Two possible solutions to too much sitting time...

Today's Post: Thursday, 1-20-2011

Our post last Friday, 1-14 was about the health harms from sitting too many hours each week which most of us do both at work and at home.

Too much sitting seems to help cause heart disease and the CRP inflammation that is a major cause of heart disease. It also tends to help cause obesity and type 2 diabetes.

In that post we had some potential solutions:

1. Program in several walks a week.

2. Make a very strong effort to watch TV for way fewer hours than most people do. (TV watching is the worst kind of sitting.)

3. Reliably program in many breaks from doing it when you have to sit for hours. That post has some ideas on how to do that that work for me.

4. And, each week, do more exercise in addition to the walking, particularly interval cardio and strength training.

Then on Tuesday this week, 1-18, HealthDay News had this story online:

“More Evidence That TV, Computer Time Could Harm Heart.”

It seems that a new study reported that too many hours a week sitting in front of a TV or computer screen, which they called, “screen time," is linked to signs that your heart needs longer to recover from exercise, an indication of poor heart health after doing eight-minute exercise treadmill tests.

And, the researchers who did the study who were from the Cardiovascular Center at National Taiwan University Hospital noted that same thing happens in people who didn't exercise much or at all.

In fact, recovering more quickly from exercise is a marker for cardio vascular fitness.

1. But that strongly suggests that the kind of vigorous exercise that makes you fit which actually works best when done in a few more intense sessions than in a longer, slow session might strongly combat too much screen time.

So, doing some kind of interval cardio sessions 3 or 4 times each week likely is one way to combat the worst effects of too much TV or total “screen time” each week.

That means besides the taking the extra breaks and pruning back the amount of TV watching, interval cardio may be one of the best ways to do this.

Dr Al Sears’ PACE program is one of several ways to do this. You can do interval cardio on a NordicTrack or in short sessions of jumping rope or an a minitrampoline such as the Urban Rebounder. These sessions can be done in as little as 10 minute per session. You can even alternate very brisk walking with normal walking speed on a walk as a kind of interval cardio.

2. The second way to combat too much sitting time is to do the set of things that prevent heart disease, lower CRP inflammation and other excessive inflammation and which increase the responsiveness of your blood vessels.

The first two parts of that way combat the heart disease problem too much sitting causes. But all three of them increase how responsive your blood vessels are. And, the more responsive your blood vessels are, the faster you recover from exercise.

To prevent heart disease do things that increase your HDL from eating olive oil and nuts and berries and egg yolks and NOT eating sugary foods or hydrogenated oils or being around tobacco smoke. Taking niacin and inositol hexaniacinate and moderate drinking, particularly red wine or dark beer also boost HDL. Also do things that cut your level of triglycerides particularly eating virtually no sugary foods. And, our last strategy, interval cardio, and strength training both cut back on triglycerides and boost your HDL.

Eating beans and lentils and vegetables and fruit, particularly apples along with eating non-instant oatmeal occasionally lower LDL cholesterol. And if it remains too high doing all of the above an effective and safe way to lower it is by taking sterol supplements.

(Doing those things in the last two paragraphs, I boosted my HDL to over 95 & cut my LDL from 130 to less than 75; and my triglycerides test as under 50.)

Eating wild caught fish, taking purified fish oil omega three supplements; not eating very much of sugary foods: and virtually never eating the omega 6 oils such as soy, corn, safflower, and canola – or only eating them very rarely lowers CRP inflammation. (Not eating fat from grain fed animals which is loaded with omega 6 oils from the grain also helps!) When you both take in more omega 3 and less omega 6 oils, excess inflammation is dramatically less.

Third, in addition to doing those two things -- protecting your heart & lowering inflammation, AND also doing vigorous exercise each week, you can also take supplements that increase the responsiveness of your blood vessels.

The amino acid l-arginine is a supplement that does this. There are others that may work also. But arginine is likely the most effective. Taking a gram of arginine just before you exercise and another just before you go to bed also boosts your body’s release of growth hormone. So that’s a good way to do it.

Dark chocolate and green tea and black tea also work. But they only work when taken when you have an empty stomach and NOT with milk products. They increase blood flow and the responsiveness of you blood vessels also.