Risk of Sitting Too Long

  I have heard a lot of people saying that sitting too long may cause a downfall of one’s health.  So how true is this statement? Studies have shown that if a person sits for more than 6 hours continuously without a. well, standing break as you may call it will have a higher risk of death from all causes.  So why is that so?  Well, one common sense reason is that, sitting too long constitute muscle inactivity which in turn promotes the accumulation of excess storage fat in your body as no activities means no need to burn fats for energy within your body.  With this fat accumulation will comes high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, uric acid etc all of which are inter- related diseases!

  Sitting for too long can also cause back pain problems. This is because not all people will sit in the correct posture.  Most of us will bend out back while sitting or even use our back bone to sit so to speak, while watching TV on the couch!  This can cause unnoticed strain to our backbone especially the lumbar joint and damage to the backbone disc in the area.  As we get older and it may happen sooner that you think, our damaged disc will start to give us problems in the form of lower back pain which maybe a very hard to bear experience!

  Long period of sitting may leads to large muscle group shut down which can leads to a fatal metabolic change in our body. People who sit for too long may greatly reduce their life expectancy.  Women will have a 37% risk of dying early while their male counterpart will see their tomb 18% early.  Is that a scary fact or what?  So the solution is if you want to live longer, is not to sit for too long.  Stand up every half an hour for a brisk walk to the wash room or do some light exercises like jumping and stretching.  This will give your body a good blood circulation needed to have a good overall well being.  Especially the blood circulation will help to carry oxygen to your muscles and rid the toxin from your system as well. 

  Let me sign off today with this scary fact.  Most of us sleep for 8 hours a day.  After we wake up we SIT in the toilet to do hour daily nature call.  After we all dressed up for work, we SIT down to have a quick breakfast! Then we SIT on our car or public transport to work.  In the office, we SIT at our desk to do work from 4 hours.  In between we SIT in toilet to let go of some stresses. (Women sit all the time in toilet, that’s why they have a higher risk of dying than men!) During lunch time we SIT down to have our lunch.  After lunch we go back to office and SIT down for a meeting.  We watch the clock and its 5 o’clock.  So it’s time to go back and we SIT in our car in the traffic jam on our way home.  At night we SIT down to have dinner with our family. After the meal we SIT in our couch to watch some TV and we SIT down and play some games with our kids.  Later it is time to say good night and we go to bed.  So let try to count how many SITs we do during a typical day and you will know that we must stand up more often and do more physical activities more often to counter the SITTING lifestyle that we have and to avoid us from SITTING our way to the grave!