You can spin your blood, investigate your DNA and book on week-long wellness retreats but 'non-exercise’ is arguably the best longevity move we can make.
Longevity remains comfortably atop the wellness agenda, with many of us making it our daily mission to optimize our sleep, diet, even stress levels to live healthier for longer.
Always looking for the most powerful life hack that might move the needle the furthest, it seems the number one intervention that improves our healthspan more than any other, is exercise. However, before you click renew on that lapsed gym membership, evidence shows it’s not hitting the gym for an hour and then sitting still all day that reaps rewards but doing very little, very often - it’s called non-exercise movement.
But what does non-exercise even mean?
Is non-exercise in the room with us right now? Could be. Non-exercise is every form of non-structured, functional movement imaginable; that could be walking, gardening, doing chores, playing with the dog, even fidgeting counts. What does not count though is sitting on a sofa or at a desk for hours on end, which is contradictorily what many people’s lives consist of.
Office culture and the rise of the desk jockey sees Brits sit for as long as 8.9 hours per-day and Americans sitting almost 6 hours per-day and our sedentary lifestyles are significantly damaging our health. Indeed, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports 1.8bn adults globally are falling short of activity level recommendations.
"Exercise is part of the epigenetic landscape as an extrinsic factor acting up on our gene expression. If we exercise every day, evidence shows our organs function better when the body has been active,” explains Professor Paul Clayton PhD, clinical pharmacologist, world leading expert in the fast-developing science of preventative aging, and LYMA Director of Science.
Climbing stairs will make us live longer
Non-exercise might seem too gentle to make any discernible difference but a 2024 comparison by the European Society of Cardiology of nine independent medical studies with a total of 480,479 participants, found stair climbing associated with a 24% reduced risk of dying from any cause and a 39% lower likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease.
“We've known this since the late 1940s, when a researcher in London compared double-decker bus drivers to conductors, and found that conductors on the double-decker buses who were climbing up and down all day long, had very much lower rates of heart disease,” supports Professor Clayton.
Exercising around the 9 to 5
If you do need to sit at your desk for the majority of the day, there are effective ways to counteract a sedentary lifestyle. Increasing heart rate variability is the best way to buffer stress, limit inflammation, protect against disease, and increase your health span.
Concentrating on Zone 2 training, (where you're out of breath but can just about speak) and maintaining a heart rate of 60–70% of your maximum, 2-3 times per week. Cycling, jogging, and swimming are all heart health insurance.
Mobility exercises counteract muscle loss, and quads are the number one most important area to work out. Why? because the biggest killer of women later in life is broken hips. Studies show women ages 65-69 who break a hip are five times more likely to die within a year than women of the same age who don't break a hip. Hip fractures from falls can be prevented by strengthening your quads which increase balance, flexibility and stability.
We can also sit up straight for better organ function. Flexibility and posture have been shown to improve heart health, metabolic health and brain function.
The gold standard supplement for a non-exercise life
The LYMA Supplement formula now includes an eleventh ingredient which has been said to possibly counteract the effects of a sedentary lifestyle. ActivAMP® is a patented adaptogen that is said to activate AMPK, the body’s master metabolic switch.
“ActivAMP® is the first of a new class of natural compounds called 'exercise mimetics'. Hailed by some as 'exercise in a pill,' it flips on AMPK - the metabolic master switch, to induce the benefits of exercise,” explains Professor Paul Clayton.
“By activating an energy sensor called AMP-Kinase, ActivAMP fools the body into thinking it is exercising. This is not a stimulant but a simulant, specifically an exercise simulant. It makes muscles fitter, and in clinical trials has been shown to improve athletic performance. It’s also been shown to help lose the deep intra-abdominal fat that tends to accumulate as we age.”
In the quest for longevity, our modern sedentary lives might be somewhat against us but functional fitness is the key to safeguarding our future selves. Through enhancing our body’s reaction to movement with proven nutraceuticals we can look to living a fuller life and keep constantly moving forwards.
