Tips for Staying Active in the Office to Counteract the Ills of a Sedentary Job

 

 

Nearly 70 percent of costs associated with health care are due to preventable conditions, and new research confirms that spending long hours sitting down during commuting and working can play a significant role in the development of chronic disease.

In fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that sitting in and of itself is an independent risk factor for poor health and premature death—even if you exercise regularly. Researchers have dubbed this phenomenon the "active couch potato effect."

Even the World Health Organization (WHO) now lists inactivity as the fourth biggest killer of adults, responsible for nine percent of premature deaths¹.
In the video above, Dr. Jeff Spencer shares his tips on how to stay active at the workplace.

Research by Dr. Joan Vernikos², former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division (one of the primary doctors assigned to keep the astronauts from deteriorating in space) and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, shows that your body actually needs to perpetually interact with gravity through motion in order to function optimally.

Interestingly, with regard to counteracting the ill effects of sitting, simply standing up every 10 minutes or so is actually more effective than taking a walk. And, it’s not how long you stand up, but how many times you stand up that makes the difference.

How to Get More Active During Work Hours

A recent article in The Guardian³ offers several common sense tips for getting more movement into your day-to-day life, especially during work hours.

Using a pedometer will help you assess how many steps you take throughout your work day; then simply make a concerted effort to continuously increase the number of steps you take daily. Simple changes to the way you move about the office can add up, such as:

• Walking across the hall to talk to a coworker instead of sending an email
• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator
• Parking your car further away from the entrance
• Taking a longer, roundabout way to your desk

 Another strategy that can help eliminate some of the sitting is to hold standing-only office meetings. This tends to discourage unnecessary discourse and make meetings more productive in less time. Making slight alterations to your individual work space can also make a difference. For example, you can:

• Organize the layout of your office space in such a way that you have to stand up to reach oft-used files, the telephone, or your printer, rather than having everything within easy reach. Ideally, you’ll want to stand up at least once every 10 minutes, or more, so simply moving one or more things you frequently reach for could allow you to build this kind of movement into your regular work day.
• Use an exercise ball for a chair. Unlike sitting in a chair, sitting on an exercise ball engages your core muscles and helps improve balance and flexibility. Occasional bouncing can also help your body interact with gravity to a greater degree than sitting on a stationary chair.
• Alternatively, use an upright wooden chair with no armrest, which will force you to sit up straight, and encourage shifting your body more frequently than a cushy office chair.
• Use a standing workstation. Standing rather than sitting while doing your work can also be a helpful option. For a demonstration on proper posture, whether you’re sitting or using a standing workstation, check out Kelly Starrett’s video in this previous article.

Mounting Evidence Indicts Sitting as Independent Risk Factor for Poor Health

In recent years, researchers have taken a serious look at the effects of inactivity, and have repeatedly found that not moving or engaging in very limited-range movements for extended periods of time has a profoundly negative impact on health and longevity. For example, a recent analysis⁴ of 18 studies (which in total included nearly 800,000 people) found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least. And, while prolonged sitting was linked to an overall greater mortality risk from any cause, the strongest link was to death due to diabetes.

According to lead researcher Thomas Yates, MD⁵:

“Even for people who are otherwise active, sitting for long stretches seems to be an independent risk factor for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease.”

An earlier study⁶ highlighted much of the recent evidence linking sitting with biomarkers of poor metabolic health, showing how total sitting time correlates with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other prevalent chronic health problems—even if you exercise regularly. In other words, even if you're fairly physically active, riding your bike to work or hitting the gym four or five days a week -- you may still succumb to the effects of too much sitting if the majority of your day is spent behind a desk. According to the authors:

"Even if people meet the current recommendation of 30 minutes of physical activity on most days each week, there may be significant adverse metabolic and health effects from prolonged sitting -- the activity that dominates most people's remaining 'non-exercise' waking hours."

