When was the last time you heard that exercise was important for a healthy heart? It’s not new news by any means. We have been encouraged by experts to exercise regularly, to at least go for a walk 20 to 30 minutes 5 days a week. The clear and consistent message is don’t sit around, move.

The Turnaround – Now there’s another bit of information to adjust to as well. We’re now told exercise done only as half to a one-hour time block doesn’t protect you from degenerative heart disease after all. Neither does it prevent diabetes as you age. It seems too much sitting increases heart disease, and that specifically prolonged periods of sitting are not counterbalanced by a daily block of time devoted to exercise.

So if you go to the gym before work, or after work, but spend 8.30am to 12.30pm sitting in front of a computer, go to lunch, and resume sitting 1.30pm to 5.30pm, you are in potential trouble. With prolonged time blocks sitting with minimal movement you increase your heart disease risk by 50 to 80 per cent, in spite of the hour at the gym or walking the streets, according to the latest reports.

The Research – US Professor Marc Hamilton, a biomedical sciences expert from Pennington Biomedical Research Centre said “Tests showed signs of pre-diabetes in people who exercised moderately and weren’t obese, after just one day of sitting. They tested healthy on another day, when pottering around or standing for 75 percent of the day.”

So it looks like the secret is to keep moving, just pottering about, reaching, sitting, standing, leaning against the wall at the water cooler, dithering in the kitchen making a cup of tea, even rummaging in the filing cabinet, or standing up to answer the phone and read the paper.

Being on your feet for 75 per cent of your day goes a lot further towards health benefits than just one hour at the gym followed by seven or eight hours sitting at work and then another three or four hours sitting in front of the TV at home. Big blocks of time being sedentary increases health dangers, especially those relating to heart and blood sugar issues, even in lean people.

Good Idea – Ages back I came across a bit of good advice. Put your computer up on a shelf or on a bench top and stand to do your computer work. For a start, standing makes you more alert than sitting does. You can also do a bit of pacing as you plan and plot your next campaign and while talking on your mobile.

Clearing and Cleaning Cell Waste – There are good reasons why frequent use of big muscles in your legs and butt, as well as little muscles, keeps your insides healthier.

Frequent movement of muscles keeps your internal fluids waste disposal system pumping through filtering stations scattered all through your body. These filtering stations separate out the debris out of the fluids gathered from around cells. Then special cells generated in the filtering stations go to work and disintegrate these particles so they can be flushed out of your body effectively, leaving your cellular fluid environment clean and clear.
(for more details on this process see my article Your Body’s Clever Elimination System)

Keeping your feet moving will pump cell waste products up from your feet all the way past the groin area, usually constricted while you are sitting, to your belly area to a main collection channel. Further waste is collected from cells of various organs and delivered to the main channel that continues up within your torso.

The propelling mechanism is now the rhythmic pressure of internal muscles, especially your breathing, again much easier when standing than sitting, to deliver your lymph waste fluids higher still, into your venus blood system, just under the collarbones.

This combined fluid goes through the normal blood cleansing process. The clearing and cleansing process is much easier when you are on your feet and moving, and prevents fluid building up and pooling in your feet and legs, so common on long trips by car or plane when you are stuck in a seat for some hours.

Muscles Provide Pumping Action For Cellular Waste – Your heart is the pump that propels your blood flow round your body continuously, whether you are sitting, standing or lying down. Your cellular waste disposal system, your lymphatic system, however, relies on muscles of your body contracting and releasing rhythmically to provide the pumping action to drive the waste laden lymphatic fluids, through miles of channels, via filtering stations, eventually to the liver for detoxing.

Sitting around for long periods makes it harder to perform this task and contributes to stiffness in joints and muscles and feeling sluggish and tired by the end of the day.

State Of Mind Can Reflect State Of Body – Have you noticed that people who are depressed or feeling flat will often not move much, become more and more sluggish, unable to move or unwilling to move. They are condemning their cells to operating in a polluted fluid environment, virtually suffocating in their own wastes. That person feels worse and worse, functionally and mentally and emotionally.

Encourage them to move, walk, do something physical. This will help clear lymph waste and also improve blood flow, deliver nutrition to cells, bring fresh oxygen to tissues and to their brain, so they will feel better. It is one of the most reliable basic ways to move out of a stuck mental state. Minimum movement for prolonged periods of time allows pollution to build up in our internal spaces including our brain, joints, muscles and organs. We become very sluggish, slowed down, depressed in fact.

All functions are depressed when the body is polluted.

Stimulate Meridian Energy Flow – As well as preventing a buildup of toxic waste in your cells and lymphatic system, every move you make, with your hands, arms, shoulders, feet, legs, hips, your torso, your breathing, engages different parts of your meridian energy system, ensuring efficient delivery of energy to all your external muscles and internal functions.

Regularly moving, even for a few minutes at a time, will help to keep your circulation moving, your lymph clearing, your lungs breathing more fully, as well as your energy meridians flowing. Focused exercise builds strength and endurance and serves to keep all muscles toned with spare capacity for emergencies. “Sitting too much is not the same as exercising too little,” says Dr Marc Hamilton.
We are designed to move so don’t sit around, move.