It’s the peak of modern physical demand: sitting at your desk for a solid day’s workout at a keyboard, followed by eating at the table and watching your tube of choice.
Any moving about in between is becoming incidental.
It’s beginning to have a noticeable impact on our health, linked to anxiety, poor posture and the diabetes epidemic.
Australia’s Heart Foundation has even go so far as to say sitting down is “the new smoking”.
“The unhealthy truth is that physical inactivity, including sitting too much, has become the new smoking,” Heart Foundation CEO Mary Barry said earlier this month.
But now there’s another physical problem being linked to too much pressure on our posteriors.
A study of 140,000 Korean adults linked decreased physical activity and extended periods of sitting down with the growing prevalence of the liver condition.
“The message is clear, our chairs are slowly but surely killing us,” says Professor Michael Trenell.
“Our body is designed to move and it is not surprising that sedentary behaviour, characterised by low muscle activity, has a direct impact on physiology.”
And over-sitting is even affecting those not regarded as being overweight or obese.
So regular workouts are not enough.
We simply have to get off our butts more, the study states.
“Just like smoking before it, physical activity has the potential to consign too many Australians to live lives under the shadow of ill health, chronic disease and premature death,” Barry says.
“We know that physical inactivity already causes an estimated 14,000 deaths each year and almost one-quarter of the cardiovascular burden of disease.”
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