Sitting Kills, Moving Heals
June 23, 2013
NASA Discovery: Make This Mistake... And Not Even Exercise Can Help You
A NASA scientist discovered what makes your body decline quickly - even
if you're fit - and can set the stage for an early death. But here's a
quick and easy trick to save yourself from an early death - it's so
simple anyone can do it, and it doesn't cost a cent...
Story at-a-glance
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Sitting for extended periods of time is an independent risk
factor for poor health and premature death. Even if you are
very fit, if you uninterruptedly sit for a great percentage
of the time, you’re still at an increased risk of dying
prematurely
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Research by the NASA scientist responsible for monitoring
the astronauts, shows your body declines rapidly when
sitting for long periods
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Simply standing up over 30 times a day is a powerful
antidote to long periods of sitting and is more effective
than walking
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There are virtually unlimited opportunities for movement
throughout the day, from doing housework or gardening, to
cooking and even just standing up every 10 minutes
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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
By Dr. Mercola
If you’re like most people, myself included, you probably
spend a large portion of each day in a seated position. It’s
hard to avoid these days, as computer work predominates, and
most also spend many hours each week driving to and from work.
Mounting research now suggests that
sitting in and of itself is an independent risk
factor for poor health and premature death—even if you exercise
regularly.
Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA’s Life Sciences
Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals,
presents a simple yet powerful scientific explanation for why
sitting has such a dramatic impact on your health, and how you
can simply and easily counteract the ill effects of sitting.
She was one of the primary doctors responsible for ensuring
the health of the astronauts as they went into space,
investigating the health ramifications of space travel, and what
can be done to counter them.
On a side note, one of my initial life ambitions was actually
to be an astronaut, up until college when I opted for pre-med
instead. I’m glad I didn’t pursue being an astronaut because I
think there are far too many health dangers associated with
working in space. But it was definitely an initial ambition of
mine.
My primary passion is improving health which is why I’m very
excited about Dr. Vernikos’ work. There have been a number of
studies within the last year or two that show that even if you
are very fit, exercising as much as five times a week for a half
hour to an hour each time, you can fall far short of optimum
fitness if you sit most of the rest of the time. You’re even at
an increased risk of dying prematurely.
Dr. Vernikos’ research with astronauts has clarified why this
occurs and, even more importantly, provides us with a simple
regimen that could counteract those consequences.
In order to determine why regular exercise does not appear to
compensate for the negative effects of prolonged sitting, some
of her research focused on finding out what type of movement is
withdrawn by sitting. What she discovered was as
revolutionary as it was counterintuitive. Not only did she
discover that the act of standing up is more effective than
walking for counteracting the ill effects of sitting, the key is
how many times you stand up.
It’s actually the change in posture that is the most
powerful signal, in terms of having a beneficial impact on your
health, not the act of standing in and of itself. Put another
way, the key to counteract the ill effects of sitting is to
repeatedly interrupt your sitting. The key is frequent
intermittent interactions with gravity. Standing up 35 times at
once will provide only a small percent of the benefit of
standing up once every 20 minutes.
It’s All About Interacting Regularly With Gravity
During Skylab, which was the longest mission Dr. Vernikos
worked on in the early 1970s, many medical observers noted that
astronauts were prematurely aging
while in space. Interestingly, the changes that were occurring
were found to be very similar to what happens to you when you’re
bedridden, and to the aging process itself. Initially, Dr.
Vernikos referred to these phenomena as parallel processes, as
she could not prove a cause and effect that were identical to
all three.
That eventually changed when she was doing a bed-rest study.
“I was helping a friend out whose parents had come
from Greece and spoke no English,” she says. “The
lady had fallen and broken her hip, had it fixed and
replaced. But she refused to stand up and get out of bed.
She eventually ended up in a nursing home in California...
What struck me at the nursing home was that many of the
things I saw in these older people were very similar to what
I could see in my subjects who have been lying in bed for
seven days. Especially when they got out of bed, when
balance and coordination is affected, and they would pass
out when standing up, and they would shuffle their feet.
I thought, well, this is very strange. The people who
are in bed, and the astronauts, recover. But here are these
people in the nursing home who are showing exactly the same
changes. Maybe one should turn the question around?
Maybe the question is not ‘what causes the changes in
them—is it or isn’t it aging?’ Maybe it is the conditions
that they find themselves in—the inactivity or the relative
inactivity in space that induces these changes rather than
the number of years one has? When I started asking that
question, then some of the research began to make sense.”
Did you know that the changes in bone and muscle that occur
here on Earth in one year’s time–approximately one percent loss
of bone or one percent loss of muscle–occur in just one week to
one month when you’re in space? Incredibly, you get close to a
10-fold acceleration of the aging process when you live in a
gravity-free environment! And this is part of the equation when
it comes to explaining why chronic sitting is an independent
risk factor for premature death.
