Let's Stand up! Most Sit Can Bad

How long did you sit in one day? How long do you walk or stand in a day? Almost most people sit too much in daily life. Do not let it go on like that, because most of the sitting can be life threatening.

Sitting all day does reduce the time the body to be able to do some physical exercise which will have positive benefits for health. A new study shows that, sitting all day can actively damage health.

Too much sitting can slow down your metabolism, increasing the risk of heart disease, causes back pain, and may even shorten life.


"Too much sitting may endanger the health equivalent of smoking," said Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., a microbiologist at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Health was quoted as saying on Wednesday (11/02/2011).

Too much sitting can cause several adverse health conditions, among others:

1. Cause obesity

When a person sits, the metabolism will slow down. This was caused by an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, which is in the blood vessels of the muscles.

Lipoprotein lipase capture and burn fat in the blood. Sitting all day can decrease the activity of lipoprotein lipase as much as 90-95 percent.

When a person stands, the postural muscles that support weight loss, especially in the leg muscles will release enzymes which work to burn fat. But when you're sitting still, and do not move every 30-90 seconds, then the fat will remain in the artery. Then the fat can be stored in adipose tissue or fat tissue of the body.

Daily physical exercise can not neutralize the effects of sitting all day. Hamilton said that, even biochemical reactions to be slow on a person who sits all day.

"The biggest difference between the lean and fat rather than how much they eat or exercise, but how many of them sit down," says James Levine, MD, an obesity researcher at the Mayo Clinic.

2. Adversely affects the spine

Abdomen, pelvis and leg muscles are often used to carry the weight of the body. "But when sitting, causing most of the weight placed directly on the spine and pelvis instead," explains Andrew Hecht, MD.

It also led to compel a natural S curve of the spine to form C, which is not strong enough to accept the pressure.

3. Can shorten the life

A study has been published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2010, involving almost 70,000 healthy women and observing their daily habits for 14 years. After adjusting for risk factors including body mass index and smoking factors.

The researchers found that women who spend 6 hours a day to sit in a mortality risk 37 percent higher compared with women who spent less than 3 hours a day to sit down.

The death rate from cardiovascular disease is also 2.7 times higher in women who sit six hours or more a day, regardless of how much they exercise.