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Are You Predisposed to be a Couch Potato?

Jessica Spengler
/
Flickr

Do you know anybody who can’t sit still? What about someone who doesn't ever seem to want to do anything? Turns out, we are genetically predisposed to be couch potatoes, or not. During this half hour of Talk of Iowa, host Charity Nebbe talks with J. Timothy Lightfoot, director of the Huffines Institute for Sports Medicine and Human Performance at Texas A & M and an Omar Smith Endowed Professor of Kinesiology. 

Lightfoot says he started looking into the question because he is a person who can't sit still. 

"For many years, we had watched the amount of physical activity that people do in the United States, and what was interesting is that for 30 years there hadn't been a change." 

"Being an exercise physiologist, we think about biology, and most traits and behaviors have some biological or genetic component," he says. "Most people will say 'I control the activity that I do.'" 

Lindsey Moon is IPR's Senior Digital Producer
Charity Nebbe is the host of IPR's Talk of Iowa