Month: April 2018

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Standing at your desk? There’s more to it!

(Credit: MARIA LOKKE)

Are you using a standing desk to improve wellness and longevity. It turns out that switching to a standing desk isn’t a silver bullet…

“A standing desk is not an automatic ticket to better health. As Joan Vernikos, author of Sitting Kills and a former NASA Life Sciences director, discovered in her research on the stresses imposed by microgravity environments, uninterrupted standing can be as bad as sitting. Ideally, you’d switch between the two…

The simplest thing you can do is place a footrest under your desk where you can prop one leg while you stand. Vernikos recommends switching legs often, because ‘”the body needs stimulation through a change signal.'”

So simply using a standing desk isn’t the solution to the body’s inactivity during that stationary work. One must become active periodically no matter if one is sitting in a chair or standing at a desk.

To learn more recommendations for simple desk exercises, read the full article from wired.com: “Sitting in on Remote Meetings? Working at a Standing Desk? Follow These Tips.“

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Middle Age Cardiovascular Fitness May Prevent Dementia

Heart graphic (Credit: Pixabay)

“Among a group of Swedish women, those with high cardiovascular fitness at middle age were 88% less likely to develop dementia decades later, compared with women with moderate cardiovascular fitness, researchers reported online in Neurology.”

This means that if cardiovascular fitness is improved or maintained during middle age that has the potential to delay or prevent dementia from developing in a person’s later years. However, this was a limited study and it does not prove causation, just association, which means that more research needs to be done to determine if there is a true link between cardiovascular fitness and the prevention of dementia and if so when exactly in a person’s lifetime a high fitness level most important (be it midlife or otherwise).

To learn more details about the study read this post from the Psych Congress Network: “Fitness in Midlife May Significantly Lower Dementia Risk.” And you may also want to read the wonky source article, “Midlife cardiovascular fitness and dementia: A 44-year longitudinal population study in women“, published on March 14, 2018 by Helena Horder, PhD, Lena Johansson, PhD, XinXin Guo, MD, PhD, Gunnar Grimby, MD, Silke Kern, MD, PhD, Svante O ̈stling, MD, and Ingmar Skoog, MD. (The Neurology article came to our attention via Nicholas Bakalar’s post, “Fitness in Midlife May Help Fend Off Dementia” in the The New York Times.)

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Midlife Weight Gain Harms Your Health

(Credit: Pixabay)

For many adults, weight gain is slow and steady, but new research suggests that even a few extra pounds can boost your risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.” […] On average, people gain about a half a pound to a pound per year. Most people gain weight all the way to 55 and up,” Hu said. “But once you cross the obesity threshold, it’s difficult to go back. This study provides very strong evidence that prevention of weight gain is very important.” (Source: US News)

Two large-scale studies in the United States focused on weight gain and its connection to health problems. The studies included almost 93,000 women whose health was followed for 18 years, and more than 25,000 men whose health was followed for 15 years. The researchers found that for every 11 pounds gained the risk of certain conditions increased, including:

  • 30% higher risk of diabetes 
  • 14% higher risk of high blood pressure
  • 8% higher risk of heart disease or stroke
  • 6% increased risk of an obesity-related cancer
  • 5% higher risk of dying prematurely
  • 17% decrease in the odds of healthy aging

If you notice yourself gaining weight it is best to begin trying to modify the factors/behaviors that you believe are affecting your weight as soon as possible.

Although it’s never too late to gain health benefits from losing weight, it becomes much harder to take weight off and keep it off the heavier you get. (Source: US News)

To learn more about these studies and their findings read this article: “More Evidence That Midlife Weight Gain Harms Your Health.”