Dr. Madge Zacharias started her medical career as a pediatrician, but she’s spent the past 12 years focusing on preventive medicine for adults, especially in the area of obesity and its associated complications, nasty issues like Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.

People often come to the Zacharias Ganey Health Institute seeking help weight loss, “but we have to show people that their problems are about all aspects of life.”

So what does this have to do with small-business owners? Ganey told the National Association of Women Business Owners Tuesday that the problems associated with a sedentary lifestyle affect a person’s energy, health and productivity.

The problems facing most employees, she said, is that they are in a negative food environment (i.e. those bagels and donuts around most offices on a regular basis), under high stress and walking around with “full glycogen stores.”

Full glycogen stores? Huh?

Here’s the simple explanation: Humans evolved to store energy in the form of sugar, packing that sugar into muscles. It’s standing by, ready on short notice when a person needs to “fight or flight.”

But here’s the problem; there aren’t real tigers lurking in most offices (though there are some Tiger Moms). So when a person doesn’t get regular exercise, those energy banks remain full. And when a person’s blood sugar rises after eating a high-calorie, high-carb food (like donuts or bagels), there’s nowhere for that sugar to go. And you can probably guess where it ends up: around the tummy.

Along with weight gain, the blood sugar problems trigger insulin resistance, which can lead to Type 2 diabetes, a form sometimes called “adult-onset” diabetes. The sugar problems can also lead to higher cholesterol and problems processing salt.

And here’s the real kicker: Zacharias says all of these effects from sugar woes lead to decreased energy and production at work.

Zacharias described the process humans use to regulate their blood sugar and get energy from the food they eat. The body naturally seeks to keep a blood sugar level between 70 and 110. When blood sugar drops, the liver produces additional sugar; when it spikes, the body produces insulin to process the sugar.

Fruits, vegetables and beans all have sugar or carbohydrates that can be converted into sugar. The body has evolved to slowly release sugars from those foods into the body, helping blood sugar stay in balance.

Processed and refined grains, however, have lots of sugar but little of the fiber or other nutrients that control the speed at which the sugar is absorbed. In effect, eating a massive bagel is equivalent to downing a giant can of regular soda or a sugar pill. It causes a spike in sugar levels, and then a corresponding crash as insulin removes the sugar from the body.

That crash has consequences; it triggers cravings for more carbs to return blood sugar to the normal level.

And here’s the next problem: stress can cause the same spikes in sugar that eating a large number of carbs does (due to the fight/flight response). And when workers stay at a desk all day, the sugar pumped into the blood by stress has nowhere to go, so it ends up as fat in the stomach.

“Forty years ago this mostly afflicted white-collar men, because they were the ones with high-stress desk jobs,” Zacharias said. “Today we’re almost all white-collar and working.”

But while revamping a person’s lifestyle is difficult, Zacharias said the consequences of inaction are too high for both the person and the business.

Staying away from highly processed foods and lots of sugar, along with increased cardio and strength exercises, will boost energy levels of sedentary workers. When pursued with vigor,  it can also lead to weight loss and much better health. Several of Zacharias’ clients were at the NAWBO meeting and told the group they were able to go off blood-pressure and cholesterol medicines after changing their diet and exercise habits.

That saves the worker money in the form of fewer co-pays at the doctor and pharmacy; it also saves her company money by making the business’s health insurance more affordable.

Zacharias said everyone should think of themselves as training to be a “health athlete.” And she suggested they find a team to train with, either at work or in other settings.

“Think about athletes, even those who perform individual sports. The solitary runner still trains in a team. Get a team to help, because this is hard to do.”