Professor Janet Lord

So that's why we know that sedentary time is also important.

So your viewers might struggle with this one.

Help me to understand that.

So there are two different factors.

So the time you spent doing exercise is great.

It's going to give you all of these benefits, reduce the inflammation, help you to be more anti-inflammatory.

But if you then, say you do your 45 minutes of exercise in the morning, you go and walk the dog or you do a little jog, whatever you do for your exercise, and then you sit then for eight or 10 hours watching daytime television or you're at work and you're at your desk, you can undo a lot of that exercise.

Because the muscle will then not produce that dampening cytokine for that long period of time.

So now we know that, yes, you need to be physically active, but also don't be too sedentary.

If you're sitting, you've got a desk job or you're at home, you're retired now, perhaps every hour, get up and move around, even if it's just for 10 minutes.

Totally, totally.

It turns out that your muscle is a major regulator of your immune system.

It can make it less inflammatory, basically.

And so if you're not moving, then say you get an infection, you're much more likely to have this overshoot with your inflammation.

As long as you break that sitting time up and then this pro-inflammatory system can't really get established.

So you get up, you know, after an hour, move around and then, yeah.

Because sometimes, you know, you may not be able to, you know, stand up all day.

I had a standing desk at work and so I did stand all day.

So think about that one.

That's another good one to think about.