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Tanzania,23 farmer-hunters in the Amazonian rain forest,24 and several other nonindustrialized populations.25 In these groups, people tend to be sedentary between five and ten hours a day.
If being idle is a normal, adaptive part of the human and ape conditions, then why and how can many daily hours of sitting really be so unhealthy?
hours of sitting may trigger our immune systems to attack our bodies through a process known as inflammation.
that some of the same cytokines that ignite short-lived, intense, and local inflammatory responses following an infection also stimulate lasting, barely detectable levels of inflammation throughout the body.
Chronic inflammation is a hot topic that merits serious attention, but we need to be wary of reacting overheatedly.
good news is that the biggest causes of chronic inflammation are largely avoidable, preventable, or addressable: smoking, obesity, overconsumption of certain pro-inflammatory foods (a chief one being red meat), and—surprise, surprise—physical inactivity.
too much sitting may be hazardous simply because it causes weight gain. It bears repeating that sitting in a comfy chair barely taxes one’s muscles. In contrast, even squatting or kneeling requires some muscular effort,
By merely engaging in low-intensity, “non-exercise” physical activities for five hours a day, I could spend as much energy as if I ran for an hour.
second way lengthy periods of sitting may incite widespread, low-grade inflammation is by slowing the rate we take up fats and sugars from the bloodstream.
but if you are moving,
Put simply, regular movement, including getting up every once in a while, helps prevent chronic inflammation by keeping down postprandial levels of fat and sugar.
Another worrisome way sitting can provoke inflammation is through psychosocial stress.
Short bursts of cortisol are natural and normal,
long hours of stressful sitting while commuting or a high-pressure office job can be a double whammy.
prolonged sitting can kindle chronic inflammation by allowing muscles to remain persistently inactive.
muscles regulate inflammation during bouts of moderate to intense physical activity similarly to the way the immune system mounts an inflammatory response to an infection or a wound.
Because the anti-inflammatory effects of physical activity are almost always larger and longer than the pro-inflammatory effects,
Even modest levels of physical activity dampen levels of chronic inflammation,
Instead, they result from the absence of being sufficiently physically active, which usually means a lot of sitting.
important principle about dosage: for some things, how often and when you do them are just as important as how much.
But among the men who were fit, those who sat the most had a 65 percent higher risk of inflammatory-related diseases like type 2 diabetes than those who sat the least.
who engaged in more than seven hours per week of moderate or vigorous exercise had a 50 percent higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease if they otherwise sat
the more time you spend sitting in a chair, the higher your risk of chronic illnesses linked to inflammation, including some forms of cancer.
I find these data downright scary.
that people who broke up their sitting time with frequent short breaks had up to 25 percent less inflammation than those who rarely rose from their chairs despite sitting the same number of hours.
risk of death increases both from the total hours we spend sitting and from whether those hours are accrued in short or long intervals.
Because wealthy folks watch less TV, get better health care, and eat healthier food, they are less at risk.
likely explanation is that short bouts of activity wake up our muscles and thus keep down levels of blood sugar and fat.
light activities stimulate muscle cells to consume energy, turn on and off genes,
These activities aren’t serious exercise, but experiments that ask people to interrupt long periods of sitting even briefly—for example, just a hundred seconds every half hour—result in lower levels of sugar, fat, and so-called bad cholesterol in their blood.
less circulating blood sugar and fat prevent inflammation
small and occasional bouts of moving stimulate muscles to quench inflammation and reduce physiological stress.
Another way to sit actively is to fidget,
Sitzfleisch may boost productivity, but it doesn’t foster health.
isn’t sitting itself, but hours upon hours of inactive sitting combined with little to no exercise.
Standing is not exercise, and as yet no well-designed, careful study has shown that standing desks confer substantial health benefits.
leisure-time sitting best predicts mortality,
“Good posture is primarily a reflection of environment, habits, and mental state and is not a talisman against back pain.”
try to find ways to sit more actively without being
inert for too long, squirm shamelessly, and don’t let sitting get in the way of also exercising or otherwise being physically active.
what extent does lack of physical activity hamper sleep?
No one knows exactly when and where that eight-hour prescription originated,
indicate that the average adult in the United States, Germany, Italy, and Australia tends to sleep about six and a half hours in the summer when it is warm and light and between seven and seven and a half hours in the colder, darker winter months.
they slept less than industrialized people did. In warmer months, these foragers slept on average 5.7 to 6.5 hours a day, and during colder months they slept on average 6.6 to 7.1 hours a night.
similar average sleep durations, about 6.5 to 7.0 hours a day.
Americans who slept eight hours a night had 12 percent higher death rates than those who slept six and a half to seven and a half hours.
that people who sleep about seven hours tend to live longer than those who sleep more or less.
addition, as we age, we sleep less and wake up more easily, and while many of us sleep through the night, others sometimes wake up for as much as an hour or two before going back to sleep.
These scholars argued that it was normal prior to the Industrial Revolution for people to wake up for an hour or so in the middle of the night before going back to sleep. In between “first sleep” and “second sleep,” people talk, work, have sex, or pray.
if you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night or sleep seven rather than eight hours a night, relax.
