Sitting Disease

if you look down at your sofa and you can see the imprint of your buttocks there's a problem excessive sitting whether it's at home at work when you mush it all together is associated now with the recent medical findings with a whole slew of concerns from a health perspective the first is obvious if somebody is sitting for too long throughout their day they're not burning calories the data suggests that people on the whole are eating about the same as they did a couple of hundred years ago but by sitting too long they're burning too few calories and so obesity is the consequence so when we think about the health consequences of excess sitting it is obesity the metabolic diseases such as diabetes hypertension high cholesterol it is the mechanical issues the joint problem solving ankles back pain neck pain shoulder pain but also it is the mental issues and what is clear when you start to think about the health burden of sitting is it isn't just the physical body it is the mind as well because just as the body is designed to be moving the brain is designed to control it whilst moving and so it isn't a surprise that excess sitting is also associated with a predisposition to depression to low mood and to a general malaise that you can feel in any cubicle based office you happen to visit also I think we like to think of our patients in a very holistic and up in an all-encompassing way I think there's a spiritual issue to people who are sitting for too long our sedentary our sedentary not only in their bodies and in their minds but in their philosophy so all of us want to do good things in the world but if you're sitting you can't do and so there's a Stolte fication that occurs I would say right at the heart of our souls when you sit for too long the way I sometimes think about this is how do we get seduced to sit all day long because the data suggests that the natural way of the human is to be moving throughout the day now the art of seduction is a subtle slow insidious process and what's important about understanding why the whole of the population in high-income countries has become chair sentenced is because it occurred over several hundred years and so therefore none of us actually have memories of what it was like to be truly active throughout the day not only as our body not designed to be seated but our minds are built to be sedentary either what happened about two hundred years ago slightly before my time the Industrial Revolution occurred where in order to increase theoretically human productivity factories were built and people in droves left the agricultural practice in factory conveyor belts were built where people were seated or at least standing still all the time and modern offices evolved where people and machines were built to stop people moving at all during their day and not only did the arch enemy-- the office chair come into existence but listen to this the arch enemy-- the office chair with wheels came into existence so you know it the way to get around your office was you could actually scoot around on your wheeled off his chair rather than even get up and move now once workers of all different types became accustomed to living in urban centers in city centers seated all day long of course the car became ubiquitous and around the 1950s by then we would leave our homes sit all the way to work in our car we would sit all day at work we would sit of course during lunch and we would sit on our way home and with the presence of ubiquitous television watching and exceedingly comfortable sofas we would sit in the evening too but there was more to come the final nail hadn't been hammered yet into the coffin because then what around 30 years ago we had computers on every desk and not only on every desk work but on every desk at home and all of a sudden kids instead of going to play hockey on the lake outside or soccer in the evening it would be let's get go down to the basement and let's play our video games and so you can see how slowly and subtly humans have transferred over just a couple of hundred years which is a short period of time in the evolution of the human being from being entirely leg based throughout their day taking occasional breaks to sit to now becoming entirely chair based taking occasional breaks to walk we want to know how an earth it can be that some people can eat whatever they want and never gain a pound in weight and so what we did is we took a group of lean people brought them on to our research center and meticulously overfed each of those people by a thousand calories a day more than they needed we did that for eight weeks so that everybody in these studies got an excess of 56,000 additional calories now what we thought was there are going to be some people as this indeed happened who are more representative of most of us myself included for every additional calorie it would end up in body fat but there were indeed others who mysteriously despite be meticulously overfed by this huge number of excess calories didn't gain a pound what was fascinating is how this occurred what is the secret source of the thin here's what it is it's neat it's non-exercise activity thermogenesis so that is the calories a person burns in their daily activity not going to the gym not sitting down but it is that movement we participate in throughout the day the way it works is extraordinary so that those people who with overfeeding don't gain weight are moving more spattered throughout their day now is this done consciously no is it done going to the gym no is it done sprinting backwards and forth or frenetically frigid extraordinary capacity to burn off caloric excess and remain thin is by interspersing small bouts of walking movement throughout their day these small bouts of walking average when you actually average all of these little bouts of movements we measured them all with sensors 1.1 miles an hour so they're slow and in general they're short about 11 minutes and all of us do actually have because we then tested it these opportunities throughout our day to push in these 11 minute bouts of walking whether that is just not emailing somebody on the other side of your office whether that is walking down with the accounts to the account manager whether that is taking an extra break to go to the bathroom whether that is a short walk and talk meeting whether that's gossiping at lunch time whilst walking as opposed to sort of sitting down and eating repeated studies have come out to suggest that even if you are a an individual who goes to the gym three times a week four times a week in the evenings that does not offset the harm of sitting for too long during the day now that doesn't mean for a second that we're recommending people curtail their gym memberships not at all but what is critically important is that breaking up sitting time is something all of us have to do whether you're a person battling with obesity whether you're somebody who's then whether you're an individual who loves the gym or whether you're not everybody is we have to break up setting time so if you've been sitting for an hour without a break you've been sitting for too long so where are most of our programs now have people at 50 minutes or sooner get up and take a movement break of some sort now that doesn't necessarily mean to need to be structured quite in that fashion frequency for instance people can schedule their meetings as walk-and-talk meetings people in use the telephone ringing as a cue to get up from their chair and pace around whilst on the telephone and of course there is the new vogue of having treadmill desks which are terrific for those who can have access to them on one hand one has to break up sitting time on the other hand each of us likes to have a straightforward goal so what we recommend to people is to monitor their initial non exercise their daily activity set a goal for breaking up every hour of sitting with a break but set an overall goal for increasing physical activity by let's say 20% over a four week period of time so really the first thing each of us needs to do is to understand how important and significant this issue is as a health concern for body and for mind and the first step in breaking away from the chair sentence is to make that pre contemplative mental moment of in a way saying to the chair I am going to get up because as soon as you've done that is like turning a switch as soon as you've done that there is a realization that you have to do something what I say to individuals the trick to escaping the chair is to view this as a war a war against the chair and that involves a mental decision that you're actually going to do something that you're going to revolt an understanding that there needs to be a plan a clear recognition that things don't always go our way and so we need to adapt and the understanding that were as people we don't operate alone we operate as part of a social entity and so we need the help of others so developing a clear and strategize plan is the way to do this now some people like to measure things totally cool some people don't cool to some people like very concrete plans they need to keep books and logs and and write everything down if that's the way they are but an individualized plan based on who you are is the key and what we found was extraordinary people who are lean working in the same jobs as people with obesity are up and walking around about two and a quarter hours extra a day than people with obesity people with obesity appear to be prone to respond to chair based cues Fortuna quarter hours a day more than people who lene now what is particularly important about this is that it implies that there is a therapeutic window that each of us can actually achieve of an extra two hours a day of movement if ever there was a message of hope this is it and so when you start to look at the implications of walking being active whilst at work not only are all the health numbers improving is you would expect but also productivity and the general well-being of the company improves step by step alongside the health benefits you'd like to know more about the NEET program and about how to fight and win against the Chairman come to our website

Channel: Mayo Clinic

Views: 44,329

Keywords: Mayo Clinic (Organization), Health Care (Issue), Healthcare Science (Field Of Study), Dr. James Levine, sitting disease, Arizona, Dr. Levine, ASU, Arizona State University

Id: MfRD_a4KQoI

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 18 2014