I have seen various research on this subject over the last year or two, but the NY Times was out over the weekend with some of the latest results showing sitting for long stretches is detrimental to our health. As the article reads......
THE health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category.
THE health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category.
But a closer look at the accumulating research on sitting reveals
something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting
for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active
when they’re not sitting down. That point was reiterated recently in two studies, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.
Suppose you stick to a five-times-a-week gym regimen, as I do, and have put in a lifetime of hard cardio exercise, and have a resting heart rate that’s a significant fraction below the norm. That doesn’t inoculate you, apparently, from the perils of sitting.
The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s
behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that
may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have
determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of
enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent.
Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and
lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
“The science is still evolving, but we believe that sitting is harmful
in itself,” says Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
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