A sedentary lifestyle is slowly killing the brain. Intensive training does not solve the problem

In the topic of movement, one of the most important issues is the problem of the harm of sitting. Sitting is unhealthy and sitting does us serious damage and one might well say that "Sitting is the new smoking." Leading experts agree: Sitting (more than 10 hours a day) actually causes more health problems than smoking. The health consequences are the same for all people: all ages, both sexes, all races and countries. Note that sitting is much more harmful than standing or lying down.

In Britain, about 32% of the British population spend more than 10 hours a day in a sitting position. Of these, 50% rarely leave the workplace and even dine at the office table. It is noted that about half of office workers complain of pain in the lower spine.

Man is not made to sit on a chair.

The meaning of sitting is to give the body a break from movement and vertical position, which is the basic specific feature of the structure of our body, given to us by nature. Man is designed to be on the move all day: moving to work, moving at work, walking and feeding children, gathering food, hunting, etc. People who used to live and work in the countryside sat only for the purpose of short-term rest. But today, this figure has grown to an average of 13 hours a day, with 8 hours spent on sleep and only 3 hours left for movement (the real numbers in big cities are even less). Sitting is harmful and sitting all day on the fifth point, you destroy your health and strengthen.

The chair is a habit of the last 150 years.

Among the ancient Greeks, chairs were mainly the privilege of women and children. If you look closely at the drawings on ancient Greek vases, you will notice that they often depict women sitting on elegant chairs. Men preferred to lie down during leisurely conversations and feasts.

For a long time, the chair remained a prestigious thing. For the ancient Romans, a chair or armchair was an indicator of how successful a person was. An important official did not part with his folding, ivory-lined chair. It was carried behind him by his obedient slave. Only especially respected citizens sat on a low, richly decorated seat - bisillium. And the head of an aristocratic family descended on a home throne made of marble, arranged like an imperial one. The ancient Romans ate lying down, read, wrote, received guests. The favorite furniture of men was simple couches - wedges, borrowed from the same Greeks. The ancient Romans ate while seated only during mourning.

In the East, before and now, it was customary to sit on the floor. Even in prehistoric times, the Chinese created floor mats for sitting and, accordingly, wooden tables with low legs.

The sitting position is unnatural.

Sitting is harmful, because sitting is an absolutely unnatural position of the body. We are not used to sitting. The human spine is not designed to spend a long time in a sitting position. In general, the fact that the human spine resembles the letter S serves us well. “What do you think, with a heavy load on C and S, which of them will break faster? C,” Kranz says. However, when sitting, the spine's natural S-shape turns into a C, which almost blocks the abdominal and back muscles that support the body. You stoop, and the oblique and lateral muscles weaken and become unable to support the body. When you stand, the load falls on the hips, knees, ankles. When you sit, the entire load is transferred to the pelvis and spine, increasing pressure on the intervertebral discs. According to magnetic resonance imaging, even a perfectly correct sitting position causes serious pressure on the back.

1. Sitting is harmful, it increases the risk of developing many diseases.

Sitting is very dangerous for health, because it significantly increases the risk of diabetes or cardiovascular disease. At the same time, know that no physical exercises and training, as it was previously thought, will not remove the harm from long sitting. For every hour you sit watching TV or listening to a lecture, your life is shortened by 22 extra minutes. People who sat for 11 hours or more a day had a 40 percent greater risk. The power of the chair extends far beyond obesity; if you sit too long, diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease and early death will follow you.

Sitting is harmful and those who, for whatever reason, sit for more than 4 hours every day are more prone to chronic diseases than others. They can develop cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and even cancer. Moreover, the risk of acquiring the disease increases with the number of hours spent in the chair.

Australian researchers have made a completely frightening conclusion, which sounds like a sentence for a modern person, who often spends both working and free time at the computer. Among those who sit more than 11 hours a day, the risk of death in the next three years is 40% higher than those who spend three times less time in a sitting position.

We also note the stagnation of blood and lymph, the risk of blood clots in predisposed people. Inactivity, and in 99% of cases it accompanies long sitting, causes stagnation of blood and fluids in the legs. It is even more harmful to sit with your legs crossed, this makes blood flow even more difficult. Women should be more attentive to this problem, because it causes, among other things, obesity of the thighs and cellulite. "syndrome of motionless sitting", or simply - thrombosis. For men, it is especially harmful to sit constantly, the risk of prostate diseases increases. Due to prolonged sitting and lack of movement, the blood in the veins stagnates and because of this, there is a possibility of blood clots.

