“We are designed to move – people in motion are happy. Motion is the notion” – Dr James Levine

I recently read the book ‘Get Up: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It’ by Dr James A. Levine and I really found it so inspirational that I was desperate to stop sitting, jump out of my chair and head out for a run while I was reading it! He really is a powerhouse of knowledge and has worked with the best and the brightest in Mayo clinic run anti-obesity programmes for decades.

James Levine designed the first hugely popular treadmill desk and even had a hand in the activity tracking app that was first launched in the Apple iPod and then went on to be integrated into most smartphones. However, it all started when he was around twelve and was absolutely fascinated by the movements of snails he found in his back garden.

Movement Is Ingrained Into The Human Psyche:

He hypothesised that the snails moved in different ways – they each had their own unique way of moving and how could this be? What followed was several years of lost sleep as he tracked snail movements throughout the night in a homemade snail tank kept under his bed. Eventually, this fascination and research led to him being offered a place at a prestigious UK school and the start of his career in science. It wasn’t until years later that studies from Stanford backed up his youthful experimentation.

But how do snail movements correlate with human movement? Well, it’s all quite similar. Just like each and every snail has a unique way of movement so too do humans. We are all individuals and our energy, movement and activity levels are all different. What happens when you impose a ‘chair sentence’ as he often describes it in his book on those of us that are designed to move around freely in order to thrive? Well, it can have disastrous effects on your body and your mind.

For centuries we spent the majority of our waking time upright, moving around, running, walking or even squatting, but hardly ever sitting. Our bodies are not designed to sit all day staring at screens.

80% of all jobs now require people to be seated at a computer to earn their livelihood and that number is only increasing. Adam Levine likened it to a form of sensory deprivation, we are wondering why obesity, depression and anxiety rates are skyrocketing! This may be a big part of the answer. This over-dependancy on sitting – but what can we do about it?

At a Mark Hamilton lecture, Dr Levine heard him say that “Sitting is more dangerous than smoking” because only roughly 18% (16% if you live in New Zealand) of people smoke and are at risk of the diseases of smoking. Whereas a good three-quarters of the western population sit all day long. A sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of all major diseases (in fact he says in his video lecture below that sitting increases your risk of thirty-four chronic diseases). Sitting for long periods is particularly linked to diabetes and obesity.

“For every hour you sit watching television or listening to a lecture, your life expectancy decreases by 22 minutes” – David Duncan (as cited in ‘Get Up: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It’)

How Sitting Has Links With Diabetes and Obesity:

Blood sugar quickly rises after each meal. Because we are designed to always be moving the idea is that the spike of insulin will then go on to be fuel (glucose) for our muscles. Unfortunately when you sit directly after you eat and do not use your muscles then you can convert all of that blood sugar directly into fat and your muscles can waste away in the process. A quick walk of only fifteen minutes after each and every meal can largely wipe out any of the negative after-effects of eating!

James Levine also links prolonged sitting with obesity. He composed many very interesting obesity experiments one in which they actually overfed people! They found that there were two types of people – those that were prone to obesity and gaining weight and ‘thinifers’ as he described them in his book (maybe not so politically correct so I will just call them ‘movers’!).

‘Movers’ always want to be moving and if they sit for too long their brain sends out signals to their bodies “get up, move about!”. He actually highlighted a study they did with specifically breed marathon running rats whereby they found that their muscles are super connected to their brains and they send very important signals that tell them to keep moving.

You could give them the exact same environment and the same diet but he found that the human ‘movers’ in his study would on average be moving about and staying active for an increased time of about two and a quarter hours per day. Which meant that you could overfeed them and they would simply just move more and burn it off. He attributes this to what he calls NEAT.

Let’s Learn About NEAT Movement:

NEAT = Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis or in other words all of the minutiae everyday activities you do that use up energy. This does NOT include scheduled sports games or workouts at the gym. This could include walking to work or school, dancing, playing music, cleaning your house, gardening, shopping, taking care of your children and your pets or spending time with friends. Basically all of the daily, everyday tasks that make up your beautiful, unique and active life.

Unfortunately, in our uber productive lives, we have outsourced a lot of these tasks in favour of more time sitting at our jobs, or sedentary past times like sitting in front of the computer or T.V. We now often order ready meals, we can hire people to pick up our kids and take them to their activities, we employ a cleaner if we can afford it, we shop online, we may hire a dog walker, and we drive most places as we can’t always prioritise the time it would take to walk.

We could spend some of our NEAT time interacting with our partner or family but often that goes neglected as research shows that we often only spend twelve minutes a day interacting with the person that we have chosen to build our lives with.

Dr Levine says that it is this low NEAT score that has the most links with unwanted weight gain, heart attacks, cancer and diabetes. People who are prone to obesity and weight gain are simply just not moving enough in their everyday lives and have replaced high NEAT activities with low NEAT activities that are more chair based in nature! So what is causing this faulty brain chemistry that is keeping people in their chairs and not moving around as they should?

Brain Wiring For Movement Begins in Childhood:

Activity and muscle development really start in childhood. Prolonged sitting in childhood can create sedentary muscles that are used to being still and not active. In fact, he highlighted research that discusses how this muscle development for constant movement is largely developed within the first five years of life.

Preschoolers that spend too much time going from chair to chair, i.e. activity chair, high chair, car seat, then pram are simply not getting enough opportunities to move around, take risks, climb, fall down, learn and develop their muscles and brain as they should. This also leads to problems in school when the ‘movers’ don’t get enough time to be active and expend their energy in a positive way.

Dr Levine also discusses in his book how play, creativity, and movement are all linked and are as important for adults as they are for children. Particularly so for adults in reducing the stress of our busy lives. Many of the ways that adults now use to reduce stress are screen, food and alcohol-based (note that they are all sitting activities!).

When we should be moving to reduce stress! Because that’s really what we are designed for – constant movement, connection, laughter, and interaction as we go about our active everyday lives.

“We all have a capacity for happiness. Sitting somehow suppresses it” – Dr James Levine

I am going to do a whole post on practical ways that we can ditch our ‘chair sentence’ (as Dr Levine puts it in his book) in the office and at home so watch out for it! ♥

Links:

Watch James Levines full lecture on The Dangers of Sitting

Start tracking your everyday activity with our picks of the best fitness trackers

Need some exercise ideas? Check out this list

Read the book!

(Photo by Steinar Engeland on Unsplash)