Our ninety-degree knee-mesis

Sitting is the new smoking and the more you sit, the worse your health becomes. 

Sitting is as bad for your health as smoking is, perhaps even more so. The health hazards of sitting were first highlighted back in the 1950s when researchers noticed a twofold increase in the risk of heart attack in London bus drivers compared to active bus conductors. Since then, several studies have reproduced statistics that paint a bleak picture for our health. One study, for example, found that prolonged sitting was associated with a 147% higher risk of heart disease, a 112% increased risk of diabetes and a 49% increased risk of an early death from any cause. Yes, ANY cause.

But how & why? When you eat something, your body converts that foodstuff into glucose which floats around in your blood ready to be used by cells as energy. The hormone insulin is what regulates this process, and the more receptive your cells are to insulin, the easier it is for them to withdraw this energy and perform optimally. The opposite is also true – if cells aren’t sensitive to insulin, in other words insulin resistant, they simply cannot suck up as much glucose as they’d like, and as a result, glucose concentrations in your blood rise. Very high blood glucose increases your risk for diabetes, and irritates blood vessels which increases the likelihood of high blood pressure and heart disease.

That’s where the connection to sitting comes into play. Sitting for hours on end, though it may not feel like it, is actually stressing your body and not doing your health any favours. We were built to move and it’s movement that helps regulate your energy. Skeletal muscle (which is what you use when you move around) is the largest insulin sensitive organ in your body, and accounts for 80% of glucose disposal. In other words, without moving, glucose in your blood simply has no-where to go and, as a result, your cells start to become insulin resistant. In that instance, all that insulin has left to do, is to store all the extra glucose as fat, generally around your waist, or around your organs. Not good.

You’d think that regular exercise would counter this effect – but that’s surprisingly, and unfortunately, not the case. Even if you exercise for the recommended 30-60 minutes each day, your risk of diabetes and heart disease is still elevated if you spend the rest of the day sitting. That’s why prolonged sitting is now considered an independent risk factor, irrespective of how active you are. There’s even a name for people like that … active couch potatoes!

With meals, meetings, computers, cars and television, opportunities to sit abound – so how do we counter our ninety degree knee-mesis?  By simply substituting sitting for standing. That’s the no-brainer solution that can effectively reduce your risk for disease. Metabolic changes kick in after only 30 minutes of sitting, so in an ideal world you’d want to be getting up for a few minutes every half hour. If that’s not practical, stick a post-it-note on the back of your hand that says: “Sit less, move more!” If the post-it note doesn’t stick then memorize this mantra: “Never sit when you can stand, and never stand when you can move!” Your life depends on it.