November 28, 2007

Stand up and Putter

A New Way to Control Weight

When we sit, the researchers found, the enzymes that are responsible for burning fat just shut down.

This goes way beyond the common sense assumption that people who sit too much are less active and thus less able to keep their weight under control. It turns out that sitting for hours at a time, as so many of us do in these days of ubiquitous computers and electronic games and 24-hour television, attacks the body in ways that have not been well understood.

The solution, Hamilton said, is to stand up and "putter."

Hamilton is not suggesting that anyone quit exercising. But he says his work shows that exercise alone won't get the job done. We have to pay more attention to what's happening when we aren't in the gym, because the body's ability to dispose of fat virtually shuts down, he says, at least if we're sitting down.

A very interesting article.  Doctors injected a fat-burning enzyme into humans and then took biopsies  when people were standing and when they were sitting.  When sitting, the fat-burning enzyme was suppressed.

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