To Your Health: Sitting May Be the New Smoking

14 Oct To Your Health: Sitting May Be the New Smoking

Editor’s Note: It all started with a Wellness Conference that took place in March at The Peaks Resort & Spa. The talks featured part-time Telluride local Dr. Alan Safdi, who offered evidence-based medical findings for healthy living in easily digestible sound bytes. Telluride Inside… and Out attended a few sessions in the series and continues to offer nuggets from Dr. Safdi through a bi-monthy column, To Your Health.

Everyone, now, stand at attention.

Yes, I said age your cells prematurely.

Fascinating new research offers ways to keep our physiologically (circulation, respiration and digestion) young: get up off your office chair or couch and become less sedentary. Mortality rates decline at higher levels of standing.

Telomeres are the protective end-caps on chromosomes that shorten with each round of cell division. When they reach a certain critical length, they signal the cell to stop dividing altogether and age. With volunteers in the aforementioned studies who sat the least telomeres lengthened. In fact, their cells appeared to be growing physiologically younger.

What’s more, as we sit, our arteries appear to narrow, but can this phenomenon be modified by short walks of only 5 minutes per hour– while still sitting the other 55 minutes. Short slow walk breaks at 2 miles per hour are adequate to prevent harm caused to leg arteries through prolonged sitting.

You do not have to be running or walking, but at least consider standing more.

Smoking, emotional stress, and lack of physical exercise in general have all also been shown to reduce telomere size which, as we’ve established, is not good if your goal is to experience a long and healthy life. (Telomere length was significantly shorter in overweight or obese adolescents who had a high sodium intake for example, when compared to those with low sodium intake.)

So to prevent your DNA from degenerating prematurely and to preserve the arteries in your legs, I repeat: get off your derriere, don’t smoke, reduce sodium intake and exercise more.

About Dr. Alan Safdi: 

Dr. Alan Safdi

Dr. Alan Safdi is board certified in Internal Medicine and in Gastroenterology and is a Fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology. A proven leader in the healthcare arena, he has been featured on the national program, “Medical Crossfire” and authored or co-authored numerous medical articles and abstracts. Safdi has been involved in grant-based and clinical research for over 33 years and is passionate about disease prevention and wellness, not just fixing what has gone wrong. He is an international lecturer on the subjects of wellness, nutrition and gastoenterology.