Watch Out, Prolonged Sitting Kills

Sitting comes naturally with living. Most daily
tasks,from watching the television, eating, driving
and performing official duties, are done in a
comfortable sitting position. But there is
overwhelming evidence associating prolonged
sitting with mortality, with a few studies even
insisting that a sedentary lifestyle is more lethal
than obesity.
Experts say an inactive lifestyle is a certain recipe
for a complete degeneration of several parts of
the body. According to them, sitting for long
periods of time does not only lead to a strained
neck and sore shoulders. They posit that an
individual with a sedentary lifestyle has a greater
risk of developing heart disease, a decrease in
insulin production as well as colon, breast and
endometrial cancer.
A health practitioner, Dr. Ayo Falade, says it is
important that people strike a balance when it
comes to sitting for long periods. According to
him, winning the war against a sedentary lifestyle
comes with making conscious choices.
''There have been drastic interventions in foreign
countries where manufacturers are pushing
standing work stations or special desks into the
market. They come in various designs and are
configured to remind the user that it is time to
stand. We may not have that yet in Nigeria but
there is room to improvise. For instance, you can
make it a habit to stand up each time you receive
or make calls. We all use our mobile phones a lot
and that can be the starting block, ''he says.
Mounting evidence
A recent study done by researchers at the Toronto
University, Canada, has revealed that regular
exercise is not enough to mitigate the effect of a
sedentary lifestyle. In an investigation which
looked at 47 other studies on sedentary living, the
researchers reveal that exercising regularly
cannot reduce the risk of morbidity and mortality
associated with prolonged sitting.
While prescribing that people should reduce the
amount of time spent sitting by two or three hours
over a 12-hour period, co-author of the study, Dr.
David Atler, says it is crucial to have small but
achievable goals. He also advises that among
other personal measures, individuals who cannot
but watch television can stand up and exercise
during commercial breaks or set up an alarm to
remind oneself to move for three minutes every
half hour.
"Our study finds that despite the health-enhancing
benefits of physical activity, this alone may not be
enough to reduce the risk or disease. It is not
good enough to exercise for 30 minutes a day and
be sedentary for 23 and a half hour. Decreasing
sitting is not a replacement or exercise and
exercise is not a replacement or sitting more. They
are both important to do, and do more of,'' he
says.
In another study, sitting one's life away has also
been linked to obesity, high blood pressure, belly
fat and a host of cardiovascular diseases. The
study, which was published in American Journal of
Preventive Medicine, says a sedentary lifestyle is
more deadly for women, and harps on reducing
sitting time with a view to improving one's health
outcomes. The study investigated the sitting habits
of some women for more than a decade,
Led by Andrea LaCroix, Director of the Women's
Health Centre of Excellence, University of
California, United States, the research finds that
''older women who reported the most sitting time
are more likely to die during a 12-year follow-up,
while those sitting for more than 11 hours daily
were at the highest risks. ''
What can be done
As far as Falade is concerned, the most important
thing is for individuals to know that their health
goal supersedes every other goal. "I always say
that being healthy should be the greatest priority
for everybody. More and more people now know
that a sedentary lifestyle is dangerous to one's
wellbeing. But, do we take action or just shrug the
information off? People spend more time planning
for the future, but they do not take time to plan
how to get there. The human body was not
designed to sit for long hours. It is crucial to
identify aspects of our lives which demand sitting
for a protracted period and deal with it with small
but firm steps," he says.
Another public health physician, Dr. Joyce
Igbekele, agrees with him. '' We have local and
international studies which daily validates the
danger of living a sedentary life. I think it is a
major public health issue. Employers, parents and
individuals have a role to play. Many of us spend
more time at the work place huddled behind a
desk. Employers can encourage their staff to move
more while in the office, while parents can
monitor the time their children spend watching
television, ''she says

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