Desk jockeys should make a point to stand up for at least two hours during the work-day in order to avoid the negative health consequences linked to too much sitting, new research suggests.

Gradually break up periods of pro-longed sitting un-

til you're on your feet four hours a day, advis-es a panel of interna-tional experts. Aside from taking regular walks throughout the workday, desk-bound employees can opt for sit-stand desks or workstations that re-quire them to stand. The recommendations are based on an analy-sis of research that links prolonged periods spent seated with a heightened risk of seri-ous illness and prema-ture death. "The evidence is clearly emerging that a first 'behavioral' step could be simply to get people

standing and moving more frequently as part of their working day," the study au-thors reported on-line June 1 in the British Journal of Sports Med-icine.

Increasing the amount of time that peo-ple stand could be a more achieva-ble goal than encouraging more daily ex-

ercise, the researchers said in a journal news release. The report was com-missioned by Public Health England, which is an agency of the U.K. Department of Health, and another British organization, Active Working Com-munity Interest Com-pany. Among the panel's oth-er recommendations for office workers: Move around. Standing in one place for too long can also have harmful health effects. Changing your posture or position, or going

On Your Feet!!

S U S QUEH ANN A

UN I V E R S I T Y

H E A L TH

C EN TE R

Health Center News S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 5 V O L U M E 5 , I S S U E 2

Protect Your Heart From Stress and Depression

Choose a healthier way to cope (HealthDay News) -- Your heart may pay a price when you're stressed or de-pressed. But there are things you can do to help lighten the bur-den.

The American Heart Association recom-mends:

Identify the source of your stress or de-pression, and find ways to cope with it. This may mean psy-chological therapy.

Practice healthy hab-its, such as by taking a daily walk, but don't push yourself too hard, too fast.

Devise a healthier meal plan. Don't reach for junk food when you get stressed.

Make healthy life-style changes one at a time, rather than trying to change too much at once.

on a brief walk can reduce the risk for musculoskeletal pain and fatigue.

Employers can warn their

staff about the health

risks associated with pro-

longed sitting or being

sedentary both in the of-

fice and at home.

Employers can invest in the health of their staff

by designing working en-

vironments that encour-

age more activity.

The researchers acknowl-

edged that the materials

they reviewed don't prove

a direct cause-and-effect relationship between pro-

longed sitting and chron-

ic illness.

Still, they believe on-the-

job adjustments are in

order. "While longer-term

intervention studies are

required, the level of con-sistent evidence accumu-

lated to date, and the

public health context of

rising chronic diseases,

suggest initial guidelines

are justified," the panel

wrote.

SOURCE: British Journal of Sports Medicine, news release, June 1, 2015

P A G E 2

Chelsey Pagana

Figo Fitness Classes

Students

Wed.

4:30-5:15pm

Dressing Room A in

Weber Chapel or if

weather permits,

Smith Field

$42/Session

($60 Value)

or $10/Class

Increasing your energy

Regular, moderate physical

activity can help reduce fa-

tigue and even help you man-

age stress. Once you become

active, you’re likely to have

more energy than before. As

you do more, you also may

notice that you can do things

more easily, faster, and for

longer than before.

Health Center News

Do People Transmit Happiness by Smell? Lab experiment with 'scent samples' suggests humans pick up on

others' positive emotions via sweat.

P A G E 3 V O L U M E 5 , I S S U E 2

TUESDAY, May 26, 2015

(HealthDay News) -- As emo-tions go, happiness usually

hides in plain sight: seen in

a broad smile, heard in a

raucous laugh, felt in a big

hug.

But new research suggests

there may be a less obvious way to pick up on another

person's positive vibes:

smell.

According to a team of Euro-

pean researchers, happiness

may generate chemicals that

get secreted in sweat, and that sweat signal gets sniffed

by those around us.

The experiments also suggest

that we not only breathe in

the upbeat emotions of oth-

ers, but by doing so we actu-

ally become happier our-

selves.

"Human sweat

produced when

a person is

happy induces

a state similar to happiness in

somebody who

inhales this odor," said study

co-author Gun Semin, a re-

search professor in the de-partment of psychology at

Koc University in Istanbul,

Turkey, and the Instituto

Superior de Psicologia

Aplicada in Lisbon, Portugal.

The findings were published

recently in Psychological Sci-ence.

The researchers noted that

prior research has already

demonstrated that negative

emotions, such as fear or

disgust, can be communicat-

ed via odors in sweat.