What I Now Do to Interrupt My Sitting

Dr. Vernikos’ groundbreaking research into the health effects of anti-gravity situations may actually be among the most practical, as she has been able to determine what it is about uninterrupted sitting that robs you of your health, and what kind of movements will counteract this damage—and how much of it is required to make a difference. In essence, sitting prevents your body from interacting with and exerting itself against gravity. While not nearly as severe as the antigravity experienced by astronauts, uninterrupted sitting mimics a microgravity situation, which has the effect of accelerating the aging process. 

Thankfully, Dr. Vernikos’ research shows that simply standing up, about 35 times a day or so, will counteract the cardiovascular health risks associated with uninterrupted sitting. This is based on double-blind research where volunteers would spend four days in bed to induce detrimental changes. She then tested two groups to see which was more effective, walking or standing, and how long you would have to walk, or how many times you’d have to stand up to get better again. Her findings revealed that:

• Standing up once every hour was more effective than walking on a treadmill for 15 minutes for cardiovascular and metabolic changes.
• Sitting down and standing up repeatedly for 32 minutes does NOT have the same effect as standing up once, 32 times over the course of a day. To get the benefit, the stimulus must be spread throughout the day.

After reading Dr. Vernikos’ book, Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, I was inspired to give some serious attention to this because even though I perform a lot of structured exercise, including high intensity interval training, I was guilty of sitting down a vast majority of the rest of the day. So what I’ve done is this: I found an online timer and set it to go off every 10 minutes. When it goes off, I stand up and do one of the following:

• Four jump squats. (I thought of this after looking at a table of different activities that increase your exposure to gravity in her book. One of them was jumping up and down, which gets you up to six times gravity. Squatting is an extension of standing, so if you squat and stand, you can get the maximum benefit of working against the force of gravity. By adding jumping to it—going from a squat to a jump, landing into a squat again—you end up with about 6.5 Gs)
• Stand up really slow and sit really slow five times doing a Foundation posture, or
• Four or five one legged squats, alternating legs each period and for the third round, squatting with both legs. This will also go a long way towards building your leg strength and costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time

Sedentary Lifestyle Linked to More Harmful Body Fat

Your level of day-to-day activity also influences the type of fat your body accumulates, with more sedentary lifestyles being linked to higher levels of “white fat”—a type of fat that is less metabolically active than so-called “brown fat.” Brown fat is a heat-generating type of fat that burns energy instead of storing it, and this may have important implications when it comes to weight management. Previous research has shown that certain groups of people tend to have more brown fat than others, and there are direct correlations between the activation of brown fat and metabolic measures of good health.
For example:

• Slender people have more brown fat than obese people do
• Younger people have more brown fat than elderly people, and
• People with normal blood sugar levels have more brown fat than those with high blood sugar

Exercise, it turns out, helps transform white fat into healthier brown fat. Both mice and men participating in a recent study were found to respond to intense exercise in this way. As reported by Medical News Today⁷:

“The exercise regime had the men training on an exercise bicycle for 12 weeks and the mice running on an exercise wheel for 11 days. Compared to the original white fat caused by sedentary behavior, the new, browner fat, was much more metabolically active... Kristin Stanford, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, said: '... It's clear that when fat gets trained, it becomes browner and more metabolically active. We think there are factors being released into the bloodstream from the healthier fat that are working on other tissues.'  

... Stanford says the findings provide even more motivation to go out and start exercising. Even if you don't lost weight, the study suggests that exercising will still train your fat to be more metabolically active and improve overall metabolism and health.”

Keeping Active for Life

Avoiding sitting for long periods of time may at first seem “impossible” if you commute to a fulltime desk job, but really, all you need to do is alter the way you work and travel in small ways. For example, standing up every 10 minutes or so could easily compensate for the majority of the damage associated with sitting. Simply reorganizing your office space to be less convenient, forcing yourself to repeatedly get out of your chair, can help you build more physical movement into your workday. 

It’s important to realize that while modern technology has ushered in an era of previously unfathomed speed, connectivity and productivity, it comes at a big price if you’re not careful about counteracting factors such as increased physical inactivity. The answer is quite simply to revert back to a lifestyle that incorporates natural movement, even if you have to devise “ploys” like moving your printer to the other side of the room, instead of having it on your desk within easy reach. 

