A person who earns a living in the 21st century may face heath problems even while doing nothing. Nowadays, every available worthwhile job requires us to stay inside offices or even work at home. While completing a day’s task, we spend most of our time sitting down rather than doing any other activity that will help us burn our body fats. This daily dose of physical inactivity may lead to certain health risks that may require us to pay the ultimate price. Sitting down is the new health hazard of the 21st century and as a result, a lot of individuals are slowly suffering from its ill effects.
How We Spend Our Day
On a daily basis, we spend more or less 10 to 12 hours a day sitting down. To have a sound mind, we spend at least 8 hours a day sleeping. The remaining number of hours we have in a day is devoted to food preparation, travelling to and from work and other less stressful activities. The amount of time that we also spend during our leisure hours may also be wasted in sitting down. This cycle goes on and on and when you think about it more, we spend more moments in a sitting position rather than lying or standing up.
Health Risk Details
Doctors recommend that we spend at least 10 minutes of physical activity after an hour of sitting. However because of the type of lifestyle that we have in this century, we can’t afford to move around for ten minutes after every hour of sitting down. The longer we sit down the enzymes that our body needs to burn fat declines by 90 percent. Prolonged sitting slows down our metabolism, which will affect our cholesterol levels in our bodies. The lack of physical inactivity that happens in our lives contribute 6 percent of our heart disease risk, 7 percent of us getting type 2 diabetes, and 10 percent of a possible breast or colon cancer risk. The average death rate due to obesity in the US is now pegged at 35 million. The relation of this figure to tobacco smokers is only 3.5 million. A person who watches television for an extra hour increased his/her dying rate to 11 percent. Too much sitting can really become a lethal activity.
How to Improve Company Health Conditions
The office where you work must be aware of this fact. It must devise ways and means to further increase physical movement and contribute to the decrease of the number of hours that their employees spend in sitting down. Pantries may have elevated tables with no chairs so that employees can take their meals while standing up. Relaxation areas can have exercise devices that employees can use to unwind. A company phone can be placed in a spot where employees won’t need to sit down to make or take calls.
Organize Hike Meetings
Another way of encouraging physical movements is to organize hike meetings with the people you deal with. In a hike meeting, you don’t sit down and discuss office matters but instead, you walk side-by-side of each other as you discuss important details related to work. Some will say that this approach can be innovative and creative. It even encourages your associate to focus on the discussion so that they can provide you their undivided attention on your meeting’s topic. The only problem you will face when you introduce these changes is hesitation to try them out at first. However, once you get the ball rolling, they’ll later find out that doing such practices can lead to something fruitful in the end.