2. Comfortable chairs don't work.

Over the past 30 years, the swivel chair industry has grown to $3 billion, with more than 100 companies operating in the US market. The most popular office chair provides lumbar support. However, scientists do not share their enthusiasm. Aeron is too low, according to Danish doctor A.S. Mandal. “I visited Herman Miller a few years ago and they get it. Chairs should be higher so that you can move. But while they have huge sales, they do not want to change anything, ”the doctor complains. Much of the idea of ​​what a comfortable chair should look like goes back to the furniture industry in the 1960s and 1970s, when workers complained of back pain.

The main cause of the problem was the lack of lumbar support. “However, lumbar support does not help the spine much,” the expert believes. “There is no way out of this problem,” says Galen Krantz, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “However, the idea of ​​lumbar support is so ingrained in people's perceptions of comfort that it doesn't connect to the actual experience of sitting in a chair. In a way, we're locked inside a problem."

When we sit at the table, it seems that we are very comfortable and comfortable. Comfortable - with a curved back, with a palm on which the chin rests, head bent over the keyboard. But if you sit like this for two hours and then get up, you will definitely feel how your arms, back and legs are numb.

Sitting is harmful, much more harmful than lying or standing. All the time that you were sitting like this, the pressure on the spine was 2 times more than when you are standing and 8 times more than when you are lying down.

3. Sedentary lifestyle is worse than immobility.

Sitting is much more harmful than just physical inactivity. So, lying and standing is much more useful than sitting. Recent studies in various fields of epidemiology, molecular biology, biomechanics and psychology lead to an unexpected conclusion: sitting is a threat to public health. And it can't be smoothed out with exercise. “People need to understand that quality seating mechanisms are completely different from walking or exercising,” says University of Missouri microbiologist Mark Hamilton. - Being too sedentary is not the same as not exercising. For the body, these are two completely different things.”

4. Standing is easier and more beneficial than sitting.

“When you do standing work, you use specialized postural muscles that never get tired,” says Hamilton. “They are unique in that the nervous system uses them for low-intensity exercise, and they are rich in enzymes.” One enzyme, lipoprotein lipase, traps fats and cholesterol from the blood, burns fats for energy, converting "bad" LDL cholesterol into "good" cholesterol, HDL. When you sit, the muscles are relaxed and enzyme activity drops by 90-95%. In a few hours of sitting, the level of “healthy” cholesterol in the blood drops by 20%. Standing burns three times more calories than sitting. Muscle contractions, even those that occur when a person is standing still, cause important processes associated with the breakdown of fats and sugars. However, after the body assumes a sitting position, the action of these mechanisms ceases.

5. Increasing stress levels.

Immobilization is the best way to simulate stress. Sitting causes a chronic rise in cortisol. And too much cortisol makes patients fat and depressed in a vicious cycle: the more stressed you are, the more cortisol your body produces. As a result of excess cortisol, you start to eat more, feel more sad and overwhelmed, gain weight and sit. The cortisol system, on the other hand, sabotages the muscle response to stimuli to move, and causes you to prefer sitting more.

6. Sitting is a bad habit.

In the last few generations of people, millions of brains have become "sedentary". Most people in the modern Western world are overworked. As the brain adapts to the chair, so does the whole society. Sitting is harmful, and if the majority of people become overworked, then the structure of the whole society gradually adapts to meet the new environmental conditions.

Back in 2005, in an article in Science magazine, Mayo Clinic obesity specialist James Levine found out why some people get fat and some don't with the same diet. “We found that obese people have a natural tendency to be chained to a chair, and this habit persists even when such people try to lose weight,” the physician wrote. “What amazes me is that humans have evolved over 1.5 million years to be able to walk and get around. And literally 150 years ago, 90% of all human activity was related to agriculture. In a tiny amount of time, we became chair-bound."

If you sit for a long period, the brain becomes sedentary in structure and eventually this is reflected in the way you think - a seated body creates a sedentary mind as well. But the good news is that if a person tied to a chair takes the first step: gets up and walks, then the brain, like a muscle, begins to adapt to the movement. The brain of a person who begins to sit less and walk more triggers new neuroplasticity factors. Under these conditions, over time, the brain adapts to the newly mastered skill of its owner.

Because the brain is constantly adapting, it takes approximately three weeks for the necessary changes in the brain to take place. Threeweeks "chairholic" can become a "walker". Remember that sitting is bad and start looking at your chair with caution!

Can you tell exactly how long you sit during the day? If you do not think about this issue, the problem does not seem global. But as soon as a timer appears next to you, fixing the time spent in a chair, the result will be quite shocking. Many people work outside of production, and most of us spend 8 hours in the office. If we add to this driving a car and idle sitting on the couch in the evenings, eating or checking the lessons of children, it turns out that we are without active movement for the overwhelming number of hours a day. Even if you introduce an hour-long workout into your usual routine after work, this will not fix the situation. Most of the day of a modern person remains inactive.

