Welcome to WELLCARE Blog

Have you ever considered that you might sit too much?

Perhaps you’ve had some inkling of this. After all, if you belong to the part of the population that holds a desk job, you’d be spending anywhere from 7-9 hours sitting at work. Throw in time spent commuting and time spent sitting at home and you could easily be spending over half the day sitting down.

And you’d hardly be alone. All the cases mentioned above fit in the standard routine of modern life: home, commute, office and back again. Far from being a couch potato—how many people even still use that term?—you’d easily count as someone with a normal lifestyle.

This has some researchers worried.

For some years now, Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic has been working to raise awareness of the dangers of sedentary lifestyles, which have become increasingly common.

Levine’s research found that the eight or so hours spent sitting at work had adverse effects that couldn’t be undone even with vigorous exercise. Overall, it was linked to a significant reduction in life expectancy.

Since then, several studies have linked prolonged sitting and various health problems:

• Weight gain or obesity
  
  
• Chronic pain, especially in the neck, shoulders, back, and hips
  
  
• Anxiety and depression
  
  
• Certain types of cancer
  
  
• Heart disease
  
  
• Certain types of diabetes
  
  
• Varicose veins
  
  
• Deep vein thrombosis

This may seem unlikely. How could simply sitting down do so much harm?

In order to explain the relationship between kicking back and kicking the bucket, scientists have looked into what exactly happens when we sit down and how this could affect our bodies.

What Happens When You’re Sitting

We typically think of sitting as something you do to rest and, simply put, that’s what it is: your body at rest. It relaxes your leg muscles, allows your heart to pump at a slower rate and, assuming you have a backrest, removes the strain from your spine.

But if your body rests even when you’re working, this becomes a problem. Muscles in your legs could weaken and atrophy from lack of use. A reduced heart rate leads to dulled wits and feelings of sluggishness. A spine too relaxed loses the ability to hold its own for long.

And these are only the problems associated with sitting too long with good posture. The effects get even worse if you’re sitting the wrong way. Craning over a monitor, for instance, puts undue strain on your neck, shoulders, and spine. Having a seat that’s too high or too low relative to your desk strains your wrist when you write, type, or use a mouse.

Perhaps the most damaging thing about sitting, however, is what’s not happening while you’re doing it. Sitting ranks at about 1.0 MET (a measure of bodily energy use) per hour, compared to 1.3 for standing or 3.0 for brisk walking. Staying in an extended state of low exertion has adverse effects on metabolism, cardiac health, and muscle and bone development—which may explain why excess sitting is linked to so many health problems.

Taking a Stand for Better Health

Levine published his findings in a book called Get Up! Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It. It set the tone for the earlier discussions on the subject of excess sitting. And as the name suggests, one widely endorsed recommendation was to simply spend less time sitting and more time standing.

But the idea hasn’t stood the test of time.

Later studies investigated the potential benefits of swapping sitting for standing. This included those who hopped on the trend of using standing or adjustable desks that would allow them to work on their feet. All in all, they found no worthwhile improvement.

Standing only burned marginally more calories: over the span of a workday, it wouldn’t even cancel out an additional apple eaten. And while it improved health in some areas, like leg muscle atrophy, it worsened it in others. Prolonged standing put too much stress on the spine and heightened the risk of enlarged veins. In those with existing joint problems, these conditions were aggravated. And in poorly adjusted setups—desks too high or too low—it caused neck and shoulder aches, just as sitting does.

All in all, however, the studies weren’t conclusive enough to find overarching conclusions. Most studies either involved too few participants or ones not diverse enough to represent the general population. None of them lasted for more than a few months. If there was something wrong with either too much sitting or too much standing, the studies weren’t enough to pick up on it.

Where You Stand (In Terms of Health)

Many scholars now favor the idea that it’s not the sitting or standing itself that causes problems, but the lifestyles that are attached to them.

In meta-analyses (studies of past studies and their patterns) on the sit-stand issue, researchers have found that remarkably few of them account for other lifestyle factors. When corrected for this, new data emerged. The link between sitting and diabetes, for instance, coincided with a third factor: obesity. Furthermore, there was no increased likelihood observed among people who sat a lot, but also exercised a lot.

In other words, it’s likely that sitting a lot is indicative of a lifestyle problem—one that you can’t change just by spending more time standing.

However, standing can be used to encourage those lifestyle changes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people who spend more time standing at work are more likely to move about the office, such as crossing the room to talk to someone instead of sending an email.

When you’re used to standing, sitting remains an option but it stops being the default.

Simple Steps for Better Health

The good news is that your desk job isn’t doing irreversible damage. The bad news is that it isn’t doing your body any favors, either. To stave off the worst health risks of staying still, you need to add regular movement to your routine.

Just as standing at work can make certain behaviors come more naturally, it’s possible to make small changes to your routine to encourage long-term health benefits.

1. Proper Posture and Ergonomics

A lot of the negative effects from both excess standing and excess sitting come from bad posture. This in turn tends to come from having a bad office setup.

“Ergonomics” is the term for the study of people and their working environments and it’s come to encompass the best setups for common equipment, like desks and computers. Check out this guide on setting up your desk just right.

2. Regular Exercise

The most direct way to combat the downsides of sedentary life is through regular exercise. Emphasis on regular. It doesn’t have to be vigorous, but it does have to be consistent enough to offset the amount of time you’d otherwise spend inactive.

Small lifestyle changes such as walking or cycling to work and taking the stairs instead of the escalator are a good way to start. Ultimately, though, it’s best to find time in your day to exercise, whether that means taking a stroll or taking up a sport.

3. Pay Attention to Your Body

Your body will give you signs if you’re doing too much of something and that goes for sitting and standing too. Pay attention to chronic pain or other disturbances. If you sense any, try switching things up. Find ways to make it easy to switch between sitting and standing while you work.

In the meantime, be sure to deal with any pains you might encounter. Chronic muscle soreness can be alleviated with heat therapy, for instance. Of course, for more lasting problems, you should consult a doctor.

From heating pads and cushions to electric underblankets, Wellcare has high-quality products that can help you alleviate aches and pains that might arise from work fatigue. To guarantee your safety when using our heating products, we use only the finest available materials in our manufacturing process.

However, the best aspect of our products is that they are equipped with our very own 4D Dynamic Warmth Flow (4D DWF) technology, an innovation in the world of electric heating. With 4D DWF, heat is evenly distributed throughout the product, thereby ensuring your maximum warmth and comfort.

So, what are you waiting for? Grab a Wellcare heating pad, cushion, or electric blanket today.

We aspire for better health for our readers, liberate them from their painful episodes, and empower them to pursue their goals and aspirations, and future endeavours pain-free.