by Dr. John Beasley, M.D.
Aviation Medical Examiner
Professor Emeritus and Clinical Professor
Department of Family Medicine
University of Wisconsin – Madison
News Flash: Watching TV for an hour will reduce your life span by 22 minutes according to a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine published in 2011. One of my colleagues suggested that given the content of TV, we should say that an hour of TV actually shortens your useful life by an hour and 22 minutes.
A little while ago I attended a seminar at Wisconsin Aviation by Mooney guru Bruce Jaeger. We talked about keeping engines and airplanes going well into old age. As part of that, we discussed preventing corrosion in aircraft since corrosion is probably the one thing that can really damage your aircraft beyond repair, assuming you don’t turn it into a smoking hole.
This stuff about keeping engines and the airplanes they pull along free of corrosion is relevant to me since my 1980 M20J has achieved “senior” status. In the interest of full disclosure, so have I. So how do we prevent corrosion? There will be some corrosion no matter what we do, but for both aircraft and people, just sitting is probably the very worst thing for us.
With people, as with airplanes, the best preventive maintenance is “activity,” and for people this means both physical and mental activity. Put simply, there are no medications I can give you that will make up for inactivity.
“Yeah, sure, John,” you say, “I jog 5 times a week, so what are you getting at here?” A year or so ago, I would have agreed that regular exercise should be sufficient. But more recently there have been a few studies showing that inactivity, even in people who are otherwise quite fit, is very deleterious.
So suppose, worst-case, your day job is that of being a mouse jockey sitting in front of a computer. What can you do? A very recent study suggested that if you even just get up, take a break from your sitting job and engage in moderate exercise such as brisk walking for even just two minutes every 20 minutes, that you significantly increase your sensitivity to insulin and thus presumably reduce your risk of diabetes. Since we know that insulin resistance is the cause of most of the increased health risks related to diabetes, I would strongly suggest doing just that – don’t sit for longer than 20 minutes at a time. My best guess is that using a standing desk, or sitting on one of those balance or exercise balls, will also help, but I don’t know of any data.
There are other hazards related to just sitting.
Some years ago, there was a study showing that 10% of the people getting off of transatlantic flights have some evidence of blood clots in their legs. The usual recommendations for long commercial flights suggest no alcohol and no coffee because of possible dehydration. Personally, I think that’s a bunch of malarkey. You would have to be really dehydrated to affect clotting much. What may matter is to take an aspirin before you go, wear support stockings and, most importantly, annoy your fellow passengers by getting up and walking around at least every hour or so. So there is an advantage to drinking a lot of liquid – you’ll have to get up to go to the restroom more often!
If you are flying a personal aircraft on a long trip, there’s not much you can do about this while you are in the left front seat, other than wiggle your feet and legs as much as possible, take the aspirin and use support stockings. Overall, however, if you are in good health, the risk is really low.
Back to exercise and avoiding corrosion…one colleague suggested that the best way to keep living (and flying!) a long time is to make it a daily routine to jog a mile to a bar, have one glass of red wine and jog home. Probably there’s something to that! Bon Appetit!
(Credit: I owe the term “Sedentary Death Syndrome” to my colleague, Dr. Rod Erickson of Tomah, Wisconsin.)
