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Journalism of Courage
Does your 9 to 5 job require you to keep sitting at your desk while being glued to your computer screen for long hours at a stretch? While you may not realise it, doing this day in and out for a long period of time can wreak havoc on your health. Even research has linked sitting for long periods of time with a number of health concerns. “They include obesity and a cluster of conditions — increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and unhealthy cholesterol levels — that make up metabolic syndrome. Too much sitting overall and prolonged periods of sitting also seem to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer,” according to Mayo Clinic.
Nutritionist Anjali Mukerjee took to Instagram to share some easy changes that you can make to incorporate some movement while working. “If you alternate periods of standing with periods of sitting at intervals of 30 minutes or 1 hour, you can actually reverse the problems associated with sitting for too long and optimise your body for a better metabolic state and improved well-being,” she captioned her video.
They are:
Buy a standing desk. You can just order it at the furniture shop and use it.
Have walking meetings. If you are in a group of three or four and if there is a little park outside your office, you could go there for meetings and walk around while talking.
If you are having a Zoom meeting, you could have it on your cell phone and walk around your house whilst having a meeting.
If you are sitting in your office on a desk, you could also stretch while sitting at your desk as it brings untold benefits to the human body. So stretch as much as you can.
Do a bit of deep-breathing exercises like, pranayam and anulom-vilom. They will refresh you.
“For every half an hour of the meeting or sitting that you have, make sure that you are only sitting for 20 minutes, eight minutes you are standing, and walking around for at least two minutes. This way, you will overcome 8 to 10 hours sitting in a day and it will prevent you from a whole lot of medical conditions later into your life,” she suggested.
Walking has various health benefits; it can reduce your risk of developing conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and some cancers. Speaking with indianexpress.com, Dr Ashish Contractor, Director, Department of Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine, Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai said, “Walking is the best exercise from a public health perspective, and 30-60 minutes a day of brisk walking will help you reduce the risk of most chronic health conditions, as well as will keep you in great physical and mental health”.
Contractor suggested starting your exercise program with a walk at a comfortable pace for a few minutes and then gradually building up to 30-60 minutes of walking at a brisk pace. “However, once you have achieved this, and there are no health reasons preventing you from doing more, you could increase the pace and even start jogging for short stretches. In fact, you could do a walk-run combination, with the run component getting longer as your fitness increases”.
While increasing physical activity sounds easy enough in theory, in practice, it’s much harder. As we have become more industrialisedd as a nation, the need for physical activity has decreased. “It would not be an exaggeration to say that we now need to get creative to find ways to get physically active,” said Dr Contractor.
“Personally, two methods which work well are, using the stairs, and parking the car further away,” he concluded.
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