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Get Up, Stand Up New evidence confirms what you knew already: hours of sitting is a drain on health. Thanks to a smorgasbord of media attention, few can be unaware that a sedentary lifestyle is bad for you. But now a team of researchers at MU is weighing in with some news you might not have heard. A word of warning: It's a message you'll not want to take sitting down. New findings by an MU team led by Marc Hamilton, an associate professor of biomedical research, indicates that prolonged periods of sitting, be they hours-long office sit-downs or extended living-room lounging, produce ill effects that go well beyond the risk of a bulging belly. In a series of studies published by the journal Diabetes, Hamilton and his colleague Theodore Zderic, a post-doctoral researcher, determined that sitting leads to the suppression of lipase, an enzyme that breaks down fat in the body. Lipase also plays a central role in cholesterol regulation and metabolic risks associated with heart disease and diabetes. The researchers have coined the phrase "inactivity physiology" to describe their work. Their most recent discoveries -- results that have attracted the attention of and inspired multiple invitations for collaborative projects by researchers across the globe -- are just one more indication that sitting too much is a distinct and serious health hazard, they say. It's also important to note, Hamilton and Zderic add, that sitting too much is not the same as exercising too little. "The enzymes in the blood vessels of muscles responsible for fat burning are shut off within hours of not standing," Hamilton said. "Standing and moving lightly will re-engage the enzymes, but since people are awake 16 hours a day, it stands to reason that when they sit much of that time they are losing the opportunity for optimal metabolism throughout the day." Losing this "optimal metabolism" can have profound effects on health, including increasing one's risk of diabetes, cardiovascular illness and, of course, obesity. Alarmingly, the researchers found that exercise alone, even when practiced for an hour a day, was not sufficient to reverse sitting's negative effects. "You can appreciate that our legs are big and strong because they must be used all the time," Hamilton says. "There is a large amount of energy associated with standing every day that can't be easily compensated for by 30 to 60 minutes at the gym." A better strategy, Hamilton suggests, involves remaining upright. Standing while doing household chores, shopping, chatting on the phone and other activities can keep one's enzymes active while as much as doubling the body's metabolic rate. Working at a "stand-up desk," a work surface preferred by notables as diverse as Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill and Donald Rumsfeld, is also an option worth exploring. "Because our research reveals that too little exercise and excessive sitting do not change health by the same genes and biological mechanisms," Hamilton says, "it offers hope for people who either are not seeing results from exercise or cannot exercise regularly. The lifestyle change we are studying is also unlike exercise because it does not require that people squeeze an extra hour into their days and get sweaty at the gym, but instead improving the quality of what they already are doing." |
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Published by the Office of Research. ©2009 Curators of the University of Missouri. Click here to contact the editor.
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