Standing for Mental Clarity and Physical Health. By Dr. Mercola. Are you sitting down? This habit, which the average U. S. It's becoming clear, though, that all of this sitting is doing our bodies no favors and, instead, is contributing to rising rates of overweight and obesity, chronic disease and even premature death. In the video above, Dan Pardi, a researcher with the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at Stanford University and the Departments of Neurology and Endocrinology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, interviewed Kelly and Juliet Starrett. Juliet is a former competitive athlete, Cross. The Epilepsy Foundation is your unwavering ally on your journey with epilepsy and seizures. The Foundation is a community-based, family-led organization dedicated to. Read the latest Cardiology news, opinion, conference coverage, thought leader perspectives, medical journal articles and more from theheart.org and Medscape. Fit authority and co- founder of the healthy movement website Mobility WOD. In short, the husband- and- wife team are veritable experts on movement and how it can make or break your health. But their latest venture, Stand. Up. Kids. org, is the product of their role as parents, first, and it's one that may help improve the health of kids across the U. S. It Started With a Sack Race at Field Day The sack race is one of the most athletic events at many school field days, requiring kids to step into a burlap sack and jump to the finish line as fast as they can. When Juliet and Kelly volunteered at their daughters' school field day running the sack races, they were . Basic jumping in a sack, they were falling down, they didn't have the skills to just be able to jump across a field inside a burlap sack. This habit, which the average U.S.Exercise boosts the immune system and helps you to keep your weight in check. With as little as three hours of exercise per week, or about 30 minutes a day, a woman. I'm certainly not a physical therapist, but even with my untrained eye I was able to see that these kids were super messed up . When we started looking around, we're like, 'What could possibly be the underlying cause of this primary change in an essential movement pattern?' It turns out the only thing that we feel like we can point to is the sitting. At some point there's a sitting load that kids can no longer buffer, and so their tissues begin to adapt, and because they spend . They're quick to point out that this isn't so much an issue of sitting versus standing as it is one of moving versus not moving. The duo approached the school's principal and succeeded in introducing standing desks to a classroom of fourth graders. To date, through the development of their non- profit organization, they've given about 3. U. S. That sedentary behavior literally starts to throw off light switches and down regulate the function of the human being. When you sit and stop using your muscles, your brain may follow suit. The Starrettes cited some impressive statistics, such as a $4. A study published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport also revealed that in first grade boys, lower levels of physical activity and higher levels of sitting time were linked to poorer reading skills. It's About Moving More and Listening to Your Body It can feel overwhelming to think about giving up your chair, but it's not an all- or- nothing proposition. Rather than focusing on not sitting, think about ways to move more. In the classroom, for instance, a student using a standing desk is free to sit on the floor if he is tired. Even sitting on the floor can be advantageous over chair sitting, as the former frees you to move in a variety of positions, such as sitting cross legged, which helps increase flexibility and range of motion. Further, just having that option, to stand if you feel like standing and sit if you feel like sitting, is important in itself, because it teaches kids (and re- teaches adults) to pay attention to how their bodies are feeling and respond accordingly. There's even a stool in the classroom and if kids are sick or injured they just lean. What we've done is given them the option and given the permission to listen to what's going on in their bodies, which is a part of this physical education. And when you're standing, you're unlikely to stand completely still, at least not for long. You'll likely stretch, lean, bend and pace. You may take your foot on and off a footstool or fidget. This is all movement that counts toward your daily activity, activity that is lacking in so many Americans' lives. Just by ditching your seat in favor of standing, you propel yourself into near- constant motion. Take It Slow. If you're used to sitting for six, eight or 1. According to Juliet: 5. What we tell people is just to take little baby steps. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States.1 From 2008 to 2010, CVD accounted for 272,668 deaths annually in persons younger than. In addition, be sure your desk is adjusted to the proper height, and many people feel more comfortable having somewhere to put a foot on and off, such as a stepstool. If you don't have a standing desk, it's possible to fashion one out of a regular desk by propping up your computer on a box or an overturned wastebasket. If standing isn't an option, you can reap many similar benefits by getting up from your chair every 2. For times when you do sit, . They advise sitting on your sit bones, engaging your legs and trying to look over the chair. When you're first starting out, divide your day into optional sitting and non- optional sitting. Don't worry about the times when you have to sit, but take stock of what they call . When combined with time spent sitting while driving to school, doing homework and eating, kids are spending 8. Kelly's initiative, called Standup Kids, has partnered with a number of corporations, giving about 3. They've also partnered with University of California Berkeley and the local county public health department to try to get more research done. The children have access to stools, should they choose to use them, but teachers say they rarely do. Their mission is to put standing desks in every public school in the U. S., and they've already succeeded in establishing the first entirely standing school in the world, which is Vallecito Elementary School in Northern California. Save Yourself From Near- Certain Dysfunction. In 2. 01. 6, I interviewed Kelly about his book, . Personally, it's been a real eye- opener for me and has helped me address some of my own movement challenges. This is a simple way to radically improve your health. If you're not convinced, Kelly mentioned a study that found office workers who smoked to be healthier than non- smokers simply because they got up every 3. Kelly also has a You. Tube channel called Mobility. WOD, which stands for Workout of the Day. The interventions he suggests are not only powerful, they're also inexpensive — in most cases free. They can help you avoid the any chronic diseases and orthopedic problems linked to prolonged sitting. This can be fixed, in part, by increasing opportunities for movement, but the first step is recognizing whether there's a problem. The video below, from Stand. Up Kids, shows how you can test your child's range of motion using positions that are most easily compromised by sedentary behaviors like too much sitting.
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