Is there a sitting disease??

If like me, your average day is a blurred haze of work. Then endless sitting in traffic, backed up for miles due to 6 blokes all leaning on a shovels looking down a hole at some unfortunate other who drew the short straw. Then finally when we get home, we relax without the energy to move off the sofa, watching some half arsed programme about couples buying houses 15 years ago. Then like me, we spend a lot of our day seated. But unfortunately, there may be some deadly health consequences associated with our sitting. Whether we want to sit and just slob about or whether it is from need because we are at work. Sitting for a long time has now been given the term ‘Sitting Disease’.

Sitting disease might sound a bit weird, but it's becoming real concern. The term "sitting disease" is used now by both the scientific and medical community to describe a host of possibly life-threatening health woes that are rife within our society because of our sedentary lifestyles.  And we're all at risk – even if we don't know it.  

Studies have shown that adults spend three-quarters of their waking hours either sitting or reclining.  What’s even worse really is that children to spend on average two thirds of their waking hours being sedentary.  Gone are the days when kids played outside all the time.  As a kid myself, I couldn’t wait to get out of the house to play. I was out from dawn till dusk, only coming in if I was hungry.  If it was pouring with rain and I couldn’t go out, it was like a life sentence!!

So where has all this come from?  Researchers have found, having looked at almost 800,000 participants, that there is a frightening connection between a sedentary lifestyle and serious health outcomes. In fact, compared to people who sit minimally during the day, long time sitters have a 112 percent increased risk of developing diabetes and a 147 percent increased risk of having a heart attack or stroke, coupled with a 90 percent chance of dying from such an event. In addition, long time sitters have a 49 percent increased risk of dying prematurely. Wow!! I know that you can almost read any message into statistics, and sometimes they can be used as a scare tactic but it is still a bit freaking frightening.  I also know that obesity and the fact that we are all getting fatter, is being partly blamed on the fact that we don’t move so much.  Which may be in part true but I don’t think is the root cause of the obesity problem. But we all really know that being a slob can be us in the evening and at the weekends. Even at meal times in front of the TV, although I’m not saying we should walk around with food spilling off our plates like a game show challenge, can be us!!

But why now, people have always been sitting, so why the hype now??

To better understand, turn back the clock a few years to when many researchers, physiologists and health experts were looking for an explanation for the worldwide obesity epidemic. By comparing the lifestyles of previous generations to our own, researchers made an eye-opening discovery, our life styles are completely different!!!!! Now that is unbelievable, I wish I was an expert, as clever as that, to come up with that astounding piece of research.   Let’s hope that we weren’t paying for that research.  I bet I did, my taxes would have paid for that crap!!!  They should have asked my gran, she’s always on and on and on about it. It wouldn’t have cost a penny either.

Anyway, in the past, most people didn't sit at work. A hundred years ago, there were many more agricultural-based lifestyles or people worked as tradespeople or did other tasks that involved standing and moving. Today, we drive when we would have walked or biked. We sit in front of a screen when we would have shovelled, nailed or carried. And all of our leisure time is in front of a computer or television screen. We don’t even move to change the television channel over any more. Technology has made our day-to-day lives less physically demanding. We're moving less, sitting more and thereby making ourselves vulnerable to disease.

So what does that mean?

The hour upon hour spent sitting means your body's tissues, organs and metabolism aren't engaged. The longer you sit, the less efficient your body's systems become. Eventually, they start to stumble. The metabolism of fats and glucose gets disrupted. You're not burning as many calories. Your heart, lungs and muscles go into slow motion mode, over time, they decay. Leg muscles, aren't stimulated while sitting, so you're effectively shutting down large parts of your active tissue. Prolonged sitting turns an efficient body into a sluggish mass of unhealthy organs.  If we're sitting around for most of the day, our metabolic activity stalls. Insulin isn't used effectively and, instead of being absorbed by our bodies, glucose builds up in our blood which can lead to diabetes.  Inflammation, obesity and, particularly, increased weight gain around your middle are other possible consequences.  A sedentary lifestyle also creates poor posture, curvature of the spine and painful protruding discs in the neck and back. So there is some truth behind the research. We’ve all tried to get fit, spending weeks and weeks building up our fitness. Then for whatever reason we lay off for 20 minutes and it seems as if we have never moved a muscle ever. Our muscle tone disappears and we become saggy.

Is Regular exercise enough?
Now I found this surprising, studies showed that the amount of time people spent sitting each day had a bigger impact on their health than the amount of exercise they did each day.  Even if you reached the exercise recommendations for good health, if you spent the rest of your time sitting down, it effectively undid all the good work you've done with exercise. It was found that the longer people spend sitting, the worse their blood sugar, regardless of how much exercise they did.

So what does that mean?

Reducing your risk of sitting disease is pretty easy. There’s no need for a gym membership. Just look for opportunities to reduce and frequently of your sitting time.  Stand up, sit less, move more, more often. If you interrupt long sitting spells you will have better health. It may sound uncomplicated, but the answer really is that simple.  Moving time keeps your skeleton, muscles and organs healthy.  So try and find simple ways and reasons to keep moving and it can be as simple as just standing.

I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions at all on what I have talked about, definitely reach out to me in the comments of this post and I will get back to you!  I need to go now and do something now, I’ve been sat long enough!!