Do you regularly sit for prolonged periods of time?
Do you generally lead an inactive lifestyle?
If so, you could be putting yourself at risk of dying prematurely – even more at risk than those who smoke!
According to recent findings, a shocking 5.3 million premature deaths a year are linked to inactivity, compared to 5.1 million linked to smoking! These worrying figures from a recent study published in the Lancet to coincide with the Olympics.
In light of these revelations, our Southend chiropractor warns that while many people recognise that an inactive lifestyle can cause back pain, many are unaware of the most sinister risks it brings. Many of us – especially office workers – sit for more than eight hours a day, five days a week, and for the majority of us who do so, this level of inactivity is deemed as a necessity to carry out our work.
But this frequency of prolonged inactivity is now linked to serious health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. It’s therefore crucially important that all office workers (particularly those of us who don’t engage in regular physical activity) make a focused effort to incorporate some form of exercise into our daily schedules. Just one hour of exercise a day can actually offset these health risks.
The results of the study revealed that people who sat down for eight hours a day, but still engaged in regular physical activity, had a significantly reduced chance of early death compared with people who sat for fewer hours a day, but do not exercise.
If a full hour’s physical activity every day seems unrealistic, our chiropractor recommends incorporating small fragments of manageable exercises into the day. Getting off the bus a stop sooner, for example, or climbing the stairs instead of riding in the lift can make a difference. Walking during lunch and tea breaks and parking the car further away from the office are also great ways to slot in some health-boosting exercise. The bottom line is that we should all be looking at ways to reduce the amount of time for which we are sedentary and increase our physical activity.
Increased activity doesn’t cost you anything, but inactivity could cost you your health, and according to this recent study, even your life.
Move more. Live more.
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