Stay in Shape with this Simple Movement 35x a day!

Details: Published on Wednesday, 06 November 2013 16:51; Written by Tim Staggs CPT National Level NPC MP Competitor

If desk work 2 you're like most people you spend a large part of your day sitting around behind a desk. In today's society we sit behind a computer, sit while driving to work, and sit while we watch TV. Our bodies are not designed to sit for long periods of time and our health is paying the price.

Sitting requires little energy expenditure, "calorie burning drops to one per minute, greatly reduces activation of low back muscles, electrical activity in the legs shut off, enzymes that help break down fat drop by 90 percent. After two hours, good cholesterol levels drop by 20 percent and after 24, insulin effectiveness drops by 24 percent; your risk of developing diabetes rises. People with sitting jobs have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease as people with standing jobs. Sitting six-plus hours per day makes you up to 40 percent likelier to die within 15 years than someone who sits fewer than three, even if you exercise." (MedicalCoding&Billing.org)

It also means that we can't get too hung up on a once-a-day exercise routine. “FIRST you need to make sure you’re engaging in more or less perpetual non-exercise movement, as this is an independent risk factor. You then want to add structured exercise on top of that to reap all the benefits associated with exercise.

Going to the gym a few times a week for an hour simply isn’t going to counteract hours upon hours of chronic uninterrupted sitting, which essentially mimics a microgravity situation, i.e. you’re not exerting your body against gravity. Only frequent non-exercise movement will do that,” according to Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals.

“What became abundantly clear to me very quickly was that gravity plays a big role in our physiological function and in the aging process,” Dr. Vernikos continued.

“Fortunately, there’s nothing complicated about this. The key point is to move and shift position often, when you’re sitting down. Meaning, you want to interrupt your sitting as often as possible.”

“We were designed to squat. We were designed to kneel. Sitting is okay, but it’s uninterrupted sitting that is bad for us,” Dr. Vernikos says. “We are not designed to sit continuously. We are not designed to be in quasi-microgravity… It’s not how many hours of sitting that's bad for you; it’s how often you interrupt that sitting that is GOOD for you!” (mercola.com)

Okay, so if that didn't already sound bad enough, let's talk about lipoprotein lipase. Lipoprotein lipase is an enzyme that attaches to fat in your bloodstream and transports it into your muscles to be used as fuel. Lipoprotein lipase is dramatically reduced during inactivity and increases with activity. It's been noted to drop as much as 90% by sitting for long periods of time. By standing up you are essentially helping the body burn fat as fuel.

So what can we do to combat the negative effects of sitting if exercising isn't enough? First off let me point out that exercising an hour a day is excellent and is necessary to combat the negatives to sitting, but it isn't enough. In order to counter the effects we must do everyday body movements as much as possible.

Things that we use to do in a normal day of living such as picking up things from the ground, cooking, walking to the mailbox, etc. A simple way to help combat sitting is to stand up 35 times per a day from sitting.

Standing up once every hour was more effective than walking on a treadmill for 15 minutes for cardiovascular and metabolic changes
Sitting down and standing up repeatedly for 32 minutes does NOT have the same effect as standing up once, 32 times over the course of a day. To get the benefit, the stimulus must be spread throughout the day

I even recommend taking it a step farther and incorporating something more beneficial then just standing up. Try doing 4 jump squats every time you stand up, or 4 jumping jacks, or 4 one legged squats. The key to improving our health, boosting that metabolism, and counteracting all the negatives to prolonged sitting is to stand up and move! 35x a day is all it takes. Hit me up on Facebook @ www.facebook.com/staggstim

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