March 27, 2014

changes in our lives



Well I am standing up computing.  
Decided to do this upon recommendation in a book I am reading on bio mechanics.  
Then I of course did research and lo and behold 
research says sitting is bad and lots of sitting way bad
and most of my time at home inside is computing, reading, SITTING....
although I am occasionally on my feet cooking or housecleaning.....now and again.

Why stand?

There is a staggering amount of convincing research about the perils of sitting. In the scientific world, it’s similar to how the community views global warming, smoking, and sugar consumption–overwhelming consensus. Sitting is bad for you. You are slowly killing yourself by sitting all day long.
Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic is one of the earliest and most vocal critics of sitting. In sources as varied as The New York TimesSalon, and Discovery News, Levine claims that “Excessive sitting is a lethal activity.” He is even credited with creating a name for what we’re facing: “sitting disease.”
Sitting all day long is so bad that it can’t even be outdone by exercise. There’s a phrase for what most of us are: “active couch potatoes,” who make a point of exercising each day, but otherwise spend the rest of the time sitting in the car, on the couch, or at a desk. Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist and research fellow in biology at Imperial College London who writes on the “influence of science and biology on modern life” for The New York Times, says,
Sitting all day long is so bad that it can’t even be outdone by exercise.
“It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.”
Sitting is bad because it’s incredibly passive and barely burns any calories. But the passivity is not the only reason sitting is bad. Excessive sitting has tangible impacts on how your body functions. 
“When you spend long periods sitting, your body actually does things that are bad for you. As an example, consider lipoprotein lipase. This is a molecule that plays a central role in how the body processes fats; it’s produced by many tissues, including muscles. Low levels of lipoprotein lipase are associated with a variety of health problems, including heart disease. Studies in rats show that leg muscles only produce this molecule when they are actively being flexed (for example, when the animal is standing up and ambling about). The implication is that when you sit, a crucial part of your metabolism slows down.”

And the plus is that I am not computing as much which is a fine thing.

Other change - realized our little girl Indigo has been hurting.  
It snuck up on us little by little.  
We didn't realize she had stopped hopping on to the sofa 
until we asked her to jump into the car and she couldn't....not wouldn't couldn't.  
We got out a drug used last year 
and the improvement is dramatic and amazing AMAZING!