What is something simple that could transform your health? No, it’s not the Ozempic hit, nor a little-known berry touted as the latest ‘superfood,’ nor a new app for your phone.
It’s pretty basic: you need to get up and move more.
The fact is, whether sitting at a desk all day or glued to the couch watching TV for hours, our sedentary lifestyle is creating a pandemic of poor health.
Our bodies are designed to be active. Food (specifically the glucose it is broken down into) is the fuel that powers it.
But if we sit all day expending very little energy, blood glucose levels are still higher than they should be. This, in turn, causes the chronic diseases that I now see so frequently in the emergency room: type 2 diabetes, heart attacks and cancer, which affect both old and young.
Dr Rob Galloway says our sedentary lifestyle is creating a pandemic of poor health
Study after study has confirmed the risks of sitting for too long. In one of the most recent studies, researchers in Taiwan examined data from nearly half a million people over a 20-year period and found that those who worked sitting were 34 percent more likely to die from a heart attack and 16 percent more likely to die from a heart attack. hundred more likely to die. die from all causes (including cancer) than those who traveled for work.
As James Levine, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in the United States and eminent endocrinologist, said: “It took nature two million years to design the dynamic, walking human being, and it took those humans 200 years to reverse the trend.” art of nature and cramming people into chairs all day.
Professor James Levine says it has taken humans 200 years to reverse two million years of nature’s design
‘Sitting is more dangerous than smoking and kills more people than HIV. We are sitting until death.’
While we don’t know exactly what makes sitting so dangerous, we do know that it leads to high glucose levels, which increases insulin levels, leading to type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and also helps cancer cells survive. divide and multiply.
But when we move, even just standing, our muscles contract, which burns glucose. But what if you have a desk job, as an estimated 40 percent of workers in Western economies do? You might assume that a standing desk would be the answer.
If recent news is anything to go by, maybe not. Last week I received a call from a friend who works in human resources for a top division soccer team. She had been thinking about getting standing desks for administrative staff, but as she was about to order them, she read a headline that changed her mind: “Experts issue health warning on standing desks.”
A standing desk is useful, but a treadmill next to the desk can be even better, as it will allow you to move around and costs as little as £200.
This much-publicized story was about a study in Australia that looked at the amount of time people stayed stationary, based on data from more than 80,000 participants (wearing special wrist monitors) in the UK Biobank study. This is an ongoing project to identify the environmental and genetic factors that lead to the disease.
The study revealed that after six years, the chances of participants suffering from cardiovascular disease (such as strokes and heart attacks) or poor circulation disease (such as leg ulcers and varicose veins) were directly related to the amount of time that passed by parked.
The results showed that standing is bad for your health, whether sitting or standing, but sitting still is much worse than standing: standing for a long time does not increase the risk of suffering a stroke or stroke. heart attack, “just” a disease due to poor circulation – no surprise. Actually, as we know, standing still means blood flow is not as good.
In fact, the researchers didn’t mention standing desks, as they emerged from reports on their study, which made some incorrect assumptions that people who use standing desks are completely stationary.
Those reports also overlooked this key fact: standing at desks replaced sitting at them, something we know is so dangerous to our health.
The truth is, there are good medical reasons why standing, even if you’re not moving, is even healthier than sitting: it helps with posture and core strength, and it burns more calories, as needed. Activate large muscle groups to help. you stand up.
You burn an extra eight calories an hour when you’re standing, which doesn’t sound like much, but in reality a year of working nine to five burns an extra 13,440 calories, about what you get from 77 Mars bars.
If you have a sedentary job, your best bet is to get a desk that can go from sitting to standing. Also, take regular breaks or, better yet, in my opinion, get a treadmill under your desk.
Here’s what I use at home now: The little treadmill that fits under my desk costs just over £200, but it’s one of the best purchases I’ve made.
When I work from home on a non-clinical day, I typically walk 10km while in meetings, grading assignments from medical school students, and writing, and I often carry my five-month-old baby in a baby carrier.
They put the baby to sleep, I burn calories, and even my back pain is gone, probably because I stay active.
(If your back hurts from standing too much, switching between standing and sitting may be the best thing you can do; a sit-stand desk is the answer. But even more important is moving more.)
Standing desks are not dangerous: standing still is. And it is much worse to sit and be still than to stand and be still. But try to keep moving, you really don’t want to “sit” until you die.
@drobgalloway