What Makes Sitting So Detrimental to Your Health?

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By Dr. Mercola

The Importance of Non-Exercise Movement for Longevity

Mounting research suggests that even if you exercise regularly, you might still succumb to the ill effects of too much sitting.

For example, a study published last year1 concluded that adults who spend an average of six hours a day in front of the TV will cut their life expectancy by nearly five years, compared to someone who does not | 9,886 views watch TV. Another recent analysis2 of 18 studies found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least. According to lead researcher Thomas Yates, MD:3 Even for people who are otherwise active, sitting for long stretches seems to be an independent risk factor for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease. An earlier study, published in 2009,4 also highlighted much of the recent evidence linking sitting with biomarkers of poor metabolic health, showing how total sitting time correlates with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other prevalent chronic health problemseven if you exercise regularly. According to the authors: "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 -the activity that dominates most people's remaining "non-exercise" waking hours."

Continuous Daily Activity Linked to Healthier Aging

Most recently, a Swedish study5 concluded that those who live a generally active life have better heart health and live longer than those who remain sedentary for most of the day. This held true even for those who didnt engage in a regular exercise routine. As reported in the featured article:6 Based on nearly 3,900 men and women over age 60 in Stockholm, the study adds to evidence suggesting that just sitting around may be actively harmful, researchers say. We have known for 60 years that physical activity is important for the heart, said lead author Elin Ekblom-Bak... But until recently the research has mainly focused on exercise and has "forgotten" about the background activity that we do during daily life... Whether someone exercises vigorously or not, it still usually only takes up a small fraction of the day. That leaves the rest of the time for either sitting still or engaging in non-exercise activities, like home repairs, lawn care and gardening, car maintenance, hunting or fishing. Avoiding the temptation to stay rooted to the couch may be particularly important for seniors. If youre older, youd be wise to make a concerted effort to spend more time doing low-intensity, everyday activitiesanything, really, to cut down on the time you spend in a seated position. In the featured study, participants who were signed up at the age of 60 were tracked for more than 12 years, and the findings were quite telling:

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Those who reported overall higher levels of daily non-exercise activity suffered fewer heart-related problems For every 100 of the sedentary people who experienced a heart attack or stroke, only 73 of the highly active group had such an event For every 100 of the least active who died, only 70 of the most active died Those who had high daily activity levels and engaged in a regular exercise program had the lowest risk profiles overall Yet another recent study7 found that seniors who exercise experience less depression, dementia, and other chronic health problems, including diabetes and cancer. The benefit of exercise was major increasing the odds of healthy aging as much as sevenfold! Best of all, even those who didnt start exercising until th their odds threefold.

What Makes Sitting So Detrimental to Your Health?

According to David Dunstan with the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, the lack of muscle flow through your body, thereby reducing the efficiency of biological processes. "In addition to engaging in regular health enhancing exercise, people should be encouraged to also think wha which they are not exercising," he told Reuters.8 Indeed, while regular exercise is undoubtedly important, its becoming increasingly clear that staying activeand by movement, especially standing upas much as possible throughout the day is in all likelihood imperative for health a poor blood flow contributes to the detrimental effects of chronic sitting, I believe theres more to it than that. Earlier this year, I interviewed Dr. Joan Vernikos,9 former director of NASAs Life Sciences Division and author of Sitt presents a very interesting scientific explanation for why sitting has such a dramatic impact on your health, and what She approached the problem from a different angle than most. Curious to find out why regular exercise does not app prolonged sitting, her research focused on finding out what type of movement is withdrawn by sitting. What she disco in posture that acts against gravity that is the most powerful, in terms of having a beneficial impact on your health. Re fact found to be more effective than walking! According to Dr. Vernikos: The key to lifelong health is more than just traditional gym exercise, three to five times a week. The answer is intensity non-exercise movement that uses the gravity vector throughout the day.

Whats Gravity Got to Do with It?

The word gravity vector reveals Dr. Vernikos background and expertise with anti-gravity. She was in fact one of the astronauts from deteriorating in space. In an anti-gravity situation, your body deteriorates at a far more rapid pace, an period of time simulates a low-gravity type environment for your body. Activities such as housecleaning, rolling dough, gardening, hanging clothes to dry, bending over to pick up a stray so these fall within the spectrum of movements you would ideally engage inmore or less continuouslyduring daily lif these types of activities as G habits. The reason why theyre so critical for your health is that when you move, you increase the force of gravity on your bo cellular deterioration, so the key is to disengage from the gravity vectorthis low anti-gravity situationas much as p Ive previously written about the health benefits of Acceleration Training, or Whole Body Vibration Training, in which y as the Power Plate. Acceleration Training works by increasing the force of gravity on your bodywhich is at the hear degree, a mini trampoline will also increase the G forces on your body and provide similar, yet less extreme, benefits body to gravitational pulls ranging from zero at the top of each bounce to two to three times the force of gravity at the

