The Impact of Sitting All Day – Part 3
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
Related Posts
Stretches for Head, Neck and Shoulders
These stretches can either be done as a complete series or individually and most of them can be done at your desk. Some will ease tension in specific parts of the body whilst others are generally relaxing. Please remember stretching should always be relaxing and never painful! To get maximum benefit from these stretches you should do them daily and hold each stretch for 15 seconds and repeat twice. Head And Neck
- Head rotation - keeping your head level, slowly turn from side to side.
- Slowly drop your head sideways moving your right ear towards your right shoulder and push down with your left shoulder - repeat on other side.
- Stand with your feet shoulder distance apart; look down towards your right foot (hold for 15 seconds), dropping left shoulder - repeat the exercise looking towards your left foot.
- Drop the lower jaw and open the mouth wide.
- Shrugging shoulders in a circular movement - forwards and then backwards.
- Raise your shoulders high and let them drap heavily; whilst letting breathing out.
- Clasp hands behind your head, with elbows back - push your chin back. Hold for 15 seconds. From this position look down and push your elbows together at the front and hold for a further 15 seconds.
- Clasp you hands and push up towards the ceiling, palms up now look down.
- Sit upright in a chair with a firm seat. Raise your arms as high as possible and remaining seated drop forward letting your head and arms hang heavily towards the floor.
Difference Between Sports and Deep Tissue Massage
- Seated Acupressure Neck & Shoulder massage is a short focused massage to release tension in the Neck & Shoulders
- Choose Sports massage over deep tissue massage when you go to the gym with a specific sporting goal in mind, i.e. you are going for more than just generally keeping fit. Or you are really focused on your sport including actively taking part in competitions or you are keen to improve your performance or your training is solely focused on your sport and you do not cross train.
Sports Massage Deep Tissue Massage Incorporates Deep Pressure Yes Yes Similar massage stokes Yes Yes Releases muscle tension, pain, physical stress and stiffness while restoring flexibility Yes Yes Able to resolve common injuries and woes for inactive, desk bound people Yes Yes Incorporates a custom blend of oils and hot stones to relieve tension and anxiety No Yes Athlete orientated including - Focus on improving athletic performance - Incorporates stretching - Assessing injury risk - Rehabilitation after injury Yes No Knowledge of sport - Able to deliver specific pre-exercise treatment for any given sport - Able to deliver specific post-exercise treatment for any given sport - Able to deliver specific treatment during intense training for any given sport Yes No Introduction to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Way back when I first started at Barclays, one of the first clients I treated was returning to work after being signed off with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Which is a common and painful disorder of the wrist, caused by pressure on the median nerve which creates numbness and tingling in the fingers. At its worse it can lead to loss of grip and permanent numbness in the fingers. Repetitive computer use thought to be one of the causes, but scientific studies have shown contradictory results. A recent review of the scientific evidence found that frequent computer or mouse use can nearly double the risk of developing the condition. Repeated tapping, scrolling and swiping on your smartphone or tablet can also lead ot carpal tunnel problems. If these sort of repeated movements are the cause then improving your posture will help. But it is also worth ruling out other possible causes such as:
- Diabetes
- Arthritis
- Thyriod Disease
