Some interesting studies out there showing that too much time sitting down is having a catastrophic affect on our health.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/sitt...eneration.html
http://pittsburghquarterly.com/index...w-smoking.html
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Of course, health studies conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around. After 1 hour of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat declines by as much as 90%. Extended sitting slows the body's metabolism affecting things like (good cholesterol) HDL levels in our bodies. Research shows that this lack of physical activity is directly tied to 6% of the impact for heart diseases, 7% for type 2 diabetes, and 10% for breast cancer, or colon cancer. You might already know that the death rate associated with obesity in the US is now 35 million. But do you know what it is in relationship to Tobacco? Just 3.5 million. The New York Times reported on another study, published last year in the journal Circulation that looked at nearly 9,000 Australians and found that for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11%. In that article, a doctor is quoted as saying that excessive sitting, which he defines as nine hours a day, is a lethal activity. |
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Sitters tend to die sooner Sitting disease is the popular term that has evolved from the relatively new research field known as inactivity physiology, coined by Marc T. Hamilton, now of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Baton Rouge, La. More than a decade ago, he and his research team found surprisingly potent and rapid direct effects caused by reducing light activity in a single day. First, they saw this in lab animals and later in people. Not only are our own experimental lab studies continuing to show that the effects of inactivity, and light activity, are more important for health than we had originally expected, but also dozens of observational (epidemiological) studies are providing a high level of consistent agreement, Hamilton says. One recent study that has generated much attention was done by a researcher at the American Cancer Society. After tracking the health of 123,000 Americans over a 14-year period, he found that women who sat for 6-plus hours a day were 40 percent more likely to die within the study period, compared with women who sat for less than 3 hours a day. For men, the difference was 20 percent. And for both genders, it didnt matter if they exercised or not. |
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Molecular mayhem of muscles at rest As soon as we sit, Hamilton explains, electrical activity in our leg muscles stops, impacting a variety of metabolic pathways influencing heart disease and diabetes. For example, an enzyme that acts like the vacuum cleaner for blood fat is shut off, leading to other effects on cholesterol metabolism. What researchers also are finding is that the ill effects of sitting most of the day cant be undone with a gym workout. Even if people meet the current recommendation of 30 minutes of physical activity on most days each week, there may be significant adverse metabolic and health effects from prolonged sitting, concluded the authors of a 2009 editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. |