It’s becoming increasingly clear that your body needs perpetual movement in order to function optimally, and this includes both non-exercise movements, and a more regimented exercise plan. In the case of the latter, exercises in which you use your body the way it was designed to be used is quite clearly the most powerful way to optimize your health and fitness. High intensity interval training (HIIT) is an example of this. 

This type of Peak Fitness exercise mimics the way ancient hunter-gatherers used their bodies, and research has again and again confirmed that HIIT outperforms traditional aerobic cardio exercise. That said, I believe it’s important to include a variety of exercises, as doing the same ones all the time will lead to a relative tolerance and will not provide your body with the variety of stresses it needs to continuously adapt, improve, and grow stronger. Four additional types that will turn your Peak Fitness regimen into a truly comprehensive exercise plan are:

1. Aerobic
2. Strength Training
3. Core Exercises (including Pilates, yoga, and/or Foundation Training)
4. Stretching

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Fat-Boosting Gene Mystery 'Solved'

The mystery of a genetic flaw which greatly increases the risk of obesity in one in six people has been solved by an international group of scientists.

A version of an obesity gene, called FTO, had been linked to a bigger belly, but the reason why was uncertain.

A study, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, showed it made fatty foods more tempting and altered levels of the hunger hormone, ghrelin.

Obesity experts said drugs targeting ghrelin might reduce weight gain.

There is a strong family link with obesity, and a person's genetic code is thought to play a major role in the risk of them becoming overweight.

People have two copies of the FTO gene - one from each parent - and each copy comes in a high and a low-risk form. Those with two-high risk copies of the FTO gene are thought to be 70% more likely to become obese than those with low-risk genes.

But no-one knew why.

Hormonal

A team, led by researchers at University College London, tested two groups of men. All were a normal weight, but one group had the high-risk FTO genes and the other was low risk.

The first tests looked at levels of the hormone ghrelin either side of a meal in 10 men from each group.

Levels of the hormone, which makes people hungry, did not fall as far in the high-risk patients after the meal. Their ghrelin levels also began to climb more quickly.

In separate tests, a series of brain scans after a meal showed further differences between the two groups. Men with the high-risk genes found pictures of high-fat foods more appealing than the low-risk men.

Dr Rachel Batterham, the head of the centre for obesity research at University College London, told the BBC News website: "Their brain is set up to be particularly interested in anything to do with high-calorie food."

She said they were "biologically programmed to eat more".

Help?

Dr Batterham said understanding how FTO affected the odds of becoming overweight would help patients.

She said exercise such as cycling was an excellent way to lower ghrelin levels and there was a significant amount of research from pharmaceutical companies working on the hormone.

She added: "Also protein meals do lower ghrelin more, so anything that suppresses ghrelin is more likely to be effective in FTO patients."

The FTO mutations were probably life-saving at one point in human history when piling on the pounds in the summer would help people survive the winter.

Commenting on the findings, Prof Steve Bloom, from Imperial College London, said: "We know the tendency to overeat in a society with too much food and no need for exercise is inherited.

"Slowly we are discovering the factors which make us overweight and this study, encompassing not only demonstration of a higher level of hunger hormone, ghrelin, but also changes in the brain associated with ghrelin's action, is an important step forward."

The study was funded by the Rosetrees Trust and the Medical Research Council.

Source: http://dld.bz/cHPuu

5 Simple Swaps to Make Your Summer a Little Bit Healthier

Summer days are filled with relaxing moments with friends and family — which can often mean hours-long meals, frozen treats, and sugary drinks. Try one or two of these simple swaps this week to make sure you don't ruin the fun by stressing over a few extra calories.

