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Everybody knows that exercise is important. But not everyone realises just how important exercise is and more importantly how exercise/ activity can and should be implemented to get the best health results…
The Problem With Sitting
We evolved to move. Exercise and movement are a physiological requirement for good health and up until very recently (evolutionarily speaking) that’s what we did. It’s only been with the massive increase in technology over the last 200 years that we’ve become more sedentary. We now sit to eat, we sit to drive, we sit at work and a lot of people still sit when they are at the gym!
This departure from how we were designed to move is one of the primary reasons for the development of spine and joint problems and a whole host of chronic diseases.Take a look at the Top 10 Health Risks Associated with Sitting to find out more.
“Sitting is as bad for our bodies, as sugar is to our teeth“
What can I do?
Improving health via exercise requires 2 things:
- Getting enough of the right types of exercise (not really a surprise).
- Reducing sedentary time/ increasing “non-exercise” physical activity.
Now, the first point is pretty obvious but the second is less well known. However, it’s well established that sitting too much is harmful in its own right. It’s been found that adults who sit it for longer than 6 hours per day had up to a 40% greater risk of death over the next 15 years than those who sat for less than 3 hours a day, regardless of whether they exercised on top of that .
So, even if you are exercising regulary (30 minutes moderate intensity exercise 5 times per week) if you’re still spending upwards of 6 hours a day sitting you are still at risk of many of the problems associated with not enough exercise.
Now, some people do have to sit for more than 6 hours but there are strategies you can implement to reduce the effects on your health. Follow the links below to find out what to do:
- Learn to sit less and increase your “non-exercise” physical activity: Exercise 102: Stop Sitting
- If you are already active throughout the day and don’t sit for more than 6 hours, find out what you can do to optimise your exercise time in Exercise 103: Start Moving
This page was written by Steffen Toates. Steffen is a chiropractor at Dynamic Health Chiropractic in Jersey, Channel Islands. For more information about Steffen click here.