Using muscle memory to get you moving

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Brisk walking, hitting the gym, making it to the pool or spin class—those are great activities that’ll help fill your need for aerobic action that elevates your heart rate and breathing, increases brain health and repair, and ups your overall metabolism while reducing harmful inflammation. But these days even folks who get the recommended 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a week still do a lot of sitting around—watching TV, at work and in the car. In short, most folks have a “more Roomba than rumba” lifestyle!

A recent survey found that the average American sits 13 hours a day and sleeps around 8. That’s 21 hours of immobility. According to a study in Diabetologia, every extra hour of sedentary time is associated with 22 percent increased odds for Type 2 diabetes and 39 percent increased odds for metabolic syndrome.

For real vitality, you can embrace lots of small, frequent changes in position and effort. Study after study shows that it’s the little things—standing up and walking while talking on the phone, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, washing your dishes by hand, mopping a floor—that are necessary to keep your muscles, mind and molecules healthy.

Fortunately, if you’ve been active in the past—say, played high school sports or been a roller skater or a bike rider—you can thank your muscles for their memories! A new study out of the U.K. reveals that exercise actually alters the DNA in your muscles—another one of those epigenetic changes— and muscles’ memories of exercise past can help power your new commitment to moving more.

One Finnish study found that cutting leisure-time sitting by 21 minutes a day resulted in improvements in biomarkers for heart health and lower glucose levels. Plus, over the course of a year, the get-up-more-often group maintained muscle mass in their legs, while a control group who did not cut sitting time saw muscle mass decrease by half!

A University of Indiana study shows that taking three five-minute walks during a three-hour stretch of sitting reverses harm that sedentary behavior does to leg arteries. It seems that when your muscles are slack (while you are sitting), they don’t contract and don’t help pump blood back to the heart. Blood can pool in the legs, damaging the lining of your vessels and making them less flexible, which is a risk factor for stroke and heart attack. So, let your body remember to move, sweat, breathe deeply, smile, flex, jump and bend.

Since surveys show that most people would like to stand up more often, reducing your sitting time by 50 percent is a do-able and essential goal.

■ Find every chance to stand and move more. For example, walk up and down the soccer or softball field sidelines while watching your kids play. Take the stairs at work. Ditch the car whenever you can. Get a standing or treadmill desk. Walk the dog; don’t just watch the dog walk.

■ Make TV watching active: Do stretches, exercises or pedal a stationary bike.

■ Go retro: Mow the lawn with a push mower; use a broom, not the vacuum; hang the laundry out to dry in the backyard (it smells so good).

■ Build up your endurance and increase your aerobic activity, too: Sign up for water aerobics; play tag with the kids; heck, join a dodgeball team (they’re all over the place). You’ll be surprised at how happy your muscles will be when you shift them from memories to motion!

So let your inner, playful child, enthusiastic highschool athlete or college swimmer help you get big results—even from small upgrades in your activity level. Move your mind. Move your muscles. Move to a younger RealAge.

(c) 2018 Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.