Intensive training does not solve the problem

Movement is important and good for our health. But even intense training to a sweat cannot balance the situation. The danger from sitting for many hours in a chair is so great that in most cases it causes chronic health problems. This was reported to the world community in January 2015 by one of the authoritative medical publications. Unfortunately, a sedentary lifestyle has become the norm for our culture. We are not afraid of the statistics provided by the World Health Organization: physical inactivity among adults is the fourth leading risk factor leading to premature death.

What happens to the human body with insufficient activity?

The presented report notes that a sedentary lifestyle causes changes in the human body. Scientists also managed to prove that training twice a week is not able to change the situation. Many of us are used to sitting for most of the day. But for some reason, we do not associate the problem of the sharply increased statistics of cardiovascular diseases with physical inactivity. In addition to heart disease, inactive citizens risk depletion of bone density, and even cellular mutations that provoke cancerous tumors. It has been proven that if a person sits for 8 to 12 hours a day, he increases the risk of type 2 diabetes by 90 percent. Fortunately, these risks can be offset by getting out of your chair at least every hour. Just a two-minute warm-up will help your blood circulation return to its previous course.

Modern people sit too much

This trend is typical for all developed countries. For example, in the United States of America, the average adult is in a seated position for 60 percent of their waking hours. If you translate these statistics into hours, then on average you get more than 6 hours. The Mayo Clinic recently reported on a study in which they observed people sitting in front of a television or computer. As a result, it turned out that people who spend their leisure time watching movies or chatting on social networks for four hours or more have a 50 percent higher chance of premature death (regardless of the cause) compared to those who sit in front of the monitor for less than two hours. in a day. Also during the experiment, it turned out that volunteers from a less active group (those who are busy watching TV all night long) increase the risk of cardiovascular disease by more than two times. Note that these results are valid regardless of the number of participants.

Workspace transformation can save the day

If you sit at your workplace, not getting up throughout the working day, and go for a run after work, you will have the same health risks as your colleague who lies on the couch after work. That's why in many progressive companies, the bosses have equipped standing places for their employees. That is why in companies that care about the health of their employees, rest rooms are equipped with exercise equipment. That is why many meetings are held in an informal setting on a walk, rather than at a round table of negotiations. And before you start developing the healthy habit of regular workouts and breaks, we will tell you about the changes that occur in your body during non-stop sitting.

Your muscles are weakening

So, we know that a sedentary lifestyle can be dangerous. But what exactly is this danger? This problem comes down to the anatomical design of our bodies, which were designed by nature to move. That is why a sedentary lifestyle for a long period really affects all the internal systems of the body, and the muscles suffer first of all. If we consider modern working conditions, it is worth noting that people tilt their heads to the monitor while working, and this puts an unbearable burden on the neck and lower back. An unnatural position of the body while sitting can also be observed during long telephone conversations.

It turns out that in order to neutralize the consequences of hypodynamia, it is not necessary to spend money on a fitness club. But first things first.

Unnatural posture

According to statistics, people who spend most of the day in a sitting position most often complain of the following problems: overweight (in particular, a big belly), osteochondrosis of the lumbar and cervical spine, sciatica, constipation, varicose veins and hemorrhoids. Men also face specific problems with the prostate gland.

Doctors explain this by the fact that the sitting position for a person, in general, is unnatural. Long centuries of evolution have adapted us to either lie down or walk-run, well, in extreme cases, stand! When we sit, the spine and muscles cannot properly hold the body, and the organs (intestines, internal genital organs, lungs, etc.) are squeezed and therefore suffer. Therefore, the old saying that it is better to walk than to stand, and it is better to lie down than to sit, has its historical confirmation.

Even sport is not a panacea

Nevertheless, until now, it seemed to all of us that no one had yet died from sitting at a desk. And almost all people have diseases after 40 years, and this seems to be already in the order of things.

American doctors were the first to sound the alarm. They even began to demand changes in the recommendations of the Ministry of Health. Because it turns out that prolonged sitting leads to the fact that hemorrhoids turn into colon cancer, and excess weight - into diabetes and strokes. According to doctors from the American Cancer Society, even physical activity cannot reduce the harm from sitting for a long time. They believe that you can run for an hour every morning or every evening, but if you spend the remaining 6-8 hours glued to a chair, then such loads will not at all reduce the risk of disease and will not prolong life.

Who's longer?

