Born to move, not to sit or lie down.
Born to move, not to sit or lie down
Paul Kochoa, PT, DPT, OCS, CGFI
The New York Times pretty much has it covered. After spreading the news that sitting is killing us and lying down isn’t any better, they’ve come out with basically what I’ve been telling people for awhile: we’re born to move.
Researchers from Yale studied an indigenous tribe in Tanzania who are primarily still hunter-gatherers. They looked at their blood pressure and other cardiovascular markers. They investigated just how hard they worked throughout the day and how much they moved to determine just how much movement we need to maintain good cardiovascular health.
They found that the tribespeople were moderately active, rarely ran, but were active even late into their 70s. More importantly, their cardiovascular health was good with good cholesterol levels. Undoubtedly, some of this was due to diet. But the main takeaway from the study was that the human body evolves in response to the physiological demands placed on it.
We’ve become residents of a obesogenic world. Sitting and lack of activity makes our bodies adapt and change to that type of lifestyle and position. Even in healthy, young men, lying down or sitting down too much over just a two week period changed their metabolic makeup and they developed insulin resistance.
So if you sit too much and aren’t very active, your body will adapt to that lifestyle. Our bodies, particularly our hearts, want to be worked. The bottom line is to avoid pathology, we have to move more, and move often.