Even if you are on the right track,
you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
WILL ROGERS
FROM AN EVOLUTIONARY POINT OF view, exercise is even more essential than we’ve been told, but it doesn’t have to be the mindless, miserable slogging people often think it is. Seen through the lens of our ancestors’ lives, movement becomes layered with function, creativity, thrill, and play. Rather than some ancillary responsibility we pencil into our day, it’s an indispensable dimension of a fully animated life.
The fact is we’re meant to move and move often. Move in mundane ambulation as we go about the day’s tasks. Move erratically and explosively as we push the boundaries of our limitations—because a life-threatening situation requires it, or because we crave the thrill to be found at the brink. Move creatively as we seek to express and experiment.
Movement feeds deeply ingrained instinct. What we often mistake for ennui in the modern age is, in part, a physical restlessness—like the detached, lost acquiescence of a caged animal. Movement, after all, defines us as humans. We’re bipedal creatures who have evolved through both grand physical striving (e.g., migrating across the planet) and highly sophisticated endeavors (e.g., creating tools and technology). We relate to the world by acting upon it in some literal or figurative regard. Movement lives as motion and metaphor.
I’ve noticed something in the way people think about exercise. Sure, for some people it’s simply about finishing the obligatory forty minutes on an elliptical. For others who readily embrace physical exertion, however, it’s all about a different kind of goal—ambition and achievement. It’s about the progression to a lower (or higher) weight, a faster time, or a longer run. I think that’s part of being human—the drive to improve oneself. It’s not everything, however. Humans are also adventurers and explorers. We’re drawn by curiosity. We’re moved by creative, seemingly arbitrary bouts of inspiration. The journey compels us, sometimes for no other reason than the journey itself with all its sights, sounds, and random incidents along the way. I think this applies to all aspects of living in the body—to movement, to sensing, and to play. We can embrace it also as a means of fulfillment and pleasure—with the power to reward us neurochemically and transform us epigenetically.
“What we often mistake for ennui in the modern age is, in part, a physical restlessness— like the detached, lost acquiescence of a caged animal.”
Beyond the full gamut of physical benefits, activity literally helps build and rebuild our brains as well as our muscles. Yes, exercise goes to the head in dramatically healthy ways throughout the course of a lifetime. There’s truly no overselling this point. Most obviously, exercise increases blood flow to the brain, which provides more oxygen and energy but also reduces free-radical damage and enhances memory. Researchers also know that exercise stimulates the creation of new neurons and the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a chemical that’s instrumental in neuron formation and preservation.14 Then there’s the impact on gene expression: exercise specifically promotes gene expression that supports plasticity,15 the brain’s crucial power to alter neural pathways, which allows us to adapt neurologically to and learn from our experiences. Plasticity is the stuff that fuels our cognitive development. There’s no better way to maintain your intellectual faculties and adaptability than exercise.
“While a devoted exercise regimen offers assorted benefits, it’s simply not enough to protect you from the hazards of marathon sitting.”
Sitting is unnatural and uncomfortable for a species that has been standing, walking, and squatting for 2.5 million years. The human default resting position is actually squatting; it’s only been in our very recent history that we’ve taken to marathon sitting. No wonder we contort and distort our bodies in vain attempts to avoid discomfort and pain while stuck in a chair!
So, what’s so bad about sitting? For one, it weakens your gluteal muscles by deactivating them and putting them into a static stretch. Sitting also causes your hip flexors and hamstrings to shorten and tighten, gradually worsening over time. Unfortunately, strong glutes and good hip and hamstring mobility are critical to just about all manner of activity, from mundane daily tasks like picking up that paperclip off the floor to playing a demanding contact sport. If you are glued to the chair all day except for that lunchtime pickup basketball game or trail run, you can pretty much expect to get injured when you call upon your atrophied, imbalanced body for peak performance.
But far more sobering is the fact that scientists are now linking a sedentary lifestyle (defined as sitting for twenty-three hours a week or more) with diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, cardiac disease, and premature death.16 The physiology of inactivity theory suggests that prolonged sitting also causes weight gain by creating imbalances in critical metabolic hormones such as leptin, which regulates appetite and fat metabolism in the body. When leptin signaling is compromised, your brain will crave more food, and your body will default into a fat-storage hormonal pattern instead of a fat-burning hormonal pattern.17 All this has scientists and members of the medical community repeating the same tagline: sitting is the new smoking.
There’s even a new medical term associated with chronic sitting: active couch potato syndrome, used to describe people who suffer from the same health risks as the absolute inactive despite devoting themselves to vigorous daily workouts—simply by virtue of the fact that they spend so much uninterrupted time sitting in long commutes, at desk jobs, and again when they get home and plop in front of the television. While a devoted exercise regimen offers assorted benefits, it’s simply not enough to protect you from the hazards of marathon sitting.
By taking frequent breaks from sitting, however, even brief ones consisting of a minute or so, can measurably improve your circumstances. The moment you get up and get moving down the hall or around the office courtyard, you kick into gear the hormones—leptin, lipase, and insulin—that will shift you into a fat-burning mode. As endocrinologist James Levine of the Mayo Clinic explains:
Simply by standing, you burn three times as many calories as you do sitting. Muscle contractions, including the ones required for standing, seem to trigger important processes related to the breakdown of fats and sugars. When you sit down, muscle contractions cease and these processes stall.18
One popular trend in Evolutionary Health circles is standup desks. You can create your own by retrofitting your computer desk with a couple of sturdy cardboard boxes. Nearly every member on staff at Primal Blueprint Publishing in Malibu independently transitioned to a predominantly standup workstation using this method. (Well, maybe a little peer and environmental influence was involved, but hey—that’s a good thing!)
Standing at your work desk re-engages your muscles, promotes good posture, burns more calories, and generally avoids the perils of long periods in the chair. Standing also creates such metabolic efficiencies as increased calorie burning, improved circulation (including to your brain), and increased muscle recruitment. At first it may feel unnatural and uncomfortable to lose the chair, and you can certainly proceed with this exercise gradually. Stand for as long as you’re comfortable, return to your chair for a sufficient rest period, then cycle into another standup period.
Even if you proceed with stand-and-sit cycles gradually, standing should predominate over sitting with a few months of effort. Let the transition happen at your own pace, and make sure you don’t experience pain in your back or lower extremities from standing too long. Standing on a padded mat is a great way to improve the comfort and duration of your standing efforts. You’ll know when it’s time to transition to sitting over the course of the day, so pay attention, stay comfortable, and stay committed to the effort.
If you work for a large company with a facilities support staff, request standup adaptations such as a higher shelf on which to rest your computer. Or, if you decide to take matters into your own hands and make your own simple standup environment, all you need are a couple reams of paper, shipping boxes, or a footstool to elevate your keyboard and monitor. (Consider getting assistance to make sure your setup is safe and ergonomically optimum.) Once you become a convert, you can order a sophisticated standup workstation. But before you buy anything, test out different workstation heights. Measure the one that works best, and keep that measurement handy when you’re shopping or building. For great ideas, check out the possibilities at Ergo Desktop at Ergo Desktop.com and Stand’n Sit Workstation at Standin Good Health.com.