1. Ice cream treat: A stop at your favorite ice cream parlor is a worthy treat on hot days, but if you're not careful it can become a daily habit. Stock up on one of these portioned frozen yogurt treats instead — at many under 100 calories each, you can calm cravings without reaching for the cone.
2. Cocktail hour: It's hard to resist an evening of drinks on the patio, but those glasses of sangria can add up, calorie wise. Remember to savor each glass slowly and choose a lower-calorie spirit to imbibe. Get more tips for saving on happy hour here.
3. Picnic in the park: A picnic spread is like a never-ending buffet of fried, creamy, or sugary foods ready for you to enjoy. Make a few of these healthy picnic recipes to take along with you to ensure you've got options when that second helping of fried chicken is calling your name.
4. Iced coffee break: It's too hot, and you need something frosty to wake you up. While an occasional Frappuccino can be a great treat, making your iced coffee break a daily habit can set you back thousands of calories. Cut the calories by more than half by opting for light options, nonfat milk, or a smoothie instead. Here are the healthiest iced Starbucks drinks to order instead of the Frappuccino.
5. A BBQ every week: Your social calendar is filled with backyard Summer parties, which can mean lots of hamburgers, hot dogs, and chips and dip in the foreseeable future. Navigate those weekend barbecues by swapping that sausage for grilled shrimp and veggies, cutting down on the condiments, and bringing your own healthy dip. Get over 40 more healthy grilling tips and tricks here!

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Facial Fitness

 

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In the same way that you can tone up your legs with a good run or lift weights to zap flabby arms, you can use facial exercising to benefit your face tone. Aside from stimulating your facial skin’s circulation, a good facial workout can also tighten up the underlying muscles to help create a taut, more youthful appearance.

Easy and quick facial exercises

The brow smoother
Diminish the appearance of hooding on your upper eyelids with this easy brow smoothing exercise. To begin, spread your fingers across the centre of your forehead. Next, pull your fingertips down while lifting up your eyebrows. Do this for a count of 30 seconds three times a day.

The cheek sculptor
To lift and tone the facial muscles that give shape to your cheeks simply place an index finger on the top of each cheek bone. Now smile so that your cheeks lift up while pulling your top lip flat against your teeth, making sure your top and lower lips are kept far apart. Repeat and release 20 times in a row. Repeat three times a day.

The jaw toner
Want to prevent a sagging jaw line and create a bit more definition to avoid a double-chin? Open your mouth and curl your lower lip over your bottom teeth. Slowly open and close your mouth five times. Perform this exercise three times a day.

The turkey neck buster
Stick your tongue out as far as it can go and curl it upwards as though you’re trying to touch your nose. Hold this pose for 10 seconds and then repeat, but this time try and touch your chin. Repeat this exercise 10 times. You know the drill; perform three times a day.

The glow booster
When you apply your moisturiser at night, gently massage it into your face with both your hands using broad, even strokes. This will help stimulate blood flow to your skin to give you a healthy-looking glow and assist with better product penetration.

Got it? With a little dedication, facial exercise enthusiasts believe you can start to see a difference in your face in as little as a week, so happy facercising!

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Medicate Yourself With Food!

 

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One of the biggest topics in the health and wellness world right now is using food as medicine. We often look for the quick fix to our health issues rather than looking at the real issue. Popping a pill for high cholesterol while eating a big mac isn’t going to solve the long-term problem. If you want to be healthy you have to give your body the right fuel. You wouldn’t put petrol in a diesel car because you know it would ruin the engine. So it makes sense that when we continue to put harmful foods in our bodies we eventually feel and look like what we eat.

Many think of fruits and veggies as a way to eat ourselves thin when we should really start looking at what these foods can do for our bodies other than being a solution to dropping those last couple of pounds. Revising the way you eat can absolutely turn your health around. Start looking at that salad as a way to nourish and heal your body and you’ll not only start feeling great, but you may just feel tempted to pull those skinny jeans out of your closet that you’ve beenhiding for so long!

Stash these Foods in Your Medicine Cabinet!
Berries
We love berries! Full of vitamins and minerals, loaded with fiber (to keep you full!) and vitamin C, berries are essential in your refrigerator. They have zero fat and are the lowest carbohydrate of any fruit. Research shows that berries are proven to slow down the aging process, boost immunity, and can help protect against certain types of cancers. Blueberries have the highest level of antioxidants helping to protect cells from free radicals. Blackberries cultivate a strong immune system, fighting off symptoms of the common cold.

