Zombie apocalypse and the unmoving human race

There's been lots of talk about zombies in the media this week. But all you have to do is ride on the subway during rush hour to see a sea of zombies commuting back and forth to jobs they most likely hate. We all know that sitting all day and not exercising isn't good for us. We also know that chronic illness like diabetes and heart disease and obesity is on the ever constant rise. So why do we need yet another study to give us yet another reason to get off our butts and leave them behind. To me, it's a plea by health researchers that it's time to wake up to the fact the way most people live is just plain bad for us. But being caught up in the consumer machine where we think working more will solve our financial problems and where employers treat people like machines that can keep on going no matter how unhealthy or worn out they get. The fact that as a population we are getting fatter and fatter and moving less and less and getting very preventable lifestyle induced diseases should point to the fact that there's an underlying sickness in our society. So the the New York Times Well Blog covered yet another study that shows that inactivity is really bad for us especially when we sit all day like zombies in front of computer screens.

They wanted to determine whether this physical languor would affect the body’s ability to control blood sugar levels. “It’s increasingly clear that blood sugar spikes, especially after a meal, are bad for you,” says John P. Thyfault, an associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri, who conducted the study with his graduate student Catherine R. Mikus and others. “Spikes and swings in blood sugar after meals have been linked to the development of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.”

They used volunteers for the study that are normally very active and asked that the volunteers cut back on their activity levels dramatically. Then they watched what happened to their blood sugar levels while sitting all day.

And there were changes. During the three days of inactivity, volunteers’ blood sugar levels spiked significantly after meals, with the peaks increasing by about 26 percent compared with when the volunteers were exercising and moving more. What’s more, the peaks grew slightly with each successive day.

This change in blood sugar control after meals “occurred well before we could see any changes in fitness or adiposity,” or fat buildup, due to the reduced activity, Dr. Thyfault says. So the blood sugar swings would seem to be a result, directly, of the volunteers not moving much.

Which is both distressing and encouraging news. “People immediately think, ‘So what happens if I get hurt or really busy, or for some other reason just can’t work out for awhile?’” Dr. Thyfault says. “The answer seems to be that it shouldn’t be a big problem.” Studies in both humans and animals have found that blood sugar regulation quickly returns to normal once activity resumes.

Do we really need another study to encourage us to move? Are studies even going to have an impact on how much people move anyway? Not really. Instead, individuals need to look at the sickness that has infiltrated their lives and led to them not moving and becoming sedentary. There's no data out there that can impact an individual's choices, not until the individual wakes up to the fact they are caught up in a system that keeps them not only sedentary, but also numbed out to the fact that our priorities as a race are totally out of whack.