People may be overweight simply because they sit too much, according to scientists at the University of Missouri. They found that exercise alone isn’t enough to take off extra pounds – they discovered that the enzymes in our body responsible for burning fat simply shut down when we sit down.
The scientists said the discovery goes far beyond the assumption that people who sit for hours on end in front of the TV or computer are less active and thus prone to gain weight. They said the simple act of sitting on our cans for long periods harms the body in ways which have not been well understood.
“It was hard to believe at first,” said research team leader Marc Hamilton, associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia. When the team began investigating what happens to fat when we sit for extended periods, they really didn’t expect to find much, and certainly didn’t expect to find anything that turned out to be “huge.”
In order to avoid the harm caused by sitting for long periods, Hamilton said everyone should stand up and “putter.” While he doesn’t suggest people quit exercising, he says exercise alone isn’t enough. He says we need to be ever mindful of what we’re doing when we aren’t engaged in exercise, because the ability of the body to get rid of fat stops whenever we stop and sit down.
The researchers injected lab animals with radioactive tracers to follow the fat and find out what happened to it when the animals sat. They found that a fat-splitting enzyme called lipase is suppressed after the animals sat for several hours, and that the fat was transported to adipose tissue, which is connective tissue where fat globules are stored. In other words, the fat was put in a place where it could not easily be burned. Tests with humans showed essentially the same thing: fat was retained; HDL cholesterol, the “good” kind, was lowered; and the overall rate of metabolism was reduced.
No one yet knows how much we need to get up and move around to keep the fat-splitting enzyme active, but Hamilton says there’s soon going to be flood of research by a lot of people to find out. Until all the answers are found, he advises getting up and “puttering” whenever possible.
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