It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting – in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home, you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death.
A new study from American Cancer Society researchers finds it’s not just how much physical activity you get, but how much time you spend sitting that can affect your risk of death. Researchers surveyed 123,216 healthy people (part of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention II study in 1992) and found that people who spent their days sitting down have a higher risk of mortality.
During a time period of 1993 to 2006, researchers found that women who sat down for at least 6 hours a day were 37 percent more likely to die when compared to women who sat for 3 hours a day during the time period studied. For the same time period, men who sat down for 6 hours a day were 18 percent more likely to die than their standing counterparts.
Women were 94 percent and men were 48 percent “more likely, respectively, to die compared with those who reported sitting the least and being most active.”
It sounds not that great, is it? Folks like me (and probably you) who either enjoy our TV or computer time after work or work in front of a computer all day? Shall we all quit? Shall we give up on exercise because “it doesn’t help?” No, I don’t think so, it is unclear, if they said sit down 8 hours a day, exercise will not help you live longer, that make sense.
According to Jon, the co-author of The 7 Minute Diet: Simple Suggestions For Weightloss,
… several researchers who were not directly involved with the study made some spot-on comments.
First, your body has to move frequently to reduce inflammation. Inflammation is THE number-one cause of heart disease, and heart disease is the number-one cause of death. Yet, movement need not be long and laborious. In fact, long-duration exercise may actually do more harm when it comes to inflammation.
Studies show that long-duration exercise of an intense nature, such as hours of biking hard, running, weight training for more than a hour etc can cause a significant spike in inflammatory markers. C-reactive protein increases as well as enzymes indicating muscle and organ damage.
Another reason for this is the nature of blood fats called “triglycerides”. This is something I know quite a bit about as my “trigs” (for short) have almost always been well above normal. Only my dietplan and a vitamin I use (upcoming) helped me lower trigs to normal.
Without moving around during the day our trigs can become elevated quickly. Trigs are also elevated through the consumption of excess carbohydrate. It does not matter if these carbs come from brown rice or sugar: Trigs respond in many people by rising from ‘any’ source of carbohydrate.
So what if you DO have a desk job? What can you do? Here are the 3 tips he suggested to use.
1. Get up every 45 minutes and walk around for 5 minutes or so. 10 minutes is even better. You won’t notice those 5 minutes, but they add up to 40 MINUTES of fatburning-style cardio a day. That’s right: Walking burns bodyfat. The 45-minute trick works because your body begins to store and accumulate triglycerides within an hour of consuming meals and for up to 3 hours post-consumption.
So, breaking up the sitting with simple movement tricks your body into using more of those fatty acids for fuel rather than for storage. The net result can be more bodyfat gone AND improved health, despite the sitting-at-work handicap.
2. Focus on your meal planning more than your exercise. Exercise is VITAL for a more shapely body, burning off excess bodyfat and keeping healthy. If you sit for more than 8 hours per day, adjust your carbohydrate down to about 80 grams per day. Start there. If you need more help, go here
3. If your trigs are high, talk to your doctor about using vitamin B3, called niacin. Niacin, ONLY in the form of nicotinic acid, is very effective at lowering trigs, raising HDL, and even lowering C-reactive protein levels. And it’s cheap as well. However, NEVER take niacin (nicotinic acid) without being under a doctor’s care as it can be very hard on the liver and cause some nasty side-effects in some people.
In conclusion, do not let this latest study discourage you from exercising. In reality, you should exercise by simply moving once every hour, along with intense but brief exercise 3-5 days per week for fatloss and body-shaping results.
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