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The problem is that our modern society and our reliance on technology has reduced or eliminated many of these opp replaced it with sitting. Some people have even taken to texting other family members inside the same house instead of this sloth-like inactivity adds up and can take years off your life. Based on double-blind research conducted by Dr. Vernikos, the minimum number of times you need to interrupt your health risks is in the neighborhood of 35 times per day. Interestingly, and importantly, her research also shows that s minutes does NOT have the same effect as standing up once, 35 times over the course of the entire day. In order to This helps explain why vigorously exercising a few times a week still isnt enough to counteract the ill effects of daily

Simple Techniques to Counteract the Harm of Sitting

Like many of you, I too spend far too many hours a day sitting in front of my computer and started to harvest the hea I gradually developed back pain and could not stand for long periods of times without pain. I also become more rigid though is that this all happened in spite of exercising six or more hours per week. As Ive become increasingly aware of the importance of non-exercise movement, Ive incorporated a variety of strate frequently interrupting your sitting, another important factor that Ill address in the sections below is posture, as poor of sitting for prolonged periods. Personally, I decided to incorporate some posture-strengthening strategies in combin frequently stand up: First, to make sure I interrupt my sitting enough times each day, I use an online timer set to go off every 15- m posture using two techniques from the Gokhale Method (see below). I now alternately stretchsit and stacksit remarkably. Also, while Dr. Vernikos says that simply standing up and sitting back down may be enough to do the trick, pro already in good shape you may want to do more. I decided to take it a step further. I add different body movem break and do something like four jump squats or one-legged squats. I also regularly do Foundation exercises developed by Dr. Eric Goodman. In addition to increasing the gravitat address weakness and imbalance in your posterior chain of muscles. Earlier this year I interviewed Dr. Goodm suggest listening to that interview.

The Importance of Posture

Proper posture is truly foundational for health and most of us who live in industrialized cultures, including you, have f functional biomechanics of your body, you can learn to optimize the way you move at all times. This in turn effectively allows for optimal circulation. Two effective methods, mentioned above, are Foundation Training, and the Gokhale Method, created by Esther Gok she calls primal posture, which is the way your body was designed to stand, sit, and move. For a more complete dis please review my previous article, The Gokhale Method: Banish Pain by Relearning Proper Posture. One of the key postural techniques Esther teaches is how to maintain a J-spine. Conventional advice tells you to tuc spine. This also causes you to you lose about a third of the volume in your pelvic cavity, which squishes your interna tack on hours of uninterrupted sitting, its no wonder sitting can lead to so much dysfunction. By carefully observing the posture of native peoples around the worldand toddlers tooEsther realized that a J-sh -spine is actually based on the norm of poor posture... When you search the annals of anatomical charts of the huma medicine simply began to accept this norm as normal, if not ideal. However, as with vitamin D levels, this is not an norm. For optimal health, you really want to strive for an ideal posture. A J-spine refers to a posture where your back is straight, your lumbar relatively flat, and your buttocks are protruding free PDF downloads describing this posture on Esthers website, GokhaleMethod.com.10 This biomechanically correc pain, and allows your digestive organs to function without restrictions or blockages.

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Remember Primal Posture When Sitting, and Stand up Frequently

As mentioned, in addition to getting out of your chair frequently enoughat least 35 times per day or moremaintain significant difference. Esthers method of primal sitting allows the bones in your spine to stack properly, thereby allo Then, as you breathe, your entire spine lengthens and settles naturally. This movement stimulates circulation and pro In the video below, Esther demonstrates how to use your back rest as a traction device to help you elongate your spi flattening out your lumbar area, promoting a more beneficial J-spine posture. This is an incredibly powerful and healing habit to get into and I would strongly encourage all of you to adopt it. Reme workouts you do a week that will keep you flexible and pain free but how you spend the bulk of your day. If you are s looking for pain down the road. This habit will allow you to actually stretch your spine rather than compressing it while this exercise as it has made a dramatic difference in my ability to move freely without pain.

Take Every Opportunity to Move Your Body

Research such as Dr. Vernikos is powerful evidence that many of the health problems people suffer today are linked incompatible with optimal biological functioning. Fortunately, the answer is simple. Just revert back to a lifestyle that Using your body the way it was designed is one of the most powerful ways to optimize your health. As Ive discussed training (HIIT) is yet another example of this, as it mimics the way ancient hunter-gatherers used their bodies. Moder outperforms traditional aerobic cardio exercise on virtually every front. If you have a sedentary job, standing up every 10 to 15 minutes may compensate for the majority of the damage from posture. I recommend incorporating either Foundation Training or the Gokhale Methodor both. When you sit, pay a you can easily turn it into an opportunity to move into a Foundation posture. Last but not least, instead of parking yourself in front of the TV at night, consider doing something else, or at the very is on

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