Yogurt
Not only will you reap the benefits of protein and calcium, but also yogurt has key minerals that help fight osteoporosis. Yogurt is a perfect snack for diabetics and everyone else because it can help maintain blood sugar levels. Try topping some low fat Greek yogurt with berries of your choice and you’ve got yourself a snack filled with benefits!

Spinach
While you should try and incorporate a variety of leafy greens in your diet to reap the most benefits, spinach has been shown to protect against chronic disease such as heart disease, diabetes and some forms of cancer. If salads aren’t your cup of tea try adding a handful of this disease fighting leaf into a smoothie. You wont taste a thingexcept deliciousness!

Beans and Legumes
Loaded with phytochemicals, folic acid, fiber, iron, magnesium and many other great health benefits, beans are inexpensive and great to add to a meal for a low calorie vegetarian option. Beans and legumes can help reduce the risk of cancer, lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels. They can also help stabilize blood sugar. There’s no reason not to fill up on these little guys!

Eggs
Eggs are packed with high protein, and are a great source of carotenoids, choline, and xeanthin. Choline is an essential nutrient, especially for women who are pregnant. They also promote eye health and prevent macular degeneration, which is a leading cause of blindness in many older people. We give eggs a thumbs up here!

Salmon
This fish has healthy and nutritious omega-3 fatty acids that can help lower blood fats and prevent blood clots associated with heart disease. The American Heart Association recommends eating at least two servings of fish (especially fatty fish) at least twice a week. Salmon or other fatty fish such as tuna can reduce the potential intake of saturated fat from other higher fat food!

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Eat Fresh!

Eating more foods as close to their natural state as possible may help keep your skin looking its best for longer.

 

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Eating more foods as close to their natural state as possible may help keep your skin looking its best for longer.

Anyone who’s embraced some type of raw food diet will be the first to tell you it’s improved their health in leaps and bounds and many medical doctors agree. Choosing food that’s fresh and in its natural state is a great way to ensure you get the maximum nutritional value out of each and every bite. This is because a lot of the time, cooking and processing food ends up destroying its nutrients.

It’s also good for skin
In short, getting lots of vitamins and minerals in your diet will always be good for your health as well as your skin. If you’re consciously eating as many raw foods as possible, or choosing raw items over processed, nutrient devoid items, you’re definitely going to improve the intake of nutrients needed for healthy skin. Collagen-encouraging antioxidant vitamins like A, C and E and minerals like zinc are essential to your skin’s reparative process.

The list of celebrities who’ve embraced raw food diets or try to eat as much raw food as possible is endless and includes big names like Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore, Alicia Silverstone, Madonna, Angela Basset and Susan Sarandon. You’d have to agree, they’ve all got amazing, glowing skin.

Eat consciously
Now we’re not saying you should convert to a serious raw food diet and turn up your nose at cake for the rest of your life. What we’re suggesting is that next time you’re faced with choosing a snack, you consider picking up a handful of antioxidant-rich berries or vitamin-packed nuts in place of a fatty pie or a packet of chips that have low nutritional value. You may find that increasing the amount of raw, fresh food that you consume sees you drop a dress size and enjoy more radiant-looking skin.

Glow baby glow
Aside from eating well, there are other ways to assist in getting a beautiful, radiant-looking complexion and one of them is to invest in a good exfoliator, something like POND’S Perfect Colour Complex Naturals gentle exfoliating facial foam. This will help remove any old, dead skin that lies on the surface of your face and dulls your complexion.

Another good reason to regularly exfoliate is that when your skin isn’t clogged with old surface cells it’ll have an easier time absorbing the beneficial ingredients in your skincare products. One product that’ll go a long way to helping you get that ‘glow’ is POND’S Flawless Radiance anti-spot intensive even tone serum. Just a few drops every day will help prevent pigmentation before it appears and give your skin a bright, new luminous look.

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