Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Sitting for a Long Time Damages Your Health


We hate to have to stand up for a length of time, but it is no pleasure to be sitting in the same posture all the time. It cramps our legs, causes back ache and annoyance, among other issues. But unfortunately many of us have the kind of jobs that require us to spend most of our time in front of a computer at a desk. This is of course not the healthiest lifestyle but we have to put food on the table, so we cannot escape this reality. In fact many kinds of physical complications arise from us sitting in front of the computer for a length of time in the same posture. We cannot help it because we have liabilities to worry about. However, we can make work easy on us by taking certain steps.
One may be wondering, it is pretty annoying having to stand straight all the way to the office in the subway, why would anyone want to give up on sitting down? No one who has worked at a desk all day would ask this, however. There are studies that indicate that people are more prone to heart diseases if they live a sedentary lifestyle, that includes sitting for a long time in a day.
Not just heart diseases, you may be prone to diabetes and obesity if you stay in a sitting posture for a long time. Some studies indicate a doubling or tripling of obesity rates for people who spend a major chunk of their day sitting. If you think you can undo the damage by working out at the gym later, then you are very wrong. Such damages are hard to undo, no matter how much you exercise. Some people call sitting the new smoking. This seems to be a choice between good health and being employed.
However, we can take measures to minimize the damage. We can try to stand up after sitting for over 20 minutes. This will help you burn an extra sixty calories in an hour. It will also improve you cholesterol levels. Of course, less time sitting means less chance of obesity, heart diseases and all. There is of course a reason for this. In our body there is this enzyme called lipase. This enzyme helps in the processing of fat and cholesterol. It helps in moving fat into muscle tissues.
When fat is moved there it is burned in order to produce energy. So this way fat gets burned instead of being stored as body fat. Lipase circulation almost stops after sitting down for more than twenty minutes. So when you stand up, lipase circulation starts. Now the question is how to work while standing up because the boss would not pay you if you cite health reasons for doing less work. For that you can purchase a keyboard stand with a desk riser. A stand up workstation and a monitor riser will keep your computer at your eye level and the keyboard stand will help you work while standing.