How Sticking Your Bum for Long can Cause You Harm

Did you know — just sitting for prolonged hours (say four to eight or more hours) every day as a routine will shorten your lifespan?

Honestly, it was a news to me. Indeed! An important one.

Out of curiosity, I did a little online digging to know which jobs require long hours of sitting other than writing of course. To my surprise, I found a long list.

Longer the list, greater the concern.

*Which professional comes to your mind who has no choice, but just sit tight for his job?*

My answer was, Drivers.

I was confident, driving occupation will top. I quickly checked its workday sitting percentage. It was 49.2%, which meant it was sitting only in the middle and therefore beaten up by other occupations.

Wanna know, who tops?

Bill and account collectors with 91.5%. If someone should feel bad about fetching top score in life, should be these poor souls. I am truly concerned for them. After you learn about the dangers of sitting, you maybe concerned as well.

I wonder, where do writing sit oops I mean stand?

Aww! Sadly, writing was not even taken into account.

Maybe, writing is not an occupation?

Well! It is a passion — This thought is more comforting.

The list includes software developers(90%), human resource managers(75.4%),mechanical engineers(73.7%), Health information technicians (72.9%), Sales managers (72.3%), Receptionists and information clerks (67.4%), Medical and health service managers(65.2%), English Language and literature teachers (51.8 %) and so on…

*The data was collected from 135 occupations, and about 55 showed greater than 50%.

How sticking bum for long can cause you harm?

To understand this, we must know about the functions of skeletal muscles (muscles attached to bones and under voluntary control), because sitting means skeletal muscles at rest or inactive. Skeletal muscle inactivity for long term is dangerously dangerous.

The body of an average adult is occupied by about 42% skeletal muscle consuming about 20% oxygen.

Anybody can name the basic function of a muscle.

Yeah! Movement\Locomotion.

Maintaining posture and balance.

No muscles — No movement.

Skeletal muscle has more to its credits than just moving our body from place to place or moving our hands and legs for all day to day activities, even at night, you know it…

Heat production And Temperature Regulation

When I feel very cold, I rub my hands or just do some warm-up exercise and soon I feel warm and better.

Even if I don’t do any voluntary movement, involuntarily my body starts shivering by the muscle action.

The muscle fiber or cell burns up a lot of energy—The result is the production of heat. Muscles therefore help in regulating body temperature.

Movement and Digestion

Muscles’ activity helps the digestive tract work efficiently, helping the digestion of fats and sugars. It's the reason we are advised to take a walk after heavy carbohydrate or fat meal. Haven’t you felt better after that little walk?

Energy Resource — Glycogen Storage

Glucose, in simple term—blood sugar is the instant source of energy for our cells and is the only energy source for brain cells.

Glycogen is the stored form of excess glucose, thus serving as energy reserve and also helps maintain the blood sugar levels within normal limits.

Where is glucose stored as glycogen?

About 500 grams of glycogen is stored in muscles making up 1–2% of its total mass and about 100 grams in liver making up 5–6% of its weight. It is important to note, the muscle glycogen is used to supply energy to muscles itself whereas liver glycogen supplies to the rest of the body.

This implies muscles utilize more energy, but when it is active.

What happens when there is habitual muscle inactivity during prolonged sitting or lying as in sedentary lifestyle?

Sedentary behavior is participating in non-physical activities like sitting or lying down for various activities like entertainment or work that do not require energy expenditure. People spend about one third to half of their workday in sitting or spend almost all their leisure hours on sedentary activities like screen based entertainments — watching TV, computers, mobile-phones, and driving.

Studies have been conducted in about twenty countries to record the average sitting hours of participants from different occupations and countries. They found that adults in all countries were sedentary for at least 5.8 h/day, and about 7.3–7.9 h/day was recorded in US.

Prolonged inactivity may result in weakening\wasting of muscles in the leg and buttocks or gluteal region. The gluteal muscles help in stabilizing the pelvis when walking. The muscle weakness may cause falls and injuries as the joint stability is lost.

Just two-week muscular inactivity in leg can cause one-third loss of muscle strength even in young adults .

A study was conducted by Andreas Vigels (1) and research team in the University of Copenhagen, Denmark on seventeen young people to determine the effects of leg immobility on muscle strength, leg lean mass and other parameters like fiber type and capillary supply.

The findings suggest that six-week aerobic training like cycling increased the muscle strength in young men, yet didn’t restore it to normal.

