It’s time you stopped being a couch potato

Think about all those hours you spend perched on your office chair. This may be unhealthy. Experts say this may lead to piling of fat around the heart. A new study has confirmed this fear. Fat deposited around the heart suffocates the functionality of its muscle — hence leading to conditions like high blood pressure, myocardial infarction (where part of the heart muscle dies) and subsequently stroke. Medics say this kind of fat that stays in one place is difficult to burn out even with vigorous and regular exercises. These results were released by the American Heart Association recently. Many recent studies suggest that when it comes to its deleterious health effects, sitting is not just the absence of physical activity–it has effects on the body that go beyond lack of exercise. This means that even if you jog daily, but then sit for eight hours a day, the sitting is still doing something bad to your health. According to Dr Joseph Mucumbitsi, a cardiologist at King Faisal Hospital, Rwanda, sitting for long, coupled with unhealthy meals and luck of exercise, increases the risk of heart problems and affects the spine and joints.An American study looked at data on 504 Californian adults, averagely aged 65. In particular, a CT scan (a computerised scan that creates detailed images of the inside of your body) was used and data revealed how much of certain types of body fat were deposited in each participant’s body. How fat forms“We looked at subcutaneous fat, which is stuff on the outside (for example, a potbelly) then visceral fat, which is around the organs and intramuscular fat, which is actually in the muscles. We also looked at intra-thoracic (chest cavity) fat and pericardial fat, which is around the heart,” said the study lead author Britta Larsen, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of cardiovascular epidemiology at the University of California, San Diego.The participants were also asked about the amount of time they spent sitting per week and how much time they had spent being physically active.The study found that the more time spent sitting, the bigger the area of fat deposited around a person’s heart. Fat deposited around the heart (pericardial fat) is strongly related to cardiovascular disease. It gets in the way of heart function; it clogs up the arteries, virtually strangling the body. Exercise alone is uselessThere was also bad news for people who sit a lot, but assume that they can exercise away all pericardial fat. Study shows that regular exercise is not related to the shrinking of the pericardial fat, although it did help reduce fat around the organs, which is strongly tied to diabetes and other metabolic diseases. This means exercise alone is not enough to prevent the build up of unhealthy fat deposits. “The study emphasises that sitting and exercise are two distinct behaviors. In order to be healthy, you need to focus on both–get enough exercise, but also not to sit for 10 or more hours per day like most of us do,” Larsen said.It could, however, be too early to link heart disease with sitting, some specialists say. This is because heart disease is multi-factorial. More so, this study particularly points out an association between sitting for long hours over time and the deadly fat around the heart.