The body of evidence on the negative health impacts of sitting all day continues to grow, and with it come new ideas about how people can manage the risks. A new study has delved into the metabolic effects of getting up for exercise, such as a two-minute walk, and shown that it can improve sugar processing after a meal and help maintain muscle mass and quality.
Led by researchers at Canada’s University of Toronto, the study focused on one of the many health impacts of sedentary lifestyles, which is loss of muscle mass and quality. This focuses on the function of myofibrillar proteins, which the body manufactures from amino acids and are key components of skeletal muscle, making up nearly three-quarters of all muscle protein in the human body.
Previous research by the group had shown that prolonged periods of sitting can hamper the body’s ability to filter sugars from the blood after a meal, and that interspersing bouts of exercise with prolonged periods of sitting can help regulate blood sugar. blood. Researchers have now set out to investigate what effects sitting might have on the body’s ability to use dietary amino acids for myofibrillar protein synthesis and ultimately maintain its muscle mass.
“This is critical to ensure the body has an adequate quantity and quality of muscle,” said Daniel Moore, lead author of the study.
The study recruited 12 people who were forced to sit for prolonged periods of more than seven hours, with some of the subjects interrupted every 30 minutes to walk or squat with body weight. The scientists found that those who jumped regularly for physical activity had a greater ability to use amino acids from food for myofibrillar protein synthesis.
The scientists describe these brief bouts of exercise as “snacks” of activity and write that the difference they made in promoting the use of dietary amino acids for protein synthesis was “moderate to large.”
“This is significant because prolonged periods of low muscle activity (from sitting, wearing a cast, or resting in bed) are associated with a loss of muscle mass that occurs in parallel with or due to the inability of our muscle to generate new protein after exercise. to eat. a protein-containing meal,” Moore said. “Our results highlight the importance of interrupting prolonged sedentary periods with short activity snacks. We think they also highlight that moving after eating can improve our nutrition and could allow more dietary amino acids from smaller meals or lower quality types of protein to be used more efficiently.”
The research was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Font: University of Toronto
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