If You’re Sitting This Long Everyday, Your Health Will Suffer
Let’s face it, in today’s world we spend more time sitting than ever before. Whether it’s in the car, the office or at home, we are on our butts more than ever. When you tabulate the total time each day that we are sitting, it often reaches double digits and that is not good for our over all health.
We know this intuitively and probably don’t need a study to show us that, but sometimes it’s the wake up call that we could all use.
For all of the time and money we’re spending on gyms and pickle ball and various other physical activity, you would think that we are sitting less, but that is not the case. The other bad news is, it doesn’t appear that we can exercise our way out of it.
The only way to beat the ill effects of too much sitting is quite obvious, get up and move around a lot more.
Let’s take a look at the research
Spending more than 10-and-a-half hours sitting, reclining or lying down during daytime hours could increase the risk of dying from heart failure, a heart attack or stroke – even if you do the recommended levels of exercise, a study suggests.
Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital analysed data from fitness trackers that captured movement over seven days for nearly 90,000 British people.
Overall, sedentary time averaged out at around 9.4 hours per day. The team then followed up on participants’ heart health around eight years later.
Analysis revealed that the chances of dying from heart failure, a heart attack or stroke during this period were minimal until a certain ‘threshold’ of sedentary time was reached.
They found that the risk of dying from these causes rose significantly in people who sat, reclined or lay down for more than 10.6 hours a day.
And this was also the case for participants who met the recommended 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise per week.
One way to track the amount of time that you are sitting is a smart watch of some type. Apple Watches automatically track the amount of time you’re sitting and will even prompt you to stand up at least once an hour and will track how many hours you actually were standing.
With the holiday season upon, maybe that would be a great gift for someone you love and even for yourself.
8 Ways to Sneak Exercise into Your Daily Routine
2. Take the stairs
NEW YORK, NY – JULY 26: A man talks on his phone as he walks past a Sprint on store on 14th Street in Manhattan on July 26, 2019 in New York City. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice approved a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, the third and fourth largest companies in the U.S. The deal still has one more obstacle to overcome before becoming official; 13 states have filed a lawsuit to block the transaction, citing that reduced competition will harm consumers and drive up prices. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY – JULY 26: A man talks on his phone as he walks past a Sprint on store on 14th Street in Manhattan on July 26, 2019 in New York City. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice approved a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, the third and fourth largest companies in the U.S. The deal still has one more obstacle to overcome before becoming official; 13 states have filed a lawsuit to block the transaction, citing that reduced competition will harm consumers and drive up prices. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
6. Walk or run while making calls
This can be weird if you are breathing heavily, so you might want to give the caller a heads up.
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
