Sedentary Behavior & the Heart

Overview about our Heart:

Our heart is one of the hardest working organs in the body. It pumps vital blood to the rest of our body which nourishes tissue and cells. The heart is the vital part of our cardiovascular system. Blood is the currency that fuels much of our body and without it trouble looms.

Taking care of your cardiovascular system is vital for your body to function effectively. Taking care of our hearts is easy. Yet… there a many pitfalls for bad heart health. Diet, lack of exercise and others. Sedentary lifestyle is one of the factors that can cause some wear and tear to our heart. Sedentary behavior is linked to many problems with our health.

Hopkins info

Links Between Cardiovascular Disease and Sedentary Behavior

Car use has been strongly linked obesity (Sugiyama et al., 2020)

Think: sitting on road trips, truck driving you get the picture.

Obesity creates a higher risk of CardioVascular Disease (Carbone et al., 2018)

The more weight you gain the harder your heart must work

Higher levels of sitting have an effect on blood vesssels (Sugiyama et al., 2020)

The blood must pass through vessels to do it’s job either the easy way(less resistance) or the hard way (more resistance)

The average American Adult Spends 50-60% of their day in sedentary behavior (Bailey et al.,)

That can take on many forms, school, work, driving, park bench and more.

A meta-analysis found elevated levels sitting can raise risk of Cardiovascular events by 147% (Bailey et al., 2019)

Moderation is the key to most things.

Prolonged sitting is may cause vascular dysfunction (Bailey et al.,)

Vessels can be enlarged arteries, stiffness and more.

Interrupting sitting with short bouts of Physical activity can upregulates the glucose uptake pathway (Bailey et al.,)

Little exercise and break from sitting can help process nutrients for your body.

Remember...

Your cardiovascular health matters

Reason to reduce sedentary behavior and have a healthier heart:

Feeling good starts within having good cardiovascular health gives us energy to take the day on.
The more we care for our hearts the better it can serve our other organs with vital blood.
The older we get the less likely we have to have expensive medical visits.
More time be independent and self reliant
Sitting down is nice here and there but having a reason to stand, is all that matters.
Our loved ones will appreciate our health and care.

References

Bailey, D. P., Hewson, D. J., Champion, R. B., & Sayegh, S. M. (2019). Sitting Time and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. American journal of preventive medicine, 57(3), 408–416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2019.04.015

Carbone, S., Canada, J. M., Billingsley, H. E., Siddiqui, M. S., Elagizi, A., & Lavie, C. J. (2019). Obesity paradox in cardiovascular disease: where do we stand?. Vascular health and risk management, 15, 89–100. https://doi.org/10.2147/VHRM.S168946

Sugiyama, Chandrabose, M., Homer, A. R., Sugiyama, M., Dunstan, D. W., & Owen, N. (2020). Car use and cardiovascular disease risk: Systematic review and implications for transport research. Journal of Transport & Health, 19, 100930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2020.100930