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How Your Office job is Affecting Your Metabolism:
The idea that long bouts of uninterrupted sitting might be bad for your health has gotten lots of attention over the past decade. The reason may seem obvious: If you’re sitting all the time, you’re not exercising. But emerging evidence suggests that there’s a deeper connection between sedentary time and lack of exercise, with the combination of both worse than either one on its own.
In a new study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at the University of Texas show that four days of prolonged sitting induces a state that they call “exercise resistance.”
They had 10 volunteers complete two four-day protocols that involved sitting around for more than 13 hours a day while taking fewer than 4,000 steps. At the end of one of the four-day periods, they did a vigorous one-hour treadmill workout.
Normally a one-hour workout would produce a set of metabolic benefits that persist for at least a day. Your insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance, both of which are associated with heart health, improve immediately. And your postprandial lipemia – the rise in triglycerides circulating in your blood after a fatty meal, which may contribute to blocked arteries – will be attenuated.
But when the researchers fed their volunteers a high-fat, high-sugar slurry of melted ice cream and half-and-half creamer the next day, their blood sugar, insulin and triglyceride levels shot up by the same amount regardless of whether they’d exercised the night before. After all the sitting, their workout no longer packed its usual health punch.
If exercise after extended sitting didn't help, why bother exercising?
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 27 2019, @12:13PM (10 children)
One hour isn't going to do shit. Now taking up renovating a church into a home and doing most of the labor yourself? That will get your metabolism up. Seriously, who the hell thinks you can put in one ninety-sixth of your time as exercise and see any noteworthy benefit?
Humans didn't evolve for ass-sitting. Either get up and do significant amounts of physical things too or live with the consequences.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:10PM (1 child)
Humans didn't evolve for ass-sitting.
Speak for yourself. Personally, I am highly optimised for arse sitting - I have had many years of practice, and I am getting very good at it!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:28PM
Exactly. How much practice did it take you to achieve excellence? I know it's taken me decades to get my third-degree black belt in Couch Fu.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:42PM (1 child)
Even sparse exercise will help maintain a certain minimum level of muscle capability. If you're someone who never runs, and you decide to dash around the block one day, you'll probably have sore ankles for a while. But if you do that every week, you won't have that soreness every time. Same for any other activity working muscles that you don't normally use. The first long swim of the season will probably result in sore shoulders, subsequent outings not so much. Or going to the gym and doing some of the more awkward lifts like leg adduction or deltoid raise.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:29PM
Gyms build pretty muscle but they're useless compared to doing actual work aside from getting to do cardio in the air conditioning. Pull some wire, do some gardening, push mow the lawn if you have one, even volunteer to pick up trash on the highway but do something useful with all those calories that works more than one muscle at a time in unnatural ways.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:15PM (3 children)
I can't speak for metabolism, heart health, insulin resistance, etc.... but an hour a week total of exercise is enough to maintain modest amounts of muscle mass and levels of fitness. It won't fly for an athlete or bodybuilder, but if the distance you can run and the amount of weight you can lift is below elite levels it doesn't take much to keep it at that point.
More concretely, I can manage in the low 20s for good pushups (I'm morbidly obese). I define good pushup as "lift hands between repetitions to be certain you don't cheat on range of motion". If I don't do pushups at all for three months, that number drops into the high single digits. If I do a set of pushups twice a week or even just three times every two weeks, it stays in the 20s.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:39PM (2 children)
I apparently was badly out of shape compared to myself in my late teens to early 20s. The renovations are kicking my ass worse than boot camp ever did. The work's so taxing that I stay right on the ragged edge of muscle failure from about dawn till about dusk, but full body rather than just arms, chest, or stomach. Not having downtime for any of the muscles to repair themselves actually has me weaker than when I started, though that'll change as soon as I get a weekend off.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday March 28 2019, @11:16AM (1 child)
Kids have both the higher physical resiliency of their age and also far more free time to run around, play games, and otherwise exercise. I was starting to get back into shape a year or so back but my wife developed some medical problems so my 50% of the housework and ferrying kids around to orthodontist, sports, dance, and so forth shifted to 75%. Now I'm lucky to hit an hour of exercise a week.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 28 2019, @11:23AM
Housework ain't much but it's a whole lot better than sitting at a desk. At least you're standing and moving around.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:56PM (1 child)
Are you going to call it "Alice's Restaurant"?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:33PM
You know, it hadn't even occurred to me. I listen to the song every Thanksgiving but when I think of folks living in a church, I think of my grandmother who bought one back in the 70s.
It's getting the full on house treatment. Leaving the hardwood floor in what's currently the sanctuary and going heavy on medium to dark hardwoods for everything we can think of; especially the library.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.