Movement is essential to keep our bodies functioning smoothly. Sitting down for brief periods can help us recover from stress or recuperate from exercise. But today, our lifestyles make us sit much more than we move around. Are our bodies built for such a sedentary existence? In this engaging 5 minute animated video clip, Murat Dalkilinç investigates the hidden risks of sitting down and demonstrates why and how sitting too much can put strain on our system.
We wrote more about this in a post on our EAP blog: Get a move on: Sitting is a lethal activity. In that post, we linked to a quote from a New York Times article, Is Sitting a Lethal Activity by James Vlahos, who looked at inactivity and its related health dangers. He noted that:
“Over a lifetime, the unhealthful effects of sitting add up. Alpa Patel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, tracked the health of 123,000 Americans between 1992 and 2006. The men in the study who spent six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting had an overall death rate that was about 20 percent higher than the men who sat for three hours or less. The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher. Patel estimates that on average, people who sit too much shave a few years off of their lives.”
Wondering what to do about it? Here are a few resources to dig deeper
- Additional resources for you to explore from the video creator
- Deskercize – a short video clip from our “We Want You Healthy” series
- Stand Up, Walk Around, Even Just For ’20 Minutes’
- Walking meetings can bring many benefits to your workplace