We all love to live long in this our one and only life we come but there are certain things we do that will cut short our lifespan, we have heard that there are different habits that affecting life expectancy negatively. Every now and then researchers never cease to continue searching for ways on how to live longer, the issues of diabetes, obesity, cancer, HIV and so many of them have been attributed to a loss of life and shortening of life expectancy. What about the daily activities we embark on? Some of them are not helping us to live long as we desire and some helping us to fulfill that desire, one of such thing that doesn’t allow us to live as we desire is sitting for too long a time.
The habit of sitting too long may actually not be our fault, it might be the kind of work we do like drivers driving for long distance, bankers sitting in the banking hall in front of a computer every day to attend to the customer and doing other banking activities, so many jobs require sitting for long hours as far as computerization has turned us to do so.
In one of the research carried out, in the study, it is estimated that reducing the average time you spend sitting down to less than three hours a day could increase your life expectancy by two years. Reducing the time you spend watching TV to less than two hours a day could increase it by 1.4 years.
In another study, published in the October issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which included nearly 12,000 Australian adults, concluded that each hour spent watching television after the age of 25 reduces your life expectancy by nearly 22 minutes. To put this into perspective, the authors compared it to smoking – each cigarette reduces your life expectancy by about 11 minutes. All in all, the researchers found that adults who spend an average of six hours in front of the TV will reduce their life expectancy by just under 5 years, compared to someone who does not watch TV.
When we are not active and live in a sedentary life, we tend to be of poor health which is as a result of inactivity and that will affect the overall lifespan. In the most recent study published in Diabetologia, analyzed 18 studies that in total included nearly 800,000 people, and found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least. And, while prolonged sitting was linked to an overall greater mortality risk from any cause, the strongest link was to death due to diabetes. According to lead researcher Thomas Yates, MD.
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What Can You to Reduce this Effect
- Learn to stand up from your sitting position, for every 30 minutes you sit, stand up and stretch your body appropriately.
- Make sure that while you’re in standing position, take full deep breaths to expand your torso as well. We often have very shallow breath while we sit, counter that with big deep breaths as often as you can throughout the day.
- The simple act of standing as tall as possible for a minute or two will help break the pattern of sitting, as long as you repeat it frequently.
- Think of lengthening the distance between the rib cage and the pelvis when you stand. This will lengthen your hip flexors.
- When sitting for a while trying to keep your chest (sternum) in front of your chin. As soon as the head starts to fall forward you enter the compression and degeneration danger zone. Play around to see if you can feel a difference.
- You will do less harm by sitting upright on the front edge of your chair. Backrests tend to promote excessive rounding of the spine and tend to push people into what’s called an anterior head carriage. The further forward your head goes the shorter your hip flexors will remain and that just leads to all sorts of movement problems.
A simple shift of patterns, lifestyle or habits can lead to extraordinary life-changing results. It is your health takes it very seriously. Remember Health is Wealth!
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