This Week's Wellness Tip and Healthy Choice Recipe

Sitting: Hazardous to Your Health
Even 'active' couch potatoes may face risks

by Elizabeth Pope | from: AARP Bulletin


Here's another easy, no-sweat way to markedly improve your health in the new year — stop sitting so much. You'll live longer.

Mounting evidence suggests that sitting for long periods increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, cancer and early death, even for people who exercise daily. And yet Americans now sit more than they sleep, spending an average of 10 hours a day in a car, at work and in front of a television. Older adults are the worst offenders, according to federal government statistics: Almost three-quarters are sedentary, and more than four in 10 get no leisure-time physical activity at all.


See also: Walking: The easiest exercise.



Take frequent breaks from sitting in your chair. — Chairs: Nation Wong/Photolibrary



To reduce your cancer risk, the American Institute of Cancer Research is urging Americans to add mini-breaks from sitting to a daily regimen of getting at least 30 minutes a day of moderate-to-vigorous exercise.


"If you reduce sitting by five minutes an hour, at the end of a long day, you've shaved an hour off your total sitting time," says Alpa Patel, M.D., senior epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society. That advice applies as well to "active couch potatoes," who hit the gym or take that daily brisk walk, because some research indicates daily exercise is not enough protection from the harmful effects of a sedentary lifestyle.
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Good For You Too! Kit                     

"Processed foods and trans fats too

Make you lazy and a little sick Boo.

Life's too precious, don't let it slip by

Practice healthy eating and PUT down the pie!!"
Taken from Peer rhyme 'Get that Physical'

"Apple Pie 'Fix"

Ingredients:

Butter Spray

8 peeled and thinly sliced apples

2 tbls.cinnamon

1 cup of splenda
1 cup of oats
1 cup of raisins
(1 cup chopped almonds or walnuts optional)

butter spray a pan.
mix all dry ingredients
place apples in the pan
cover with dry mix
Bake 350 for 45 min.
Serve with cool whip free
Enjoy.

Related 

• Keep fit at work. Read
• 7 ways to ease into yoga. Read
• Workout videos from Dr. Oz. Watch
• Lose weight with your smartphone. Read

Women who reported sitting more than six hours a day outside of work had a 34 percent higher risk of death than those who sat fewer than three hours daily, according to a recent American Cancer Society study. This was true even for women who exercised regularly.

In a University of South Carolina study, even physically active men were 64 percent more likely to die of heart disease if they sat more than 23 hours a week in front of the TV, compared with those who sat 11 hours a week or less.

Prolonged sitting appears to have powerful metabolic consequences, disrupting processes that break down fats and sugars in the blood. In animal studies, inactive mice and rats quickly develop higher blood fats and lower levels of good cholesterol, which together increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. An Australian study suggests a link between a sedentary lifestyle and several key biological indicators of cancer risk, including insulin resistance, inflammation and body weight.

Older adults will remember pre-soccer-mom days of walking to school, biking to baseball practice, hanging up laundry and washing the dishes. Technology, experts say, has engineered physical activity out of daily life. With the advent of personal computers and cable TV, not to mention remotes and garage door openers, there is scarcely a reason to get out of your seat.

Physical activity in the workplace has fallen, too, according to a recent study. Fifty years ago, more than half of American jobs involved moderate physical activity, often in manufacturing or agriculture, reports Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. "Today it's less than 20 percent — we're tied to our desks," says Tim Church, M.D., a Pennington professor and the study's lead author.

Last year, registered dietitian Jill Weisenberger wrote a book and started worrying about sitting too much. "I jog every morning, but what about the other 23 hours a day? I've read that sitting makes the blood vessels less elastic, and I didn't want to be a jogger and a dietitian with heart disease," says Weisenberger, 50, of Yorktown, Va. At home she began walking a circuit while cooking dinner. Then she bought a desk equipped to fit over a treadmill and now logs 30 to 35 miles a week walking at 1.4 miles per hour. "I can type, read email, surf the Net — anything except have pretty handwriting," she says.

The Cancer Society's Patel stands during conference calls, uses a printer in another office, and eschews email and the telephone to walk over to a colleague's office. She also sits on an exercise ball. "It's called 'active sitting.' If you slouch you fall off," she says. She takes a brisk 20-minute walk at lunch, adding longer walks before or after work. By reducing sitting time and ramping up physical activity, Patel also lost 40 pounds in six months



To Stand More, Sit Less

Step away from the computer and take a nice walk on your lunch break.

•Deliver messages to colleagues in person instead of texting or emailing.
•Look at minor chores as an opportunity to prevent disease.
•Place the stapler and wastebasket on the other side of the office.
•Reduce TV viewing. Stand up when fast-forwarding or changing channels.
•Put your computer on a plastic milk crate on the desk and work standing up.
•Set your computer to remind you to stand up and stretch every 30 minutes.
•Stand up when the phone rings.
•Think of ways to add physical activity to your workday and leisure time.
•Use the bathroom down a flight of stairs.

 

Using a Pedometer To Track Walking

For adults who prefer walking as a form of aerobic activity, pedometers or step counters are useful in tracking progress toward personal goals. Popular advice, such as walking 10,000 steps a day, is not a Guideline per se, but a way people may choose to meet the Guidelines. The key to using a pedometer to meet the Guidelines is to first set a time goal (minutes of walking a day) and then calculate how many steps are needed each day to reach that goal.

Episodes of brisk walking that last at least 10 minutes count toward meeting the Guidelines. However, just counting steps using a pedometer doesn’t ensure that a person will achieve those 10-minute episodes. People generally need to plan episodes of walking if they are to use a pedometer and step goals appropriately.
As a basis for setting step goals, it’s preferable that people know how many steps they take per minute of a brisk walk. A person with a low fitness level, who takes fewer steps per minute than a fit adult, will need fewer steps to achieve the same amount of walking time.
One way to set a step goal is the following:

1. To determine usual daily steps from baseline activity, a person wears a pedometer to observe the number of steps taken on several ordinary days with no episodes of walking for exercise. Suppose the average is about 5,000 steps a day.
2. While wearing the pedometer, the person measures the number of steps taken during 10 minutes of an exercise walk. Suppose this is 1,000 steps. Then, for a goal of 40 minutes of walking for exercise, the total number of steps would be 4,000 (1,000 × 4).
3. To calculate a daily step goal, add the usual daily steps (5,000) to the steps required for a 40-minute walk (4,000), to get the total steps per day (5,000 + 4,000 = 9,000).

Each week the person gradually increases the time walking for exercise until the step goal is reached. Rate of progression should be individualized. Some people who start out at 5,000 steps a day can add 500 steps per day each week. Others, who are less fit and starting out at a lower number of steps, should add a smaller number of steps each week.