Sitting is the new Smoking

Doctors are now warning that spending too much time perched on your posterior could be seriously damaging your health!

The average person now spends a staggering 8.9 hours every day sitting down. That might be at work, in a car or on the sofa in front of the TV. Add another seven hours sleeping and that means most of us spend just one third of our time on our feet.

Those prolonged periods of inactivity increase our risk of obesity, but they also cause a staggering list of other conditions. This includes heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, muscular and back issues, deep vein thrombosis, brittle bones, depression and even dementia.

Experts are now describing sitting as ‘the new smoking’, a ticking time bomb of ill health just waiting to explode. The World Health Organisation has already identified physical inactivity as the fourth biggest killer on the planet, ahead of obesity. It’s like smoking during the 1970s and passive smoking during the 90s. We all know a sedentary lifestyle is bad for us, we just don’t realize how bad it is. Spending less time sitting down really can add years to your life.

The World Health Organisation ¬recommends an adult should do at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week, or 30 minutes on at least five days. That is enough to gain the main benefits of regular exercise. However, it won’t protect you from the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle if you spend too much time sitting.

Sitting for too long slows down the body’s metabolism and the way the enzyme lipoprotein lipase breaks down our fat reserves. On the other hand, blood glucose levels and blood pressure both increase.

Small amounts of regular activity, even just standing and moving around, throughout the day is enough to bring the increased levels backing down. And those small amounts of activity add up – scientists have suggested that 30 minutes of light activity in two or three-minute bursts could be just as effective as a half-hour block of exercise. But without that activity, blood sugar levels and blood pressure keep creeping up, steadily damaging the inside of the arteries and raising the risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke.