Sitting All Day? Here’s What You Need to Know

Many workers spend their day sitting at a desk, whether they’re working from home or in the office. You may have heard that sitting down for hours on end day in, day out can be bad for your health - let’s explore why that is, and what steps you can take to counteract the negative health effects of a desk job.

How Sitting All Day Can Be Harmful

Excessive sitting can cause a myriad of musculoskeletal and vascular issues. One of the most common results of sitting all day is shortening of the hip flexors. The hip flexors are a muscle group that allows you to flex your leg/knee up toward your body (like hugging your knees to your chest). According to the Mayo Clinic, excessive sitting causes your hip flexors to relax, and over time they will progressively lose strength and shorten, which can result in chronic hip pain.

Unless counteracted by regular exercise and movement, excessive sitting can also lead to muscle atrophy in the hamstrings and glute muscles. Poor posture while sitting can contribute to chronic back pain, and can in fact lead to disc compression in the spine. From a vascular standpoint, repeated extending sitting can lead to the development of varicose veins (twisted and enlarged veins) and increase a person’s risk of a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), a blood clot that forms in a deep vein typically in the lower leg or thigh.

How to Counteract Prolonged Sitting

Luckily, there are many ways to help counteract the consequences of prolonged sitting. Emerging research indicates that moving six minutes every hour can help protect individuals’ metabolic health (Reynolds, 2021). That movement can include walking, squats, even jumping jacks - anything that gets you standing and engages your muscles will do. At SageMED, some of our billing staff like to get up and do lunges or squats to help keep their muscles engaged and support their health. If hourly movement sounds challenging to fit in to your workday, don’t worry - there are other ways that you can support your health. One study compiled and analyzed data from over 1 million subjects and found that 60-75 minutes of daily moderate activity also effectively countered the effects of prolonged sitting (Guthold et al., 2018).

It’s All About Posture

The importance of posture was briefly mentioned earlier - posture in fact makes a HUGE difference in how your body feels and functions, particularly when you’re sitting at a desk all day. Have you ever tried forcing yourself to sit up straight, only to realize that you quickly end up hunched over again? Yeah, me too. This phenomenon highlights the importance of progressively strengthening the muscles that help hold your body in proper alignment - trying to force yourself to have perfect posture right off the bat can result in injury, and is unlikely to work. Our wonderful Physical Therapists can help you to safely and gradually improve your posture to prevent and address chronic back pain, and help you identify stretches you can use throughout your workday to support proper musculoskeletal functioning.

Tory Rivera of Bodyvera Fitness has created an excellent Youtube series to help folks improve their posture, with routines that progress over the course of 28 days to help you find and maintain proper postural alignment. Combine this program with Physical Therapy to maximize your results, or start with Tory’s at-home series to kick off your journey toward improved posture so you can feel (and function) better.

 

Reference

Guthold, R., Stevens, G. A., Riley, L. M., & Bull, F. C. (2018). Worldwide trends in insufficient physical activity from 2001 to 2016: A pooled analysis of 358 population-based surveys with 1·9 million participants. The Lancet Global Health, 6(10). https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(18)30357-7

Laskowski, E. R. (2022, July 13). Sitting risks: How harmful is too much sitting? Mayo Clinic. Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/expert-answers/sitting/faq-20058005

Reynolds, G. (2021, September 8). Exercise for 3 minutes, every half-hour, to counter the ill effects of sitting. The New York Times. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/well/move/work-breaks-sitting-metabolic-health.html



Previous
Previous

Semaglutide – New Weight Loss Miracle Drug or Not?

Next
Next

Post-Holiday Spike in Flu & Other Respiratory Illnesses