Sitting May Kill You

I've been reading articles about the potential hazards of sitting for prolonged periods of time. MSNBC (URL http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34956099/) writes that:

Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods — even if you also exercise regularly — could be bad for your health. And it doesn't matter where the sitting takes place — at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV — just the overall number of hours it occurs.

How they explain this "phenomena" is by the following:

"After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," Ekblom-Bak said. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down.

Of course this is all preliminary research, but there is some sense to the madness. I would think that sitting for too long is almost like taking a nap or sleeping. The body starts to relax and shut down, thinking that it's resting. The more sitting, the more resting... it's almost like hibernating!

I guess it's comparing the number of hours of activity vs inactivity. If inactivity >> activity, then there could be a problem. Even worse, sometimes we may not even notice that we've been sitting down for such a long time, especially at work (for those of us who have desk jobs). Obviously, one will not be exercising 16 hours a day, but it's good to be aware of how much time is spent sitting and being idle.

Possible solutions? For the exercising type (I don't know if I can do this):

... people who exercise every day — but still spend a lot of time sitting — might get more benefit if that exercise were spread across the day, rather than in a single bout.

And for those who are stuck at the desk in their office:

"... they should try to interrupt sitting as often as possible," she said. "Don't just send your colleague an e-mail. Walk over and talk to him. Standing up."

I agree with the one above - sometimes I tell myself to get up and to walk around the room, or do assisted dips on my chair during conference calls. Or do my work standing or while in a squat position. Anything to keep my body from falling asleep.

I remember going to many Student Spiritual Convocations (SSC), and the coordinators and counselors told us that we need to break the spirituality cycle that we would get ourselves into. This cycle consisted of reaching a high after major church convocations/seminars like SSC; but after some time we start to go back to our old ways, and that high begins to become a low. Then another SSC comes, and we hit a high again, and the cycle continues.

Why is that? I think of it now as what the aforementioned article discusses - prolonged period of sitting, inactivity, idle. In our spirituality, we may hit periods of time where our faith becomes dormant or asleep. If we don't keep a constantly active and live faith, we may fall into this category of risk. And even if we attend SSC or NYTS or any other church seminars and reach a super high "high" point, all the days before and after that we spend in idle can possibly harm us. It could even kill our faith/spirituality.

So, what's a possible solution? Like the article states, constant movement/activity or spreading out exercise/activities. Our faith needs to be always active, or at least more active than not. I would think that would mean not to just do everything faith-related in one bout each day, but maybe split them up throughout the day - for example, praying in the morning, reading Bible in the afternoon, praying at night. That way, we can think about God throughout the day, and not just in the morning or at night.

I sometimes (more often than not) find myself in this situation. I wait til evening to do my Bible reading and prayer, in one sitting. I do get something out of it, but I'm sure I reap more benefit if I spread them out. Maybe I'll start out with this method, and I hope to gain much more from my faith if I can maintain this!

If you have any other ideas, please feel free to share!