidently says that, "Excessive sitting is a lethal activity."
Fortunately, sitting disease is easily treatable... by just standing up!
Keys to Healthy Standing
Of
course, there are some details that you should know for getting the
full benefits of staying upright and active. In a nutshell, they revolve
around two issues: how often to stand and how long to stay standing at a
time.
Negative physiological changes happen within a single hour
of sitting. Specifically, an hour of physical inactivity suppresses a
key skeletal muscle enzyme, called lipoprotein lipase (LPL), that is
crucial for controlling the breakdown of plasma triglycerides and for
driving up the level of HDL cholesterol. Just an hour of sitting reduces
the activity of skeletal muscle LPL by about 90 percent. ALL of the
negative consequences of physical inactivity start right then and there.
The key lesson is that you must stand up at least once during every hour waking hour.
How
long should you stand up at a time? Dr. Levine and his colleagues have
found that standing up for 10 minutes at a time is beneficial. That's
it.
The key lesson is that you must stand up for at least 10 minutes at a time.
What
you do while standing is almost irrelevant. Some folks walk around.
Others jump onto a trampoline for some light bouncing (this offers the
bonus of enhancing the flow of your lymphatic system... very important).
At
the high end, business executives have bought into the concept of a
desk treadmill so they can walk while they work. Dr. Levine invented
such a treadmill exactly for that purpose.
Get creative. Read a
book for 10 minutes while standing; put your laptop on a box while you
work; take short walks around the office; stand up while watching TV or
talking on the phone. The possibilities are endless.
By the way,
this is where the so-called 'bachelor style of eating' works well...
I.e., standing over the kitchen sink while you eat. This is great if you
eat alone, although maybe not so much for a family.
The bottom
line is that, whatever you do that has you sitting for an hour or more,
then you have been sitting too much. You really must get out of your
chair for 10 minutes at a time out of every hour - 50 minutes of sitting
and 10 minutes of standing. This is a very simple strategy that
provides tremendous health benefits, and it works almost anywhere you
are (maybe not at the movies?).
Regular Exercise Does Not Help - Go NEAT Instead
If
you have suppressed your LPL enzyme by sitting too much, no amount of
exercise will get it to make up for lost time. Exercise doesn't put LPL
into any kind of high-speed mode that lets you catch up from excessive
sitting.
The only way to overcome the ills of sitting is by
standing up or moving around every hour. Remember, LPL activity drops by
about 90 percent within an hour of sitting. It takes only 10 minutes of
standing to reinvigorate it.
The jargon that the medical folks like Dr. Levine have come up with for this 'non-exercise' is NEAT: non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
Thermogenesis is just a fancy way for saying generating heat, which to
most folks means using calories. The concept of NEAT has become so
significant to Dr. Levine that he has published several research
articles and two books on the subject.
