The simple way to transform your health, reduce the risk of death and stay slim… without Ozempic: PROFESSOR ROB GALLOWAY

What’s the one simple thing that can change your health? No, it’s not the Ozempic shot, or some obscure berry touted as the latest “superfood,” or a new app for your phone.

It’s quite simple: you need to get up and move more.

The fact is that our sedentary lifestyle, whether we sit at a desk all day or spend hours glued to the couch watching TV, is creating a pandemic of poor health.

Our bodies are designed to be active. Food – specifically the glucose it breaks down into – is the fuel that powers it.

But if we sit all day and use very little energy, the glucose levels in our blood remain higher than they should. This in turn causes the chronic diseases I now see so much in the emergency room – type 2 diabetes, heart attacks and cancer, which affect both young and old.

Study after study has confirmed the risks of sitting for long periods of time. In one of the most recent studies from Taiwan, researchers examined data from nearly half a million people over a 20-year period and found that those who worked while sitting were 34 percent more likely to die from a heart attack and 16 percent more likely to die of a heart attack. to die from any cause (including cancer) than those who moved for work.

As James Levine, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in the US and a leading endocrinologist, famously said: ‘It took nature two million years to design the walking, dynamic human, and it took those humans 200 years to reverse the trend. turn. art of nature and cramming people into chairs all day long.

Professor James Levine says it took humans 200 years to undo two million years of nature’s design

‘Sitting is more dangerous than smoking and kills more people than HIV. We’re killing ourselves.’

While we don’t know exactly what makes sitting so dangerous, we do know that it leads to elevated glucose levels. This increases insulin levels, leading to type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and also helps cancer cells divide and multiply.

But when we move, even just standing, our muscles contract, burning glucose. But what if you have a desk job, as an estimated 40 percent of workers in Western economies do? You might assume that a standing desk would be the solution.

To go by a recent news report: maybe not. Last week I received a call from a friend who works in HR for a premier league football team. She was looking for standing desks for administrative staff, but as she was about to order them, she read a news headline that changed her mind: “Experts Issue Health Warning About Standing Desks.”

A standing desk is useful, but a desk treadmill might be even better as it gets you moving and only costs £200.

This much-discussed story was about a study in Australia that looked at the amount of time people spent standing still, based on data from over 80,000 participants (wearing special wrist monitors) in the UK Biobank study. This is an ongoing project to identify environmental and genetic factors that lead to diseases.

The study found that after six years, the risk of cardiovascular disease (such as stroke and heart attack) or disease due to poor circulation – such as leg ulcers and varicose veins – was directly related to the time they spent at rest.

The results showed that sitting still is bad for you, sitting or standing, but sitting still is much worse than standing still: standing for long periods of time does not increase the risk of stroke or heart attack, ‘just’ disease due to poor circulation – none surprise, really, because we know that standing without moving means your blood flow isn’t that good.

In fact, the researchers didn’t mention standing desks, which stemmed from reports on their research that made some incorrect assumptions that people who use standing desks are completely stationary.

Those reports also missed this important fact: standing at a desk replaces sitting at a desk, which we know is so dangerous to our health.

The truth is, there are good medical reasons why standing – even if you’re not moving – is still healthier than sitting: it helps with posture and core muscle strength, and burns more calories because large muscle groups need to be activated to help you stands up.

You burn an extra eight calories per hour standing, which doesn’t sound like much, but in fact, after a year of working nine to five, you’ll burn an extra 13,440 calories – about what you get from 77 Mars bars.

If you have a sedentary job, it is best to purchase a desk that you can convert from sitting to standing. Also, take regular breaks – or better yet, in my opinion, get a treadmill under your desk.

This is what I use at home now – the little treadmill that fits under my desk costs just over £200 but is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

When I work from home on a non-clinical day, I typically walk 10km during meetings, grading and writing medical student assignments – and often carrying my five-month-old baby in a baby carrier.

The baby is put to sleep, I burn calories and even my back pain is gone – probably because I stay active.

(If you get back pain from standing for long periods of time, alternating between standing and sitting may be best; a sit-stand desk is the solution. But even more important is to move more.)

Standing desks are not dangerous: standing still is. And it is much worse to sit and stand still than to stand and be still. But try to keep moving, you really don’t want to die.

@drrobgalloway