The evidence continues to grow that regular exercise provides benefits to human health effecting diseases that range from cancer and diabetes to heart disease, arthritis and pre-mature death. Now a University of Missouri researcher has found direct evidence that a reduction in daily physical activity is a primary cause for emerging risk factors that give rise to chronic disease. The shocker is, that it only takes about two weeks of reduced activity for the effects to show up in our blood.

“A low level of daily physical activity not only doesn’t help your current health status, it could be the reason you got sick in the first place,” according to Frank Booth, professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine. “Our study looked at what happened when a group of individuals reduced their daily physical activity. Our findings indicated that if there is a lack of normal physical activity, a person greatly increases the chances of developing a chronic disease. Previously, we thought that not exercising just wasn’t healthy, but we didn’t think that a lack of activity could cause disease. That assumption was wrong.”

Researchers at the University of Missouri teamed up with the University of Copenhagen. They conducted two separate studies. The first study involved less active people who averaged 6,000 steps each day. This group was asked to reduce their total steps to less than 1,400 steps daily for three weeks. They were instructed to take a car rather than walk or choose an elevator over climbing stairs, etc.

The second group consisted of active people who averaged over 10,000 steps a day. This group was also asked to reduce their activity to 1,400 steps a day for two weeks.

The average American adult takes 7,473 steps daily. An inactive person is someone who takes around 2,100 steps a day or moves a total of less than 30 minutes throughout an entire day.

At the end of the study researchers administered a glucose tolerance or fat tolerance test or both to the participants. These studies measure how fast the body is able to clear sugar or fat from the blood. The longer it takes to clear sugar or fat from the blood, the higher the risk for that individual to develop a chronic disease like diabetes, arthritis or heart disease.

What surprised the researchers was fact that after two weeks of reduced activity, regardless of how active the person was prior to this, either average or above average activity, a reduction of his activity to a sedentary level resulted in higher blood levels of sugar and fat and it took much longer to clear these substances from the blood.

“We use to think that it is healthy to be physically active, but this study shows that it is dangerous to be inactive for just a couple of weeks,” said Bente Pedersen co-author and lead investigator and director of the Centre of Inflammation and Metabolism at the University of Copenhagen.

“After 14 days of reduced stepping [reduced activity] subjects experienced accumulation of dangerous abdominal fat, while also developing elevated blood lipids, a sign of pre-diabetes and cardiovascular disease. If you choose the passive mode of transport and abstain from exercise, than your risk of chronic disease is likely to increase markedly,” commented Pedersen.

Fellow researcher Booth adds, “When the doctor says to go and exercise, they are not just telling patients to do that to improve their health; increasing daily stepping [increasing activity] could actually reverse a cause of chronic disease.

He further stated that when individuals reduce their activity to sedentary levels “extra fats and sugars don’t clear the bloodstream, they go where we don’t want them and cause problems for our bodies’ typical metabolic functions.”

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