More recently, scientists from University College London have stated that people who sit for a long time not only feel bad, but age on average 10 years faster than their mobile peers. They figured it out exactly by examining 2,400 pairs of twins and measuring their telomere lengths (these are the end segments of chromosomes). By the way, scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of telomeres. Twins were studied because each person from a pair has the same genetic material as a fellow. So, studies have shown that those twins who moved a lot had longer telomeres, and their genetic copies, which were sitting more and more, had shorter chromosome tips. And now about what it means.

Let's remember school biology: chromosomes are special structures located in the nucleus of each cell. They contain hereditary information in the form of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, which looks something like a rope ladder twisted into a spiral). DNA is made up of many sections, each of which is a gene. Initially, the basis of the chromosome is one DNA, but as it develops, it doubles and thus gradually develops from a single cell into a whole person.

So, at the ends of chromosomes are telomeres - several pairs of protein structures (nucleotides). When a person grows, DNA reproduces itself, due to this, viable cells divide, and old ones die off - this is how the development and renewal of the body occurs. However, with each cell division, the length of the telomere decreases. The shorter it is, the older the body and the closer the end of life. That is, today the length of the telomere is the most important sign of aging.

Get up - get younger

According to modern science, the length of the telomere is reduced by about 21 base pairs per year. However, they are shortened not only due to DNA division, but also due to the fact that DNA is damaged by inflammatory processes, free radicals and other unfavorable factors. Including the seat.

A study of twins found that those who were on their feet for less than half an hour a day had telomeres 200 base pairs shorter than those who were on the move for 3 hours and 19 minutes. In fact, the more active twin had the same telomeres as a person 9-10 years younger!

The researchers found data that suggested the following. The DNA of many sedentary people is more susceptible to DNA damage from free radicals and subsequent inflammation. And an active lifestyle helps to cope with this inflammation.

But after all, at the very beginning of our conversation, we already found out that even regular physical exercises will not help prolong the life of those who sit for many hours without a break! What to do?

Stop spreading diseases!

The answer came from the Swedish School of Sports and Health Sciences. Her scientists found that the body begins to sound the alarm only after you sit for 4 hours. After this time, in particular, the work of the genes responsible for the metabolism of glucose and fats in the body fades. Hence weight gain, diabetes and cardiovascular disease! Based on this, the Swedes give recommendations to absolutely everyone, regardless of age and health status:

● Control the amount of time you sit without a break. Try to warm up every 2-3 hours - get up, walk around the office or apartment. Even something as simple as sipping or pulling a book off a shelf will do. If you are at home, you can feed the dog or bring the cat from the kitchen, make yourself a sandwich, after all.

● Take short walks during your lunch break. When you watch TV at home, get up from time to time and walk around the room (you don't have to take your eyes off the TV screen to do this).

● Make it a rule not to call children and household members, but to approach them - and you will save your vocal cords and bring benefits to the body.

● Fitness classes, walking and jogging only make sense if you don't sit all the time in everyday life. To spend more than 4-5 hours in a row on the fifth point means to negate the entire beneficial effect of training.

The advice to get up and go about your business more often, even if you have a sedentary job, is nothing new. However, until now, neither specialists nor the patients themselves have thought that in this way it is possible to activate the work of the genes responsible for metabolism, and thereby stop the aging process. In general, if you want to live longer, lift yourself out of your chair and sofa more often.

Have you ever heard that sport promotes health? Of course, this has long been proven by scientists. An active lifestyle reduces the risk of developing a variety of diseases. But have you ever thought about the opposite? Can a sedentary lifestyle harm a person, and especially the brain?

Changes in the brain

A group of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) conducted an experiment and got shocking results. It turns out that changes in the brain can be caused by a sedentary lifestyle. Prior to this, experiments had shown that lack of activity could lead to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or premature death.

It is difficult to shock a person with a medical education with such news. Neurosurgeons confirm this fact and claim that it is quite natural. The work of the brain depends on many factors, and therefore, with a sedentary lifestyle, less oxygen enters it. Frequent hypoxia can indeed lead to various pathologies.

The essence of the study

The journal PLoS One published information that researchers link a sedentary lifestyle with atrophy of the medial part, located in the temporal lobe of the brain. For the experiment, 35 people aged 45 to 75 were invited. They provided scientists with data on their physical activity and the amount of time they spent sitting.

The next part of the experiment was the study of the brain of experimental people. For this purpose, scientists used high-precision magnetic resonance imaging. People who lead a sedentary lifestyle have been found to have problems in the part of the brain that is responsible for the formation of new associations and memories. Such impairments can further lead to dementia and cognitive decline in older people.

