A sedentary life is one in which you spend a lot of time sitting down and can be hazardous to your well-being. The fewer moments of lying down or being seated you do in the day, the higher your probabilities for living a healthy lifestyle.
Moving around or being in a standing position during the day lowers your risk of dying early rather than sitting behind a desk. living a sedentary life, puts you at a higher chance of obesity, developing health complications like type 2 diabetes, heart diseases, and probably going through depression and anxiousness.
How a sedentary lifestyle influences your body?
Humans are shaped to stand erectly. The heart and the entire cardiovascular system function more productively that way. The intestine also performs more productively while you are upright. It’s normal for people that are bedridden in health facilities to go through issues with their intestine function.
Being physically active improves your overall energy and endurance levels in the body, and maintains the strength of your bones.
Legs and gluteals (buttocks muscle)
Sitting for long durations can result in slackening and wilting of the large leg and buttocks muscles. These large muscle groups are needed for walking as well as stabilizing you. If the above-mentioned muscles are not strong you are likely to wound yourself through falls and strains when you are not physically active.
Weight
Moving your muscles enables your body to break down and take in the fats and sugars you consume. If you devote a lot of time to being seated, digestion and metabolism are not really as efficient, so you store these fats and sugars as fat in your body.
Regardless of whether you workout or not, if you allow a lot of time to sit, you are still at risk of health complications, like metabolic syndrome. The latest analysis report advises 60–75 minutes daily of medium-intensity activities to prevent the disadvantages of a sedentary lifestyle.
Hips and back
In the same way as your legs and gluteals, your hips and back muscles will waste away as well if you stay sitting for long durations, therefore killing their ability to support you. Sitting causes shortening of your hip flexor muscles, this will result in complications with your hip joints.
Being seated for long durations will as well result in issues with your back, particularly if you sit in a bad posture or don’t utilize an ergonomically customized chair or workstation. Bad posture can also put your spinal health in a bad state causing complications like disc compression in the spine resulting in early degeneration, therefore causing a lot of pain.
Depression and anxiousness
The relation between being sedentary and your mental wellbeing is not as certain as the relation between being sedentary and your physical health yet, but a fact is that the disadvantages of both anxiousness and depression are more in people that consistently sit.
The reason could be because those that find themselves sitting a lot miss the advantages of participating in physical activities and fitness. Try to practice standing up and moving more often.
Cancer
Recent reports mention the disadvantages of sitting involve increasing your possibilities of generating cancer variances such as lung, uterine, and colon cancers.
Cardiovascular disease
Being sedentary for long durations has been related to heart disease. The research reported that those who are not active and for long durations find themselves sitting have a percent greater risk of experiencing a heart attack/stroke.
Diabetes
Research has revealed that even lying in bed for up to five days or a little more could result in multiplied insulin resistance in your body, which will result in an unhealthy increase of sugar levels in the blood.
Ways to save your health from the disadvantages of sitting
- Incorporate more physical activity into your day
Some ways you can be active during the day include:
- For longer trips, you can partly walk or cycle.
- Use the stairs instead of elevators or escalators to move between floors or put effort into walking while on the escalator.
2. Incorporate activity at work
There are plenty of ways you can move around in the office:
- Take the stairs rather than the lift.
- Walk over to your colleagues to pass information rather than email them.
- Take a lunch break off from your desk and if possible away from the office as well and take a little walk outside.
- Plan walking arrangements.
3. Be active indoors
Bodyweight exercises are always a good replacement for outdoor activities, exercises like squats, lunges, and sit-ups, etc.