To see whether the same

holds true for the happier feelings, Semin's team gath-

ered sweat samples from 12

young men after each

watched videos designed to

induce a variety of emo-tions, including happiness

and fear. All the men were

healthy, drug-free nonsmok-

ers, and none drank, con-

sumed smelly foods or en-

gaged in sexual activity dur-ing the study period.

In turn, 36 equally healthy

young women were engaged

to smell the samples while

their reactions were moni-

tored. The smell group, ex-

plained investigators, was confined to women because

women typically have a bet-

ter sense of smell than men

and are also more sensitive

to emotional signal-ing.

After analyzing the facial expressions

of the smell group,

the research team

concluded that

there does, in fact, appear to be a so-

called "behavioral

synchronization" between a

sweating person's emotional

state, the sweat generated,

and the reaction of the per-son who sniffs that sweat.

Specifically, that meant that

the faces of women who

smelled "happy sweat" dis-

played facial muscle activity

deemed to be representative

of happiness.

Sweat didn't always produce a contagious response in the

smeller, however. For exam-

ple, those smellers who ver-

balized having a "pleasant"

or "intense" reac-

tion to a sweat sample did not

manifest those

reactions in their

facial expressions.

What is it exactly

that makes

"happy sweat" in-fectious?

Semin, who is also profes-

sor of social and behavior-

al sciences at Utrecht Uni-

versity in the Netherlands,

acknowledged that "we

have not demonstrated what the nature of the

chemical compound is in

sweat."

Andreas Keller, a research

associate with The Rocke-

feller University in New

York City, said the study findings make intuitive

sense.

"Hearing happy people

and seeing happy people

makes you happier," he

said, "so the fact that

smelling them would make you happier, too, is

probably not so surpris-

ing."

According to Keller, the

next step "would be to

find out what the chemi-

cal difference in fear sweat and happy sweat is that

mediates these effects.

This would open the door

to study what is going on

at a mechanistic level." SOURCES: Gun R. Semin, research

professor, department of psychology, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey; and

Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisbon, Portugal, and pro-

fessor, social and behavioral sciences, Utrecht University, the Netherlands; Pamela Dalton, Ph.D., M.P.H., olfac-

tory scientist, Monell Chemical Sens-

es Center, Philadelphia,

Pa.; Andreas Keller, Ph.D., research associate,

The Rockefeller Universi-ty, New York City; April

13, 2015 (online), Psycho-logical Science

chronic insomnia. The re-sults showed that cognitive

behavior therapy helped pa-tients fall asleep about 20 minutes

faster, re-duced the amount of time they spent

Up to 15 percent of adults ex-perience chronic insomnia—trouble falling or staying asleep at least three nights per week for months or longer.

Now, a new study shows cognitive be-havior therapy, or CBT, can improve slumber without drugs or adverse out-comes.

Researchers reviewed 20 pre-vious trials that looked at the efficacy of face-to-face CBT on overnight sleep in adults with

awake after first falling asleep by close to 30 minutes and improved sleep efficiency by almost 10 percent. The researchers say these findings show CBT is an effective treat-ment that produces mean-

ingful improve-ments in sleep.

They recommend CBT be used as the initial intervention for chronic insom-nia whenever possible.

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U.S. Food and Drug Administration

The 5-second way to tell if you're getting enough sleep Take a look around you. Does it seem like everyone is miserable, having a bad day, and just totally not interested in talking? Then you're probably not getting enough sleep. At least, that's what scientists at the University of California Berkeley will tell you. When they recorded 18 young, healthy people's reactions to facial expressions after 24 hours without sleep, the scientists found the sleepy volunteers couldn't distinguish a smile from a scowl. But after a restful night, the same 18 people had no trouble telling the difference between a happy face and an angry one.

It wasn't just their brains that couldn't recognize a friendly face, but their hearts, too. While sleep-deprived, the study participants' heart rates did not respond normally to a threatening or friendly face, and researchers found a dis-connect in communication between the brain and heart, limiting the study participants' ability to sense distress sig-nals. "Sleep deprivation appears to dislocate the body from the brain," Matthew Walker, senior author on the study, said in a press release. That disconnect leads you to inter-pret every face as threatening, according to the research-ers, and could explain why people who don't sleep well are often less sociable and more lonely.

P A G E 4

Difficulty Sleeping?

Health Center News