HEALTH PROBLEMS RELATED TO SITTING

“Most of us spend as much as 55 percent of or more of our waking hours each day sitting. We sit at the table during meals, we sit while driving our cars, we sit working at a desk at the office or at school, and we finish off the day sitting on the couch watching TV in the evening.

A growing number of studies show that the more we sit, the greater our chances of dying of heart disease, stroke, cancer, or diabetes. We tend to get back and joint pain. We are likely to be overweight or obese. Sitting also saps our energy, making us more tired than ever. In a commentary titled ‘Regular Physical Activity: Forgotten Benefits,’ published in 2015 online in the American Journal of Medicine, Drs. Steven Lewis and Charles Hennekins of Florida Atlantic University stress that lack of physical activity in Americans poses important clinical, public health, and fiscal challenges for the nation. They calculate that the cost of habitual inactivity and the resultant poor health ‘. . . accounts for 22% of coronary heart disease, 22% of colon cancer, 18% of osteoporatic fractures, 12% of diabetes and hypertension, and 5% of breast cancer . . . inactivity accounts for about 2.4% of U.S. healthcare expenditures or approximately $24 billion a year. Not a pretty picture.”

- Joan Vernikos from Designed to Move