Dont Just Sit There

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Dont Just Sit There
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/sunday-review/stand-up-for-fitness.html

After two days, the scientists biopsied muscles in both legs and found multiple genes now being expressed differently in each mans two legs. Gene activity in the left leg suggested that DNA repair mechanisms had been disrupted, insulin response was dropping, oxidative stress was rising, and metabolic activity within individual muscle cells was slowing after only 48 hours of inactivity.

Exercise only slightly lessened the health risks of sitting. People in the study who exercised for seven hours or more a week but spent at least seven hours a day in front of the television were more likely to die prematurely than the small group who worked out seven hours a week and watched less than an hour of TV a day.

In an inspiring study being published next month in Diabetes Care, scientists at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, had 19 adults sit completely still for seven hours or, on a separate day, rise every 20 minutes and walk leisurely on a treadmill (handily situated next to their chairs) for two minutes. On another day, they had the volunteers jog gently during their two-minute breaks.

When the volunteers remained stationary for the full seven hours, their blood sugar spiked and insulin levels were out of whack. But when they broke up the hours with movement, even that short two-minute stroll, their blood sugar levels remained stable. Interestingly, the jogging didnt improve blood sugar regulation any more than standing and walking did. What was important, the scientists concluded, was simply breaking up the long, interminable hours of sitting.

 

[Valentijn]

What was important, the scientists concluded, was simply breaking up the long, interminable hours of sitting.

I'll keep that in mind when I've got diabetes instead of ME, and I'm able to work again.

Anyway, I break up my hours of sitting with laying down, bathroom breaks, getting food, etc.

And of course, the TV watching study completely fails to establish causation. Even if they do die early due to sitting around too much, they may be sitting too much because they're too sick to do anything else. If that is the case and they die early, it's still due to the illness even if sitting around is somehow the more proximate cause of death.

 

[adreno]

I also recommend getting up every 20 minutes during the night, as lying down for eight hours straight is bad for your health.

 

[Esther12]

I've seen a few things about the health problems of prolonged sitting recently. Oh oh. Not too sure how it relates to my own decisions...

if I try to do any 'real' activity, like pilates exercises, then I'm often wiped enough to need to spend the rest of my time sitting/lying down. When I spend more energy pottering/standing, I'm too wiped to do another activity. I've been doing ever smaller amounts of pilates to find a happy medium, but it's all rather unpredictable and depends on what else I need to do that day.

To a certain extent, I think it's unhelpful for me to medicalise my behaviour when so much is so uncertain, and it's better when I just do what I fee like... that could lead to longer term problems, but I don't know.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Correlation vs causation... (TV viewing is an excellent one because watching TV itself clearly doesn't cause death).

The study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22374636 is interesting, but keep in mind it was amongst overweight/obese individuals, it would be interesting to see if such effects carry over to health weight individuals.

 

[Little Bluestem]

Some of us with ME also have low blood sugar problems. It is good to know that breaking up long periods of sitting with short bits of low-level activity will help stabilize blood sugar.