Sedentary Lifestyle Risks

One of the most obvious ways dogs can improve our physical and mental health is via daily walks ! 

Sedentary lifestyle is nothing but a type of lifestyle with no or very less physical activity.

Sedentary activities are sitting, reading, using computer, playing video games and watching television for much of the day with little or no physical exercise.

Especially the software professionals, who are expected to deliver quality work in time, tend to forget even to blink their eyes in front of their computers.

They work in cutting edge technologies & domains...PLM, ERP, CRM, SCM, Embedded systems and Testing - to name a few. But are they aware of the health hazards of their sedentary lifestyle ?

Fortunately nowadays some organizations are educating their employees on this topic and ergonomy at work place.

Sitting too long at work

(Attribution: (CC) Larry D. Moore)

Here is some humour, irony or little exaggeration:

Programmer n. [proh-gram-er] - an organism that turns caffeine and pizza into software !

But the point here is,

Sedentary lifestyle combined with wrong eating habits poses a major threat to the software community.

A sedentary lifestyle can become a cause for the following preventable diseases: 

  • Mental depression and anxiety
  • Cardiovascular diseases
  • Diabetes
  • High blood pressure
  • Obesity
  • Colon and rectal cancer
  • Thrombosis
  • Osteoporosis
  • Lipid disorders
  • Kidney stones
  • Infertility
  • Mortality in elderly people
Canadian researchers published this after their long research: "The longer you spend sitting each day, the more likely you are to die an early death—no matter how fit you are".

That said now let's focus on how one can come out of this sedentary lifestyle.

"Our bodies have evolved over millions of years to do one thing: MOVE," says James Levine,M.D., Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He is the author of "Move a Little, Lose a Lot".

Shake things up throughout the day by interrupting your sedentary stints as often as possible.

Take micro breaks every half hour and you can do any of the following:
Just standing up & stretching, taking a stroll (leisurely walk), reaching out to the water dispenser, going to rest room, walking with colleagues to brainstorm ideas, etc.

"Stand up every half hour", says Neville Owen, Ph.D., of the University of Queensland. "If you have to sit for longer than that, take more extended and active breaks and move around for a few minutes before sitting back down."

And at home, you can practise this: Restrict your television time to one/two hours a day. Better yet, watch it from your treadmill or exercise bike.
MOVE...MOVE...MOVE - that should be the mantra !

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