The Surprising Shortcut to Better Health

[charityfundraiser]

The Surprising Shortcut to Better Health
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/the-surprising-shortcut-to-better-health/

Snippets:

The first 20 minutes of moving around, if someone has been really sedentary, provide most of the health benefits.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that exercise has to be hard, that exercise means marathon running or riding your bike for three hours or doing something really strenuous. Thats untrue and, I think, discourages a lot of people from exercising. If you walk, your body registers that as motion, and you get all sorts of physiological changes that result in better health. Gardening counts as exercise. What would be nice would be for people to identify with the whole idea of moving more as opposed to quote exercise.

There is a whole scientific discipline called inactivity physiology that looks at what happens if you just sit still for hours at a time. If the big muscles in your legs dont contract for hours on end, then you get physiological changes in your body that exercise wont necessarily undo. Exercise causes one set of changes in your body, and being completely sedentary causes another.

I really do stand up at least every 20 minutes now, because I was spending five or six hours unmoving in my chair. The science is really clear that that is very unhealthy, and that it promotes all sorts of disease. All you have to do to ameliorate that is to stand up. You dont even have to move.

 

[Valentijn]

Do you have any idea what ME/CFS actually is? That we have an abnormal physiology involving things like muscle use and ability to stand upright?

I can't even stand up for 20 minutes without feeling crappy, much less be active that long. My "safe" limit on a good day is 5 minutes. On a bad day, it's 0 minutes. 15 minutes of light activity while sitting down made me crash. On a good day.

 

[Marlène]

@ valentijn

you don't need to stand up for 20 minutes, the theory is that you have to move every 20 minutes in order to "activate" for your spinal liquid.

I understand it is impossible for a lot of patients who are completely bedridden. An alternative is to move your toes, feet or legs every once in a while.
That's how I did some years ago. My relatives took the initiative to move my toes and feet whan I was awake because I was unable to for a very long time.

That was 3 years ago and things are a lot different now.

 

[Esther12]

I liked the idea of twenty minutes pottering about being all the exercise that's needed.. then I got to this bit:

I run a couple of miles most days. I used to feel like if I didnt run five miles it didnt count. Now Im very content to get out for half an hour or 20 minutes, and I feel reasonably healthy after that.

Curses.

This was the conclusion, and I wish I'd followed this approach when I'd first gotten ill, rather than the weird quackery that collects around CFS:

The human body is a really excellent coach. If you listen to it, it will tell you if youre going hard enough, if youre going too hard. If it starts to hurt, then you back off. It should just feel good, because we really are built to move, and not moving is so unnatural. Just move, because it really can be so easy, and it really can change your life.

 

[charityfundraiser]

Do you have any idea what ME/CFS actually is? That we have an abnormal physiology involving things like muscle use and ability to stand upright?

I can't even stand up for 20 minutes without feeling crappy, much less be active that long. My "safe" limit on a good day is 5 minutes. On a bad day, it's 0 minutes. 15 minutes of light activity while sitting down made me crash. On a good day.

That's why this is posted in "Other Health News and Research".

Some people with CFS are more well than others, and some people are more well at some periods than other periods. I couldn't stand up for 5 minutes or sit for 1 hour for several years. At some points, I couldn't even roll over in bed and feeling crappy is an understatement for how I felt lying down. Not all posts are going to apply to everyone.

Here's how I read articles. I don't have to apply them 100% literally to myself. I take what I can and stretch the ideas. If I read something about the first 20 minutes being the most effective, then I think okay, then maybe the first 5 minutes is also relatively more effective. If the article says stand up every 20 minutes and I can't do that, then I think okay, maybe I can stand up for 30 seconds every hour and try more or less from there. If the article says 20 minutes of standing or walking and I can't do that, then I think okay, maybe I'll try 20 minutes of passive stretching while sitting or lying down, or 2 minutes.

 

[SickOfSickness]

Thanks for the snippets, the last one is useful.

 

[Gavman]

I like it charity. Guestimating is fun. )
A note on the last one, about sitting down for too long - i've met a few older sportspeople who seem to be able to stay fluid and stretched, everywhere except their hip flexors. This is a major player in moving the legs and gets tight quite quickly from sitting too long. People in office jobs would probably understand this.