Here’s How Sitting For Longer Duration Is Hampering Your Health

As we are modernising, we have been seeking newer ways to limit our physical activities and attaining more comfortable life has become our ultimate motto. Besides limiting our physical tasks, we have become more accustomed to sitting throughout the day. Our working pattern has compelled us to sit for longer hours. Recent studies have suggested that in a bid to make our life comfortable than ever, we are compromising our health to a large extent, largely because we have customized ourselves to sitting.

Though you might feel that this fact is less believable, but it is a food for thought that despite being a convenient posture for relaxing, how can sitting hamper our health? Even though sitting is a default human posture, but its important to remember that anything in excess is harmful just like overeating. Ironically, a major percentage of people across the globe have developed the habit of performing their routine tasks in a seated posture. It has been studied that an average person spends a major proportion of time during a day doing activities such as watching television, driving, working in office, etc while being seated.

It has also been noted that a person going to office spends around 10 to 14 hours sitting while a person engaged in farming activities or strenuous tasks spend around 3 hours sitting. While you have been wondering how fortunate you are to enjoy a comfortable life, here are some facts that prove why sitting for longer duration is hampering your health:

1. Sitting Limits The Amount Of Calories You Can Burn

While still continuing with the sedentary lifestyle, the meagre non-exercise physical activities such as bit of standing, walking and other non-sitting activities are responsible in contributing to a major portion in the calorie burning process. But if you have become too habitual to enjoy the sitting job where you don’t even have to rush far to attend the nature’s call or to grab a cup of coffee, then lack of such calorie burning tasks can actually add excess weight. Many studies have even concluded that in comparison to people who have white collar jobs, farmers are able to burn 1000 more calories since their work doesn’t allow them to have that comfortable seat like us. So while standing and walking for lesser time duration are able to burn less calories, sitting or lying down for long hours can definitely put no strain on your body and hence you hardly burn calories in this process.

2. Sitting Makes You Add Extra Pounds

There is seemingly an unannounced race between countries as to who will emerge as the obesity capital of the world. It has been surveyed that there is an alarming increase in the number of obesity patients worldwide and it is even more significant in case of children aged between 5 and 15 years. Almost everyone these days seem to be disappointed with their weight. People have become so much physically and mentally engaged that sparing time for looking after their health has moved out of their priority list.

Now that you know that sitting doesn’t help much in burning calories, then more of sitting is equivalent to addition in weight. This is the reason why leading a sedentary lifestyle often implies a lifestyle that can lead to obesity. Thereby sitting for longer durations at a stretch can be one of the potential reasons why you are obese.

3. Sitting Reduces Life Span

As per a randomly observed survey data that accumulated results of sedentary lifestyle led by around 1 million people, it has been concluded that the more sedentary your lifestyle is, higher are the chances of dying early. Some medical experts have even revealed that people living an extremely sedentary lifestyle are at 22% to 49% greater risk of dying early. While there have been some contradicting opinions too on this matter, but major researches have supported the fact that more sitting means more sedentary behaviour and this will definitely affect your life span to a great extent, if not redressed now.

4. Sitting Makes You An Easy Prey To Lifestyle Diseases

This will come as yet another setback to you. Lets get a flashback of the golden past. How common was it for your ancestors to complain about joint pains, heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc? Don’t you think that there has been a drastic decline in the number of natural deaths these days. An average life span has reduced to 60 to 70 while our ancestors enjoyed a life span of around 90 to 100 years and died in natural circumstances.

Medical experts say that the sedentary lifestyle (that most of us are enjoying!) follows a package of around 30 diseases and medical conditions. The more sedentary lifestyle you live, the risk of type 2 diabetes increases by 112% and the risk of heart diseases shoot up by 147%. It has been studied that people who walk less than 1500 steps each day or sit for long hours without reducing calorie intake can suffer from increased insulin resistance, which is a major reason for increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes. Consuming the same amount of calories without indulging in physical activities required to burn them can have direct impact on your insulin activity.

Recommended: What Can Happen If You’re Sitting Too Much Everyday?

5. Workout Doesn’t Curb The Risk Completely

We all perceive that the retrogressive effects of leading a sedentary lifestyle can be curbed completely if we start exercising regularly. But latest studies have suggested that the health risks of sitting too much cannot be nullified completely through exercising, which was proven by a study conducted among 18 volunteers that showed less changes in metabolic rate even after exercising.

If you are spending the whole day sitting, then a mere one hour workout is not suffice. The negative effects of living an inactive lifestyle will still haunt your health. This doesn’t imply that you stop working out. Studies suggest that the health risks are comparatively greater in people who hardly ever workout than in people who regularly exercise.

Overall, it can be said that the hazardous effects of sitting on our long term health can be diminished by starting to live an active lifestyle. Even an hour of workout is not fully sufficient, because our lifestyle as a whole needs to undergo a change. Since sitting posture provides you the required relaxation, you must ensure that you don’t sit for hours together. Stand and move frequently or take the stairs to go to the next floor, manage your calorie intake, exercise regularly and start walking in the mornings or evenings. Putting your consumed calories to work by following an active lifestyle is one of the best ways to keep yourself healthy and to enjoy greater life span.