The Bad Health Effect of Extended Sitting

There’s a one-liner that has been circulating for some time in health and fitness media and I would recommend everyone research and study it in depth. It is simply a reference to the damaging effects of a sedentary lifestyle and says, “Sitting is the new smoking.”

The leading health vandals and killers in this country are heart disease, cancer and type 2 Diabetes. Researchers have found and are continuing to find evidence that prolonged sitting increases a person’s risk in developing these. We also know the 3rd leading cause of death is medical mistakes, (Ref. HospitalSafetyScore.org) so if we can avoid some of the main reasons for having to seek medical intervention for (diabetes, heart disease, cancer etc.) maybe we can also lower our risk to this as well.

Dr. James Levin, director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative has been studying the adverse effects of our increasingly sedentary lifestyle for years and has summed up his findings in two sentences. “Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death.” ~ From Huffington Post and Los Angeles Times Dr. James Levine interview.

Knowing that prolonged sitting adds to our bottom-line, waistline, decreases our capability of burning off excess sugars from our diet and decreases lung and heart (pulmonary), vitality and strength, should give us plenty of reasons to get moving more! Decreased physical activity can cause constipation since exercise helps decrease the time that waste spends in the colon. When you increase breathing and heart rate (from physical activity) for an extended period it helps stimulate the natural contraction of intestinal muscles, which translates to stimulating bowel movements. This is our body’s trashcan and when it’s not dumped regularly it can cause toxic waste to leach back into our system.

The American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported a study based on 92,234 women age 50–79 that studied (sedentary vs. active lifestyles) and found a direct link to increased early death rates from all causes including heart disease and cancer. Something that may be causing this is how technologies have decreased the need for physical activity and if we don’t figure out a way to offset that, we very well could become a part of the above statistics.

This is a concern to me personally since I spend a lot of time behind the desk, so I found a simple way to break things up since part of this time is spent on the phone. I simply have my time on the phone as a designated time to push away from the desk and walk around. I also break things up by standing, and if it’s prolonged sessions at the desk I try to break things up by doing bodyweight squats and pushups or go do something that actually requires physical work.

Tips: if you cannot leave the desk and walk around while on the phone, mark your restroom breaks as a time to do a few quick sets of pushups and squats. If you have physical difficulty with either you can lean against a wall for the pushups and hold onto a stable surface or other object to steady yourself as you do a set of squats.

Squat tip: squats are one of the best things you can do in a confined space, you can simply stand up, move over or back from your chair and do 1 or 2 sets (try to do 15–20 repetitions or until muscle fatigue). If you need something to steady yourself, you can use the chair or desk. If someone has difficulty doing a squat, I like to get them to steady themselves by holding onto something and then pretend they’re sitting into a chair (except the chair isn’t there) and then coming back up. Repeat this movement 5–10 repetitions or until your muscles start fatiguing. If you have hip or knee problems you can still do this exercise, -don’t go down as deep into your squat.

Remember, you do not have to have exercise equipment to do something about your current health and fitness sit-uation!