More how to chill out…

In part 1, I looked at the impact of sitting on your muscles,  and in part 2 I started to explore the impact on the rest of your body.  In this post I continue to explore the impact of sitting on your circulatory system including your heart. Heart Disease When sitting for prolonged periods of time, muscles burn less fat and blood flows more sluggishly, allowing fatty acids to more easily clog the heart.  In 2012 Ford & Caspersen in their research paper, Sedentary behaviour and cardiovascular disease: a review of prospective studies (International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 41, No 5 pages 1338 - 1353) showed that the people with the most sedentary time are more than twice as likely to have cardiovascular disease than those with the least. In 2012 Zedric and Hamilton found that just a few hours sitting suppresses a gene that helps keep your cardiovascular system healthy by controlling inflammation and blood clotting. T W Zedric & M T Hamilton, 2012 Identification of hemostatic genes expressed in human and rat leg muscles and a novel gene (LPP1/PAP2a) suppressed during prolonged physical inactivity (sitting), Lipids in Health and Disease, Vol 11 see http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1476-511X-11-137.pdf Cholesterol Sitting also means that your large postural support muscles are inactive.  When active these muscles produce a quite of beneficial molecules.  One molecule skeletal muscles produce is an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase - which you can think of as a vacuum cleaner for fats in the blood stream.  A study in rats showed that after 24 hours forced inactivity, their lipoprotein lipase acitivity was reduced by 90 - 95%, which led to a 75% drip in the ability of their muscles to remove fats from their bloodstream as will as a significant decrease in "good" (HDL) cholesterol. L Bay & Mark Hamilton, 2003, Suppression of skeletal muscle lipoprotein lipase activity during physical inactivity: a molecular reason to maintain daily low-intensity activity, Journal of Physiology, Vol 551, No 2 pages 673 - 682.See http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.2003.045591/full

As someone who from time to time stuggles to digest wheat or more specifically gluten which in the past has created holes in my intestine walls (leaky gut syndrome), I was interested in a recent piece of research. Like a lot of people if I eat too much wheat or gluten then I start to bloat and get digestive issues.  Researches have discovered that the reaction that some people have could be caused by fructans (the sugars in wheat, barley and rye).  The researchers from Monash University (in Austrialia) suspected that the sugar cold be the real cuplrit because people with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) still have some of the symptoms even after following a strict gluten free diet. In a 2013 research project, they noticed that the symptoms of people with gluten intolerance didn't change whether they ate food that was rich in gluten or not. They took 59 people with gluten intolerance and gaven them a different cereal bar to eat each week.  Although the bars all looked the same, one contained gluten, another fructans and the third had neither ingreditant.  The fructands bar increased bloating by 15% and gastrointestinal propblems by 13% and neither the gluten bar nor the one without either ingreditant had any effect. If frutans are the real problem then people with a gluten intollerance could use soy sauce as its low in sugars. While this research is interesting.  For me its a bit of a light bulb moment.  The reason is that I find that I can eat organic sourdough bread and I tollerate this much more.  Organic sourdough bread has gluten but due to the backing process it sis very low in fructans. Reference http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(17)36302-3/abstract

The focus of all pregnant women is a happy, health, baby and that includes carrying the baby full term obviously if there is no risk to the mother's health. Women in the US and the rest of the developed world are typically low in DHA (omega-3), with levels well below those reported in countries like Japan where more fish is eaten.  Women with low levels of the nutrient are much more likely to give birth prematurely.  Until recently there was no effective method to prevent spontaneous early preterm birth. Analyses of two clinical trials -- one in the U.S. and the other in the Australia -- suggest that thousands of early preterm births -- those at or before 34 weeks' gestation -- could be prevented if pregnant women took daily omega-3 supplements.  Taking the supplement can reduce the risk to just 1.5%.  Researchers estimated that more than 106,000 high-risk early preterm births could be avoided in the U.S. and about 1,100 could be prevented in Australia each year if pregnant women took daily supplements of omega-3. Reference https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013130104.htm