Health Hazards of Sitting – The Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Marc Hamilton studies the effects of sedentary behavior on the body. He focuses on the effects of sitting, lying on the couch, and not moving. Inactivity undermines cardiovascular and metabolic health, according to his research.
The health risks associated with inactivity might be on par with those associated with smoking, in response to Hamilton and others. His recommendations address the issue of too much sitting time in updated physical activity and health guidelines. According to his research, regular body movement is enough to achieve physiological benefits without sweating or heavy breathing.
Research on the effect of movement on the length of telomeres, the caps on the ends of DNA that protect our chromosomes, further supports the idea that sitting less can improve our health. As a result of a physical activity intervention in overweight, sedentary individuals in their late sixties, telomere length, physical activity, and sitting time were assessed at the beginning and six months later. (Shorter telomeres indicate aging and illness.)
These findings are compelling and counterintuitive. The longer telomeres of individuals with reduced sitting time were associated with better health over the six-month period. Contrary to this, the length of telomeres was negatively associated with more formal exercise.
A positive effect of sitting less on telomere length was found in this study, whereas exercising did not. These studies, combined with established science, indicate that some of the physiological benefits we gain from physical activity (for example, those related to preventing and managing type 2 diabetes) quickly decline after exercising, illustrating the importance of moving constantly and frequently during our daily lives.
I am concerned about the ten-minute rule, which brings us back to the ten-minute rule. I do not advocate the ten-minute rule for the following reason: it leads people to not move if they have less than ten minutes because they think they will not be counted.
That’s a lot of minutes that could have been spent moving but weren’t. It seems reasonable to prescribe lifestyle changes to optimize health. In reality, however, sustaining it over time will have only modest health benefits if most people are not motivated to do so. The choice between success or failure is only available when a threshold is established for movement.
The limited definition of what success looks like actually thwarts people’s ability to stick with it when life throws them a curveball when they believe they must achieve a specific target in order for the movement to be worthwhile-whether it’s for ten minutes, twenty minutes, or forty-five minutes. Toni experienced the same thing.
