When I was young, a lot of time and effort went into educating me, and my fellow students at school, on all of the many health risks of smoking. This was something that for our parents and especially our grandparents was largely unknown. Roll onto the late 1980s and early 1990s and the schools were filled with a mass publicity campaign surrounding the negative impact of smoking on your long term heath. I’ve heard it argued that sitting is the new smoking. Sitting is also something that has a number of currently unknown long term health risks associated with it.
Sitting as something we cannot avoid
I work in office job. This would be the kind of office job that even my father, who worked in an office, would not recognise. But it is not just our work that has changed. In fact, there are significant cultural shifts in 4 areas that now come into play and work is only one of them.
Disclaimer: writing this post makes me feel old!
Leisure Activity
In my life time, leisure activity has changed significantly. Not just in terms of what we do, but also how we do it. The invention and the rise of online entertainment streaming has changed leisure significantly. It is now increasingly common that leisure activity is predominantly spent watching the TV, or maybe even playing video games. What does this mean? It means that in our time off work, we are sitting.
But, how we do this has changed as well. My first few video games consoles had cables running from the controller to the console. So, when I was done, I needed to get up and return it or else have cables running across the middle of my room all the time. Films were all on DVD or Blu-ray and when I was done, would need to be taken out of the player. If I wanted to watch more, a new disc was needed. All of this required me to get up, even briefly. Now, remotes are all wireless and increasingly all entertainment is streamed or digital and so you can change what you watch with you controller from your chair. You can do it all, whilst sitting.
Transport
I won’t elaborate too much here, but just say that the trend in our culture is to be more and more reliant on cars for even basic local trips. This means that as we move from A to B, we do so sitting down.
General life
Improvements in technology and the services that go with them come into play here as well. My parents went to the supermarket every week and spent up to an hour, walking round. More and more people, order their groceries online, whilst sitting, and have them delivered to their door. The same is true for all other purchases as well. In my early adulthood, if I wanted to buy something, I would need to go out to a shop. If it was a book, DVD, Video Game, clothes, furniture, you name it. Now, all of this is available to order online and it is much more convenient to do so.
Some of this, is now available instantly as well upon purchase. I can decide to watch a film, buy or rent it online, and then watch it on my TV within a minute and all without leaving my sofa. Services like Deliveroo and UberEATS now mean you can dine on restaurant food at home, all with minimal need to actually get up.
Work
And here comes the big one. I think it is hard for people who haven’t lived this to understand. So, let me elaborate. I could very easily work my full day without getting up from my desk, sitting a chair. All of my work is on the same computer. Meetings are largely online, all filing is now digital, all communication electronic in some form. The only thing I actually need to get up for, is to visit the toilet!
In fact, I actually cannot do not much of my job at all away from a computer. So, not only is there no need for me to move around during the day, I also cannot do my job when I am not sitting.
A life spent sitting
And so, in an average day, the average person, will spend an hour sitting in their car in traffic, to spend 8 hours sitting at their computer, another hour in the car to get home and then 3-4 hours sitting at home in front of the TV or at their computer.
The average person now spend their life sitting.
The impact of Sitting
Whilst everyone craves a good sit down at the end of a long day, in reality, the sheer lack of movement that we have in our average day and so throughout our lives is very harmful. When we sit, our muscles are generally not being used that much. Especially the larger ones. They aren’t even being called upon to support our weight. This leads to weakening of these key muscles. Even those who engage in strength training to offset, do not get the benefit of regular continual movement.
From my reading so far, there seem to be four big impacts.
- Reduce muscle strength and useability
- Reduce flexibility
- Reduce general fitness
- Reduce cardiovascular and respiratory health and by extension, heart health.
The health risks associated with all of this longer term are numerous:
- Obesity
- Increased blood pressure
- High blood sugar
- Excess body fat around the waist
- Unhealthy cholesterol levels
- Vascular problems, such as deep vein thrombosis (DVT)
- Lower back pain and spine issues
- Heart disease
To name but a few.
Sitting for extended periods of time, without consistent and regular movement, is the new smoking. We are storing up health conditions for the future.
What to do about it?
I am still learning here. Let me say this though. Going for regular exercise is a really good thing and I highly recommend it. However, going for a 30 minute run 3 times per week cannot offset the effects of sitting without moving for the other 15 hours of the day. I do not have a fool proof plan to deal with this issue. Just some ideas to try:
- Make sure you exercise ever single day. This could mean going for a run. But it might mean going for a walk.
- Include a 30-45 minute walk in your daily schedule
- Split your day into 90 minute blocks and get up and walk around somewhere for 5 or 10 minutes in between.
- If your walk to work would be less than 40 minutes, consider walking to or from work several times each week if not all of the time.
- When you are on the phone, walk around.
- Walk to the local shops if you need to go.
- Stretch out your leg muscles several times through the day.
- I have a notification on my watch that goes off if I haven’t completed 250 steps in a given hour.
- Don’t keep your remote controls within reach
- Consider a standing desk or conversion.
These are just ideas. The point is that for our parents and grandparents, the normal course of every day life and work required significant amounts of movement through the day. For my generation and younger, it does not. In fact, it actively discourages this as things seem to expand to fill the time that used to be required to move places.
But, I am convinced, the impact on our health, and therefore our effectiveness in life, that would come if we took this seriously, cannot be ignore.
Sitting is the new smoking. Ignore this at your peril.
