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Hey! Sitting Can Wreck Your Body…be careful and cautious.
In 2012 it was rumored that a Taiwanese teen died after gaming for 40 consecutive hours [source: HuffPo]. Death by “Diablo 3”? As it turns out, the tabloids may have gotten one thing right about that story — apparently when you sit for extended periods of time, the Grim Reaper sits beside you. Could the gamer glaze be a harbinger of health issues to come? Quite rhetoric or do you have an answer?
When you indulge in just 30 minutes of TV watching — not even close to 40 hours at a time — you burn about one calorie per minute (that’s the estimate for a person weighing 155 pounds) — and that’s not much; in comparison it’s only about a third of the calories that would be used if that time were spent walking, and pretty close to the amount burned during a 30-minute nap (about 23 calories). While the amount of calories burned may seem pretty similar between the two activities, sleep is important for good health and memory, and sitting, well, as it turns out it may be hurting you [source: Harvard Heart Letter].
Think about how often you sit during the day; at the desk at the office, in meetings, in class, at home in front of the TV or game console — and don’t forget about all the time spent sitting in your car or during your daily commute. All those hours add up, and in recent years it’s estimated we spend nearly eight hours sitting every day on average — and some research suggests we actually may be sitting as much as 15 hours every day. Considering we need about eight hours of sleep every night, that leaves some of us with only about an hour on our feet. Excessive sitting, more than two hours a day, is referred to as ‘sitting disease’ among health professionals, and is associated with some major — and perhaps surprising — health problems, as well as an overall shorter life expectancy.
Poor posture is a headache — literally. And a shoulder ache. And a neck ache. And we can’t overlook the back problems associated with a sedentary lifestyle. You might be sitting too much, and during all the time spent seated, you might be sitting the wrong way. Sitting improperly not only causes tight muscles and muscle pain, it also increases your risk of developing an inflexible spine and herniated lumbar disks, as well as conditions such as kyphosis, which is a rounded or hunched upper back, and lordosis, which is a swayback.
Slumping over a computer screen is all too common – and it’s terrible for you.
So if slouching and slumping don’t meet the gold standard of sitting, what does? Good posture means your body is well-aligned, and well-aligned means your weight is evenly distributed, your shoulders are aligned over your hips, hips over knees — you get the idea. It’s pretty much the opposite of slumping over your desk.
When you sit more frequently than you exercise, your muscles weaken – and quickly. A sedentary lifestyle causes what’s called disuse atrophy (that’s opposed to muscle atrophy due to neurogenic causes, such as muscular dystrophy). Basically, that means when you don’t use your muscles you lose your muscles. Muscle fibers lose their flexibility and become stiff, they lose bulk and mass, and they gain fat storage instead of turning those fats into muscle energy.
Everyone needs to relax sometimes, but if you’re sitting (or lounging) more that you’re moving around, you’re not doing your muscles any favors. Additionally, when you’re in a sitting position you’re basically training your muscles to be better-suited for sitting. Your glutes and your leg muscles, for example, shorten compared to if you spent similar time standing — and that means aches, pains and balance issues. Sitting weakens the muscles you use for posture and the abdominal, pelvic and spinal muscle groups, as well.
To strengthen your bones and prevent osteoporosis, you need to stand up. Bones need to support your weight — or some weight — regularly in order to stay strong; otherwise they lose their density and become brittle and weak.
Want to keep your bones strong and healthy? Engage in weight-bearing exercises such as walking and strength training, and cut back on the sitting.
Daily walking will help you make strides against osteoporosis, as well as both weight-bearing exercises and resistance training. Exercises that put a little pressure on those bones keep bone loss at bay (and it’ll also build muscles and keep you flexible, too)
It doesn’t take much time sitting around to slow down the process by which your body converts food into energy and regulates multiple biological processes. In the time it takes to watch just one episode of your favorite movie on african magic for instance (about two hours of sitting), your body slows down its production of the fat-burning enzyme lipase by 90 percent. When your metabolism slows down, if you don’t also slow down your caloric intake and up your exercise you’re going to gain weight. But you also lose, too — your body loses the good cholesterol, HDL, that keeps the bad LDL cholesterol in check, putting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease. You’ll also lose efficiency in how well your body is able to effectively manage insulin, steering you toward diabetes
It’s not exactly rocket science: If you’re sedentary and you’re eating more than you burn, you can put on weight. But staying seated all the time can wreak additional havoc on all the processes that make up your metabolism. (Source: howstuffworks)
So you had better take note…!
