Developing a Physiological Understanding of High Duration Activity

Summary

When muscles are not contracting, the local energy demand by muscle and use of specific fuels used to produce energy by oxidative metabolism are minimal. The time people spend sitting inactive (sedentary time) typically comprises more than half of the day. This sedentary behavior is associated with elevated risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, some cancers, and multiple conditions leading to poor aging.

From a progressive series of experiments, the driving goal is to develop a physiological method for sustaining contractile activity via oxidative metabolism over more time than is possible by traditional exercise (hours, not minutes per day).

Developing a physiological method suitable of prolonged muscular activity for ordinary people (who are often unfit) requires gaining fundamental insights about muscle biology and biomechanics. This also entails a careful appreciation of the ability to isolate specific muscles in the leg during controlled movements, such as the soleus muscle during isolated plantarflexion. This includes quantifying specific biological processes that are directly responsive to elevated skeletal muscle recruitment. The investigators will focus on movement that is safe and practical for ordinary people to do given their high amount of daily sitting time.

This includes developing methods to optimally raise muscle contractile activity, in a way that is not limited by fatigue, and is feasible throughout as many minutes of the day as possible safely. This also requires development of methodologies to quantify specific muscular activity, rather than generalized body movement.

There is a need to learn how much people can increase muscle metabolism by physical activity that is perceived to them as being light effort. It is important to learn if this impacts systemic metabolic processes under experimental conditions over a short term time span in order to avoid confounding influences of changes in body weight or other factors.

Conditions

• Sedentary Lifestyle
• Hyperinsulinemia
• Glucose Tolerance Impaired
• Low-density-lipoprotein-type
• Aging Problems
• Lipid Metabolism Disorders
• Inactivity, Physical
• Metabolic Disorder, Glucose

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Muscular Exercise

Sedentary time (muscular inactivity when sitting) will be replaced with low effort muscular activity

Sponsors & Collaborators

• American Diabetes Association

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Houston

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Marc T Hamilton, Ph.D. · University of Houston

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2016-08-31

Primary Completion

2025-12-31

Completion

2025-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations