Prolonged Sitting Endangers Health

And the type of sitting you do does not seem to matter: at the office in your work chair, at school attending classes, in the car commuting to work or before a computer or the television trying to wind down after a stressful day. The overall number of hours that you sit during the day seems to be the problem and the risk factor here.

Most of us knew that sitting for long periods of time endangers and spreads the waistline and hips, but actually the act of sitting being an overall health risk? Yes, that’s news. Check out the following link… .

Several studies suggest that people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die. The following information was published in an editorial this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine by Elin Ekbook-Bak, from the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences. “After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals.” Apparently and unfortunately, the genes that regulate the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down.”

So what does that mean to the millions of people with chronic health conditions, who, out of necessity, find that they’re sitting or lying somewhere many hours of the day? (If that’s you and you’re not capable of getting up, doing, exercising and the like, then you must recline in some fashion, right?!?)

With illnesses like Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the acts of getting up and doing often bring increased pain and fatigue. For Fibromyalgia, any type of activity can result in perpetuating and escalating the cycle of pain. Often activity can compound the degree of profound fatigue felt by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients. “Activity” may not feel like your friend at all. If you’re really sick with one of these illnesses, being active for the sake of activity is not necessarily a win-win situation.

So what should you do? I’m suggesting… you do the best that you can. Exercising is not recommended for some people, however others are capable of getting up and out of their chair or bed and doing gentle-paced to moderate walking or stretching. Many people can participate successfully in warm water pool therapy or Arthritis-designed classes without causing them undue pain. This amount of activity might keep you out of the high risk category discussed above and keep you from getting totally de-conditioned.

I started with warm water pool therapy and improved gradually in physical ability and stamina through the years. Because exercising in a warm water pool does not put stress on the joints, it helps to support the body during exercise, plus the warm water feels soothing to the muscles and the whole body. This type of “activity” is still one of my very favorites. Why just this morning I worked out to sixties music and had a blast!

So here are two things to remember:

• Do as little sitting or lying down for hours at the time as possible. (Remember, it’s the total number of hours of inactivity that are the problem, according to the British study.)
• If you can move around without exacerbating your illness, do it, but only do what you can safely do. (Hint: You’re less likely to hurt yourself in a warm water pool exercise class, but you must be careful and vigilant. Sometimes the increased pain and fatigue comes immediately; other times it can sneak up on you a day or two later!)

Often at the beginning of a tough illness, you’re not able to move and be active. If you push beyond your limits, you won’t help yourself in the long run and your efforts will only succeed in putting you back into a horizontal position!

Be reasonble; listen to your doctor; consider getting advice from a physical therapist or a medical specialist who knows about this issue. There is hardly anything more important to your long term health prospects than “not becoming” an invalid forever because your body became so de-conditioned it could barely function. Ask any person who has experienced this health problem and they will tell you the same thing.

I wish you a great and healthy day,
Cinda Crawford, host of the Health Matters Show

Tagged as: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, exercise, fatigue, Fibromyalgia, health, pain, prolonged sitting, sitting