It is clear that muscular inactivity has more damaging effect on muscle strength, mass and working capacity, which needs almost three times the time spent on inactivity to restore or regain the strength.

Studies have demonstrated a relationship between skeletal muscle inactivity and adverse health outcomes like obesity, insulin resistance as in type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and ultimately death.

Metabolic syndrome

Metabolic syndrome is a collection of different unhealthy conditions — high blood sugar levels, high blood pressure, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal levels of cholesterol or triglyceride.

Prolonged sitting slows down the metabolism (building up and breaking down energy), affecting the body’s ability to regulate the blood sugar levels, breaking down of body fat and blood pressure regulation. The resulting metabolic syndrome increases the risk of type II diabetes, stroke, and heart diseases (Illustrated above).

Stroke or Heart attack

High cholesterol forms plaques in the walls of the arteries and therefore narrows and hardens the blood arteries that may increase blood pressure and finally cause heart attack or stroke.

Insulin Resistance

Inactivity is linked to obesity and obesity is linked to Insulin resistance.

Liver cells, muscle and fat cells doesn’t respond to the signals of Insulin hormone to store excess glucose in form of glycogen or use glucose for energy. In addition, other cells too doesn’t take in glucose for energy in response to Insulin signals. As a result, the blood sugar levels become high and pancreas keeps producing more and more insulin to bring back the levels to normal. But efforts are in vain as cells show resistance to insulin. The excess glucose deposits as fats.

The signs of insulin resistance are

1. Big Fat Waist is the best sign (2). If the waist measures 35 inches or more for women, 40 or more for men, it is a warning signal.
2. High blood sugar. Levels of 100–125 mg/dl (the pre-diabetic) or above 125 (diabetic).
3. High fasting blood sugar
4. High levels of triglycerides-150 or higher
5. Low High Density Lipo-proteins. Levels below 50 for women and 40 for men
6. High blood pressure-130/85 mm Hg or higher
7. Dark skin patches — Acanthosis nigricans —With severe insulin resistance, skin changes like dark skin patches occur on the nape or elbows, knees, armpits and knuckles.

Obesity-linked Insulin resistance and Cancer (3)

Studies link cancers of breast, pancreas, colon, uterus, cervix, prostrate, and bladder to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. The greater levels of insulin might fuel the growth of malignant cells.

Varicose veins And Deep vein thrombosis

The calf muscles are called *Peripheral Heart*, because their contraction help the flow or drainage of venous blood from legs down to the heart above, against gravity. Prolonged sitting can pool the blood in leg veins, which sometimes may cause the formation of blood clots and the movement of clots to blood vessels at distant sites (deep vein thrombosis). The clots can obstruct any blood vessel it lodges in. It can be fatal if the clot blocks the blood flow to lung as in pulmonary embolism.

Anxiety and Depression

Sitting is also associated with anxiety and depression, however more studies are needed to validate it.

Less sticking bum and more moving can contribute to better health.

You don’t have to put on your trainers and go for jogging every half-an-hour.

JUST TAKE A BREAK FROM SITTING EVERY 30 MINUTES.

• Remember to at least stand and walk around your room .
• Maybe you can try a treadmill-working-desk, if you can’t take a break from work .
• Just flex your muscles — hands and legs more often.
• Use staircase instead of lifts or escalators.
• Walk to your colleague and talk even if it's the nearest cubicle, instead of just talking over desks.
• If you are sitting in bus too long maybe just get down one stop before the destination and start walking home.
• If you get phone calls, then talk walking, instead of lying or sitting.

There can be a profound impact of movement even if it is slight leisurely. Being at leisure is good and fun, but not at the cost of your life.

You may die young,

If you stick your bum for too long

— Chirag

References

1. Andreas Vigelsoe, PhD et al., Six weeks’ aerobic retraining after two weeks’ immobilization restores leg lean mass and aerobic capacity but does not fully rehabilitate leg strength in young and older men. Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, June 2015 DOI: 10.2340\16501977–1961

2.Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health: Abdominal Obesity Measurement Guidelines for Different Ethnic Groups.

3.Orgel: The Links Between Insulin Resistance, Diabetes, and Cancer. Curr Diab Rep. 2013 Apr; 13(2): 213–222.

Declaration:

I own all rights to this story, which was previously published at Medium.

https://medium.com/illumination/dangers-of-sitting-aa1816b1383c?source=friends_link&sk=1a801cc35f82533fb204e586ac1d3778