Why It Is Important To Be Active?
In hope to learn something about how inactivity affects our health, researchers at the University of Missouri persuaded a group of active and healthy young people to stop being so active. Scientists have known for some time that people who generally sit a lot have more risk of developing heart disease or type 2 diabetes. The only thing that is not fully understand is why it is happening and why is inactivity connected with diseases. What is apparent is that people who are inactive are often obese, eat bad food or have problems related to lifestyle and metabolism.
To find some new answers, researchers have recently adopted a new approach to studying the consequences of inaction. They have asked people who would otherwise exercise to be inactive, in some cases even to rest in bed. They wanted to determine whether this decrease in physical activity affects the ability of body to control sugar levels in blood. “It is evident that the rise in blood sugar, especially after meals, has a bad effect on health” said John P. Thyfault, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. He conducted the study with a student of final year Catherine R. Mikus and others. ,, Jump or other sudden changes in sugar level in blood after meals are associated with the development of heart disease and type 2 diabetes”
The researchers equipped the volunteers with the most modern equipment to monitor glucose levels, which were constantly checking the blood sugar throughout the day. Also gave them the bracelets for measuring activities, to measure how many steps make. Finally, they asked for volunteers to write a detailed diary of nutrition. They told them to live normally for three days to walk and exercise as usual. The volunteers were practicing for 30 minutes or more almost every day, and made more than 10,000 steps a day during the first three days of the experiment. Averaged almost 13,000 steps. According to their devices for the measurement of glucose, the blood sugar after meals during the three days did not increase.
However, this situation was reversed during the second part of the experiment, when the volunteers were told to reduce the activity to under 5,000 steps a day over the next three days. Volunteers were no longer in practice and, whenever they could, they used the elevator instead of stairs or have ordered lunch rather than go to the restaurant.The average number of steps over three days decreased to 4.300. They ate exactly the same meals and snacks as well as in the previous three days, however, the level of sugar in their blood significantly increased after a meal. That increase was for about 26 per cent.
“This change of control of blood sugar after a meal appeared long before we were able to notice any changes in physical fitness or weight, or fat accumulation due to reduced activity,” said Dr Thyfault. This means that the change of sugar level is probably a direct result of the fact that volunteers were less active than usual.
The jumps in sugar level are normal since the muscles need less energy and take less sugar from the blood. This condition becomes a serious problem only when the inactivity continues, it becomes a normal state of the organism. ,, Our assumption is that inactivity produces physiological conditions that lead to chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, regardless of weight or diet”. said Dr. Thyfault.
In order to avoid this, people should be in motion, even in small doses. It is not necessary to exercise to hard, but even mild exercise is better than be inactive.