Astronaut Legend Proves Biological Age Can Be Counteracted
Astronaut John Glenn was the first man to perform an orbital
flight. He eventually became a US Senator, and at the age of 77
became the oldest man in space, thanks to Dr. Vernikos, when he
participated in her experiment to validate her theory of aging
in the microgravity of space.
“[Glenn] happened to be chair of the Committee on
Aging at the time,” she says. “It occurred to him,
as he was listening to all these testimonies, that what he
heard was very much like what he had experienced and what he
knew his colleagues were experiencing as they flew. So, he
got very excited.
One day in 1997, he walked into my office. He had
done some fantastic research... comparing the aerospace
medicine textbook with the PDR on the effects of aging and
drew comparisons between the two. He said, ‘Well, I think if
I flew again, it could provide information that could help
everyone as we age’... I was concerned not because of what
might happen to him during the nine days of flight, but what
might happen to him in terms of recovery.”
Still, the flight took place, placing Glenn at the age of 77
in space with five other astronauts, averaging in age between 35
and 45. The results, which were double-blind, were presented
before a full auditorium at the NIH.
“What they showed on the slide was that out of the
seven people who flew, one was an outlier. So, we all
thought to ourselves, ‘Oh, dear, they’re his. He’s an
outlier. He’s older, that’s why'... This confirms that if
you’re older, you will react differently.”
But when the identities of the astronauts in the data points
were revealed, John Glenn was NOT the outlier. A 35-year-old
astronaut was. Glenn was actually right in the middle of the
cluster of astronauts, suggesting that if you’re healthy and
fit, you really can do anything, regardless of your
age. His recovery post-flight also turned out to be just as fast
as his younger peers.
Your Lifestyle Determines How Quickly Your Body Ages
What this means for us living permanently here on Earth is
that the changes that accompany aging are more likely a result
of our lifestyle rather than the inevitable outcome associated
with a numerical or physiological age. The good news is that you
can prevent, and to a great degree delay, the damage associated
with a large portion of biological aging, especially the most
crippling, which is pain with movement and loss of flexibility
that you had as a youth.
It also means that getting too hung up on a once-a-day
exercise routine is to put the cart before the horse. 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.
“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 says.
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!”
The other thing is that when I say ‘Stand up,’ then
you say, ‘Okay, standing is the opposite of sitting.’ No,
standing is not the opposite of sitting, because sitting
continuously is bad for you, and standing continuously is
bad for you. The body is not designed to respond to square
waves. Any retail employee will tell you that they suffer
all kinds of consequences of many hours of standing on the
job. Even nurses have known this for years: standing on the
job is not good for you It’s about interrupting the sitting.
The interrupting the sitting is not necessarily walking; it
is the change in posture [that matters].”
Gravity as a Stimulus to Achieve Health...
Interestingly, lipoprotein lipase is dramatically reduced
during inactivity, and increases with activity, the most
effective activity being, you guessed it, standing up
from a seated position. Lipoprotein lipase is an enzyme that
attaches to fat in your bloodstream and transports it into your
muscles to be used as fuel. So essentially, simply by standing
up, you are actively helping your body to burn fat for fuel. But
what is it about the mechanism of standing up that would account
for this?
“These are all movements, almost below-threshold kind
of movements, that do not burn up a lot of calories, as we
know them, but that are designed to work against gravity,”
Dr. Vernikos explains.
Dr. Vernikos views gravity a bit differently from the norm.
She thinks of gravity as a virtual rod that runs through your
body when you’re standing up; down to the center of the Earth.
This virtual rod acts as a stimulus for your body, or put
another way, gravity is a source of stimulation to your body.
When you use it; when you challenge its downward force, you get
a sense of acceleration and a sense of fun. Examples include
jumping, skipping rope, cycling, downhill skiing, snow- or
bodyboarding...
“I’ve come to the conclusion that all the fun
activities that we indulge in are based on gravity,”
she says. “All these fun activities, all these games and
play that we think of, are gravity-dependent. We are using
gravity every which way. The moral to the story is be a
child again. Have fun. Play!”
On Picking a Better Office Chair... And Standing Up 35 Times a
Day
A better alternative to the traditional office chair,
according to Dr. Vernikos, would be an upright wooden chair with
no armrest.
“I will accept the armrest if you promise me that you
really rest your elbows on it. You’re not resting your
elbows, are you? If you rest your elbows and push them back
every so often, which means your shoulder blades are being
pushed back, and then you can relax again. But you do it as
often as you possibly can. That will correct a lot of your
postural problems. But if you sit in a hard back chair, a
good old-fashioned chair, it can have a nice comfortable
pillow, but it forces you to stand up and to sit up
straight,” she says.
