"רופא: "ישיבה היא העישון החדש

Is sitting the new smoking? And TD's Daniel Monahan spoke with a doctor who says Americans are being brought to their knees by metabolic dysfunction and a sedentary lifestyle. Dr. Mark Sherwood says studies show people are five times more likely to die from inactivity while only 1.4 times more likely to die from smoking, adding that 70% of the U.S. population is overweight or obese, according to statistics. Sherwood says health should be the norm, but it's becoming the rarity. According to Sherwood, obesity is the fastest growing non-communicable disease in the history of the world. The former professional baseball player also criticizes people downplaying unhealthy life choices, especially a new trend where he says some people are trying to cast being fit as right wing. Being overweight or being over fat creates inflammation, chronic systemic inflammation, and therefore every disease process has as part of it chronic systemic inflammation. So we're talking about increasing unhealthiness, increasing sickness, probably increasing the sick span of life and decreasing the lifespan itself, which none of those are good things. Sherwood says 8 out of 10 diseases that kill Americans are directly tied to food. Type 2 diabetes, for example, we do not believe it should exist in one single person. Osteoporosis we think can be avoided. Alzheimer's dementia, we think that can pretty much be avoided. Heart disease and cancers, etc., autoimmune conditions. These are the ones that are driven in part mostly by our current lifestyle, which is consistent with poor food choices, lack of sleep, you know, high stress, and certainly lack of exercise. Sherwood is calling on Americans to up their fitness game. I like to say that the more times you move, the more you can live. The only day you don't find time to exercise is the day you're dead. And the more you move, the more you live, and the less you move, the closer you are to rigor mortis. So the bottom line is, I tell people as a practical tip, for every 20 minutes they sit, just stand up for two. And you do that through an eight-hour day of work, if you have a sit-down job, you've just done a good amount of squats. According to Sherwood, we can all strive to be our best selves. In all aspects, whether it be physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and even financially. Don't let excess weight become something that's acceptable, because it is the propensity to increase disease processes. Work to get that off every day, and hey, you're loved either way. With 100% of the population predicted to be overweight by 2050, Sherwood says the time to act is right now. Mark Sherwood and his wife have a full-time wellness-based medical practice in Tulsa, Oklahoma, called the Functional Medical Institute. Daniel Monahan, NTD News.