Some Features

Given that only one experiment was conducted, it is too early to draw any conclusions. Other scientists are of the opinion that such changes can indeed occur, but only for those people who do not engage in mental activity with a sedentary lifestyle. That is, if a person, for example, spends about 5-7 hours a day in front of a computer, but at the same time he does not play and watch movies, but writes reports, then changes in the medial part, which is located in the temporal lobe of the brain, will not occur.

Ways to solve the problem

We all know that a sedentary lifestyle can harm the body. And it's not just about brain damage. Almost all organs and systems of the body suffer. The heart without cardio loads makes fewer contractions, and this reduces the tone of the walls of blood vessels. The enormous load on the spine will sooner or later lead to back pain. The metabolism is also disturbed, because the blood moves through the body much more slowly and the saturation of cells with oxygen is insufficient.

All these problems can be solved. And, of course, the best way to do this is sport. If you work in an office, walk home. Charging in the morning is also a good option. If you are sitting in front of a computer at home, then get up as often as possible and do physical exercises.

It should be noted that household chores (cleaning, washing dishes) cannot be attributed to active activities. When they are performed, very few muscles are involved. So, while cleaning, for example, you can turn on loud music and dance. If possible, after work, you can go to the pool. During swimming, a huge number of muscles are involved.

Particular attention should be paid to nutrition. If you lead a sedentary lifestyle, it should be balanced and dietary. Heavy, fried, fatty foods should be avoided. It is also necessary to carefully monitor calories, since with an inactive lifestyle, their number should be less.

According to American scientists, the average modern person spends 12 out of 16 hours of wakefulness in a sitting position: people sit at home, at work, in a car. Of course, such a lifestyle negatively affects health. Moreover, men tend to suffer more.

car seats

At the beginning of 2017, the Avtostat agency conducted a statistical study, as a result of which it turned out that over the period that had elapsed by that time, there were 288 cars per 1,000 inhabitants of the Russian Federation. The car is now really - not a luxury, but a means of transportation. However, even with such an attitude towards cars, their owners still strive to create comfortable driving conditions for themselves: for example, purchase seats or special heated capes, which are undoubtedly indispensable in the cold season.

Nevertheless, scientists urge to abandon this purchase of male drivers. In particular, the German urologist Herbert Sperling, who has been studying this problem for a long time, claims that heated seats are no less dangerous for men's health than tight-fitting trousers. The thing is that the temperature of the genitals of a man, by nature, is always lower than the temperature of the body as a whole by 1-2 degrees. Higher temperatures are simply detrimental to sensitive sperm. Interestingly, seat heating does not affect the health of a woman at all.

bicycle saddle

Another fashionable hobby today is cycling, or rather being in the saddle of a “steel horse”, can also negatively affect the state of the male body. The first study in this direction was carried out in 1998. Then British experts observed 400 men who were regularly engaged in cycling, and found out that being in the saddle really leads to compression of soft tissues and nerves.

Due to problems identified today, many bicycle seats have special grooves in the center. However, according to scientists, these gutters did not "unload" the male organs much. Experts from Norway, based on their research, assure that the tissues in the perineal area still become numb in 20% of athletes, and 13% even complain of short-term impotence.

The fact that a bicycle saddle really does not have the best effect on potency is also confirmed by scientists from Cologne, Germany, who published the results of their research in the Originalia magazine. It is noteworthy that experts have included cycling in the list of sports that cause impotence.

Cold and wet

Specialists pay special attention to such a common disease among modern men as prostatitis. The author of many manuals on health and methods of treatment and prevention of various diseases, Olesya Zhivaikina, in her next book “Prostatitis”, based on the scientific works of qualified doctors, writes that in order to avoid this disease, men “in no case should you sit on cold curbs, stones and benches.

Zhivaikina's point of view is also confirmed by the urologist, Candidate of Medical Sciences Suren Tereshchenko. In an interview for Arguments and Facts, Tereshchenko notes that during cooling and, as a result, a cold, harmful microorganisms attack all human systems, including the prostate. According to the urologist, this is why men should not sit on wet and cold surfaces.

Ordinary chair

If we take into account the sedentary lifestyle that a modern person leads, then the danger can also be hidden in an ordinary chair, sofa, stool or other piece of furniture. It all depends on how much you spend on it. According to Doctor of Medical Sciences Nikolai Boyko (Facts edition), men who spend most of their wakefulness sitting at a computer in the office and driving a car suffer from prostatitis much more often than those who move a lot. This is due to the fact that in a sitting position, blood circulation in the genital organs is disturbed, and stagnant processes, according to the doctor, almost always lead to inflammation.