In the end, it’s really all about structuring your life to
incorporate everyday body movements that your parents and
grandparents used to do in the course of day-to-day living:
picking stray socks off the floor, stirring a pot of sauce,
reaching up high for an item in a cupboard, getting off the
couch to change the channel, walking to the mailbox and back.
Think about it... if you didn’t have a computer or a smart
phone, what would you have to do to get that message to a
friend, for example?
Dr. Vernikos calls these types of movements gravity habits or
“G habits.” These are all movements that are quantified as
non-exercise activities, and the challenge is to get more of
them into your daily life. When it comes to interrupting your
sitting, you want to stand up around 35 times a day or so to
counteract the cardiovascular health risks associated with
sitting. This is based on double-blind research where volunteers
would spend four days in bed to induce detrimental changes. She
then tested two groups to see which was more effective, walking
or standing, and how long would you have to walk or how many
times do you have to stand up to get better again?
- 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
What I Now Do to Interrupt My Sitting
After reading Dr. Vernikos book, Sitting Kills, Moving
Heals, I was inspired to give some serious attention to
this because even though I perform a lot of structured exercise,
including high intensity interval training, I was guilty of
sitting down a vast majority of the rest of the day.
So what I’ve done is this: I found an online timer and set it
to go off every 20 minutes. When it goes off, I stand up and do
four jump squats. I thought of this after looking at a table of
different activities that increase your exposure to gravity in
her book. One of them was jumping up and down, which gets you up
to six times gravity. Alternatively, I simply stand up really
slow and sit really slow five times doing a Foundation posture
or I do four or five one legged squats and alternate during each
period.
As explained by Dr. Vernikos, squatting is an extension of
standing. If you squat
and stand, you can get the maximum benefit of working against
the force of gravity. By adding jumping to it (going from a
squat to a jump, landing into a squat again), you end up with
about 6.5 G’s.
However, an interesting update to this interview is that I
introduced Dr. Vernikos to Dr. Eric Goodman, the creator of
Foundation Training, and she was very excited to learn of his
work as she believes it may provide an even more effective
solution. They have yet to actually meet at this time but I am
hoping they will have a fruitful collaboration and be able to
report, at a future date, on a refinement of these current
recommendations.
It’s Never Too Late to Start Delaying Aging
One of the most exciting aspects of Dr. Vernikos research is
that it shows how dynamic and changeable the human body is. You
can reverse damage already incurred, and it’s never too late to
start. That is a massively important fact that you want to
embrace. Your body CAN recover from the damage you have likely
been inflicting on it for decades. Obviously, the younger and
healthier you are, the quicker your body will likely respond.
“That’s why I called my first book The G-Connection:
Harness Gravity and Reverse Aging,” she says.
“[B]ecause yes, you can change what you are. Your body
changes all the time. We have new cells being generated all
the time – new brain cells – which was thought not to be the
case some years ago, as well as new cells everywhere,
including skin cells.”
You can boost the gravity stimulus by using either a sway
plate, or a whole body vibration plate such as the
Power Plate. This can be particularly beneficial for if
you’re advancing in age. But other than that, what Dr. Vernikos
is advocating is NOT exercise. It’s simply regular movements of
everyday life:
“When you’re moving around and you see a speck on the
floor, you bend down to pick it up, is that exercise? No. If
you reach up to get a book off the shelf or a pot off the
cupboard, is it exercise? No. When you brush your teeth, is
it better to brush with a brush or with an electric brush?
Electric brush already takes away some of the movement that
we would normally do with a regular brush. Play golf...
[but] don’t take a cart. Carry your golf-bag.”
An important and, I think, fascinating perspective that Dr.
Vernikos brings to the table is that if you had to
choose between starting up non-exercise activity or starting up
an exercise program. Dr. Eric Goodman also believes similarly.
He is in fantastic shape. He used to be a personal trainer and
body builder but hasn’t worked out formally in many years; he
just does his Foundation work throughout each day. They both
believe non-exercise activities are more important than regular
exercise programs, but ideally you would do both. Dr. Vernikos
states:
“Yes, it’s my belief that the non-exercise activities
are the foundation of your body tuning and your health, and
more important than regular exercise,” she says.
“Regular exercise is the next step. You build on the
foundation.”
In short, as long as we understand the basic requirements
that are dictated by our human ancestors, our biochemistry or
genetics, and if we honor those with relatively simple
techniques that only take a few minutes a day, it can have
dramatic and profound implications on our health, and on the
quality and length of our life. To learn more, I highly
recommend picking up Dr. Vernikos book, Sitting Kills,
Moving Heals, available online at Amazon. It’s an easy
read, but it helps to reinforce the concepts discussed in this
interview.
© Copyright 1997-2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/23/vernikos-sitting-kills.aspx
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