Sitting for eight
or more hours a day can be deadly.
That fact has
been hammered home in study after study showing thenegative health effects — including
heart disease, poor circulation and joint pain — associated with being parked
on your behind for most of the day. The only sure way to prevent those
problems, researchers have said, is to sit far less.
But there is
growing evidence that there are ways to reverse the damage without
necessarily committing to being on your feet for eight or more
hours a day.
A new study by researchers at Indiana University
published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise suggests
that the impaired blood flow in leg arteries can actually be reversed
by breaking up your sitting regimen with five-minute walking breaks.
Sitting can cause
blood to pool in the legs and prevent it from effectively flowing to the heart
— a precursor to cardiovascular problems. After just one hour of sitting,
normal blood flow became impaired by as much as 50 percent, the study found.
But the men who
walked for five minutes on a treadmill for each hour they sat didn’t see that
decline.
“American adults
sit for approximately eight hours a day,” Saurabh Thosar, the study’s lead
author, said in a statement. “The impairment in endothelial function is
significant after just one hour of sitting. It is interesting to see that light
physical activity can help in preventing this impairment.”
The findings add
to a growing body of evidence that all is not lost for people unwilling or
unable to get on the standing desk train or those who can’t do much about long
commutes. It is also the first experimental evidence that moderate
movement can promote healthy blood flow, in spite of sitting habits.
Courtesy:
www.washingtonpost.com
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