Yes, we all know this– sitting is bad bad bad for us. At least that is what we are told over and over again, in loads of studies. Not just sitting, but reclining, lying down, chilling out, taking a load off. All bad. How bad? Well, here’s a partial list of health outcomes that have been found to be associated with what’s called sedentary behavior:

• heart disease
• high blood pressure
• high cholesterol
• stroke
• metabolic syndrome
• type 2 diabetes
• some cancers
• vascular problems
• musculoskeletal pain
• osteoporosis
• depression, anxiety
• cognitive decline
• dementia

And now, according to this study, we can add to that list “shrunken brain”. Here are the deets:

A team of researchers examined the relationship between sedentary behavior and neurodegeneration among 404 adults age 50 and older.

Study participants wore a watch that measured their activity continuously over the span of a week. Their sedentary time was then related to their cognitive performance and brain scans captured over a seven-year follow-up period. 

Participants who spent more time sedentary were more likely to experience cognitive decline and neurodegenerative changes [shrunken hippocampus] regardless of how much they exercised. 

“Reducing your risk for Alzheimer’s disease is not just about working out once a day,” said Gogniat. “Minimizing the time spent sitting, even if you do exercise daily, reduces the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease.”

Great. I guess I might as well accept that this is my future:

In case you’re wondering why and how being sedentary is killing us, I looked it up: human metabolism in all its functions gets gummed up when we are still too long and too often. From carbohydrate and lipid (fat) metabolic dysfunction, to inflammation, to decreased cardiac output to activation of the sympathetic nervous system (and much much more), sedentary behaviors give rise to these adverse processes, while even light physical activity (e.g. washing dishes) doesn’t trigger them (or something– human metabolic science is complicated and I’m not an expert on this). The take-home message here is clearly illustrated in this fancy medical overview article:

Four things that are bad for us: playing video games, watching TV, computer use, and reading a book (while lying down). Two things that are good for us: riding a bike, and running.

Yes, we all knew that. And the dozens of medical studies measuring all those adverse effects from the time we spend being inactive all offer suggestions to counteract those effects:

Move. Move more. Move more often. Move more vigorously when you can. Keep it moving, folks. You got to move it move it. (Warning: I linked to one of my favorite youtube videos– that song from Madagascar, “I like to move it move it”. I never get tired of it.)

Right. But the researchers in this most recent study pointed out that even for folks who exercise regularly and those who meet the CDC guidelines for 150 minutes a week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (plus strength training), they still need to up their at-home game by sitting less in the course of their day. How is that supposed to happen? What else are we supposed to do?

One idea is to change the environment: use standing desks, treadmill desks, or move things you normally use so they are further away (e.g. one site suggests putting your wastebasket far away from your desk). Other sorts of suggestions include setting timers to stand up regularly, and incorporate standing or pacing or walking into activities like talking on the phone, attending work meetings, etc. I do frequently park far away from places I’m going so I’ll get more steps in. So yes, some people manage to use some of these strategies sometimes.

But let’s be honest– it’s hard to change our habits in such basic physical ways. Personally, I’ve never been able to read a book while riding a spin bike or even walking on a treadmill. Walking while having a work meeting seems very distracting and also impractical– how can I walk, talk, and also take notes on my laptop at the same time?

If everyone lived in communities near friends, families, jobs, schools, recreation and religious and art facilities and local shops, and had systems in place to make moving between these places easy for everyone throughout our life trajectories, we would on balance be much less sedentary during our waking and non-exercising hours. But we don’t all live in such communities. Very few of us do.

And, our governments don’t generally prioritize this kind of living with overall public health and well-being in mind. But they could. Researchers across disciplines have studied so-called “Blue Zones”, where demographers have found that residents live longer, are more healthy and report significant well-being. How does it work? Working with a combination of factors ranging from urban planning and transportation to food production and distribution to health care to local diet customs. There are dozens of ways we can work with others to make our micro-environments more movement and interaction-friendly. We will also need help and coordination at the local, state and national levels.

So, how to become less sedentary? We can certainly look for opportunities to move our bodies in the varied ways they can during our day. But I think it’s even more important to take a stand for changing how our communities and nations operate to make them more accessible and friendly to everyone, not just those who can manage to read a book and walk on a treadmill at the same time.

I love checking out the newest scientific research on human functioning for a bunch of reasons. First, it shows how complex we are as organic beings– our systems interact in detailed ways that result in eating, digestion, break dancing, poetry creation, and doing laundry. I mean, wow.

Second, it shows human creativity in the hypotheses that scientists come up with to try to explain how some of our everyday processes work. Here’s an example: a research group studied African plains zebras (who are very social animals) to examine how their food foraging habits during drought affected their social bonds. Good news: they managed to get enough food without sacrificing their position in the herd! Go plains zebras! And the researchers concluded on this positive note:

These findings illustrate how social roles and differential responses to acute environmental stress within stable social groups may contribute to species resilience, and how communication flexibly responds to facilitate both survival and sociality under harsh environmental conditions.

And third, sometimes scientists go a bit far afield, in fact so much that they may have lost a bit of perspective. The Ig Nobel awards, held every year at MIT, recognize such breathtaking myopia for projects like one undertaken by some Brazilian scientists for studying whether and how constipation affects the mating prospects of scorpions. Yes, we can all can sort of relate. But I don’t think we really want to talk about it, much less record it for the annals of science. Well, it’s knowledge now…

Or is it? We see all sorts of splashy messaging around new scientific results, and it’s unclear what to do about them. I’ve written a whole tome of posts about the “eggs good/eggs bad” controversy.

However, in my opinion, some science headlines can be safely ignored. Here are a couple:

I guess they weren’t able to capture one of the mice participants picking their nose, so they recruited this child instead.

Okay, what’s the deal here? The upshot is this: Some perfectly reasonable scientists were interested in a particular bacterium that a) can cause pneumonia in humans; and b) is found in the a lot of human brains affected by late-onset dementia. Where it gets more arcane is that they studied what happens when there’s damage to nasal tissues (where this bacterium lives). What happened was that the mouse brains deposited more of the amyloid-beta protein – a protein which is released in response to infections. Plaques (or clumps) of this protein are also found in significant concentrations in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

However: 1) it’s not clear that the effects will be the same in humans; and 2) it’s not even clear that amyloid-beta plaques are a cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

So in the grand scheme of things, this is not something to worry about. Nothing to see here…

If I may, I’d like to offer one more example of a science headline we don’t need to worry about right now.

Okay, I’m gonna lay it all out for you now.

We are all familiar with the awkward-at-first but hopefully delicious-and-calming sensations of sitting back into a hair-washing basin at a salon. Turns out there have been a few (twelve, according to the Lancet) cases in which people had a stoke after being in that awkward head and neck position at a salon.

But what are we to do?

This article makes helpful suggestions.

The speed at which the hair is washed, how long it takes and any force or jerking movement to the head and neck while washing all contribute to the risk. Request a gentle wash, try not to stay in position at the backwash longer than you have to and inform your hairdresser if you experience any discomfort during washing.

So, no jerking around of the head and neck, no speed-washing, no extended periods in the basin. Check, check, check. I think we can all breathe a little easier now, armed with this advice.

Life can be tough. And life right now, for lots of us on the planet, is extra-tough. We’ve all got enough on our plates without adding hair-washing-induced stroke or nose-picking-induced Alzheimers to our list of worries.

So don’t worry. About these things, at least.

Have a lovely week! I’ll be back on Thursday with more… 🙂