Mike Wendland shares the health risks associated with being too sedentary and offers a prescription for avoiding this malady.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
April 2014
I have discovered something about the motorhome lifestyle that I don’t like. I have become so enthralled with being behind the wheel and watching North America go by that, well, I’ve caught a disease.
It’s called sitting disease.
Yes, there really is such a disease. And it’s reached epidemic proportions, linked to all sorts of other ailments, the first and foremost of which is obesity.
To be sure, the motorhome lifestyle isn’t the chief reason. Blame the outbreak of sitting disease on our sedentary lifestyle. Our deskbound working days. Our computer and Internet use. TV watching. But the fact is, the average American these days sits — at a desk, in the car or RV, or on a couch — eight to 10 hours every day.
Sitting. Planted. Not moving. A thick and growing-thicker-by-the-day body of medical research is documenting terrible health effects from all this.
It seems as though I am always at the computer, blogging about our motorhome lifestyle, updating social media. But added to that is all the time I have spent driving my RV during the past couple of years. Last year, I drove 35,000 miles across North America, doing stories about the interesting people and places we encountered.
Many days, I was behind the wheel 12 hours, only to stop for the night and sit right back down to edit video and write a story for the blog.
You still may be laughing at the term “sitting disease.” Don’t. No less an authority than the Mayo Clinic recognizes this issue. The experts are seriously concerned about the problem. That’s because when you sit for long periods of time — more than four hours — your body literally starts to shut down at the metabolic level, according to Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri.
It gets worse. When muscles — especially the big ones meant for movement, such as those in your legs — are immobile, your circulation slows and you burn fewer calories.
That would be cause enough to gain weight. But as it turns out, sitting so long and so much does even more to those trying to lose weight and get in shape. Key fat-burning enzymes responsible for breaking down triglycerides (a type of fat) simply start switching off. Sit for a full day and those fat burners plummet by 50 percent, noted James Levine, M.D., Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and author of Move A Little, Lose A Lot.
It gets even worse. The more you sit, the less blood sugar your body uses, meaning those sugars store as fat. Medical research shows that for every two hours spent sitting per day, your chance of getting diabetes goes up by 7 percent. Your risk for heart disease goes up, too, because enzymes that keep blood fats in check are inactive. You’re also more prone to depression, because with less blood flow, mood-enhancing hormones are not reaching your brain.
“For people who sit most of the day, their risk of heart attack is about the same as smoking,” said Dr. Martha Grogan, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic. Sitting for four or more hours a day has about the same adverse effect on your health as smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes every day.
Yuck.
Sitting disease even blunts the good effects of exercise. “We’ve become so sedentary that thirty minutes a day at the gym may not counteract the detrimental effects of eight, nine, or ten hours of sitting,” researcher Genevieve Healy, Ph.D, said.
So, what to do about it?
Standing every hour, moving around a bit, stretching, working while standing up, walking around. Those same studies show that even two-minute standing breaks can counteract the effects of sitting in dramatic ways. Some people use stand-up desks.
I asked some of my friends from my blog and social media circles what they thought about sitting disease.
Janet Arnold, F433888, a solo motorhome traveler who lives near San Diego and has a Roadtrek, follows an on-the-road regimen to defeat sitting disease.
“When traveling this past summer, I set my alarm for every two hours so I would make myself get out of the RV and do something, anything,” she said. “If I saw something interesting before, then I stopped early and reset the alarm. Part of the RV problem is they make the seats too darn comfortable.”
Judi Darin, who moderates the food section on my Roadtreking.com blog and travels the country in a Leisure Travel Vans Type B motorhome when not at her Oregon home, said traveling with a pet helps to ensure lots of activity breaks.
“There’s no better cure for a sedentary lifestyle,” she noted, “than a sweet dog with big eyes, sitting at your feet, leash in mouth, saying, ‘Let’s go for a walk!’”
Levon Talley travels full-time in a Type A Winnebago Forza. I met him and his wife, Thelma, at a KOA in Sweetwater, Tennessee, in January. In his mid-70s, Levon is in remarkably great shape. When I mentioned it to him, he beamed.
“You should have seen me a couple of years ago,” he said. “I was 35 pounds heavier. You have to watch this lifestyle. The pounds creep right up on you if you’re not paying attention.”
When I told him about sitting disease, he nodded and grinned in agreement. “That’s what I had, alright,” he said. “I was either sitting in the coach or on one of those lay-back chairs outside. My wife and I remind each other when we’re acting like couch potatoes and then we have to get up and move. We walk every morning and every night, and when we’re traveling, we stop every 150 miles for a half-hour moving-around break. We also do a lot of bike rides.”
Okay. I’m about to get cured from this disease.
Throughout the day, when I’m driving, I’ll follow Levon’s example and we’ll stop every hour and a half or two at the most and get up and get out of the RV and move around.
And when on the computer at night, in a campground or at home, I’ll do more writing and blogging standing up.
We’re also going to do a better job of visiting gyms and health clubs while on the road. And our bikes are going with us on every trip.
No more sitting disease for me!
Veteran journalist Mike Wendland, F426141, FMCA’s official on-the-road reporter, travels the country with his wife, Jennifer, and their Norwegian elkhound, Tai, aboard the couple’s Roadtrek Type B motorhome. Mike can be reached at openmike@fmca.com.