Sedentary life is a problem. Whether we work at home or in offices, we often spend long days in front of the computer. We may also spend more time than necessary sitting consuming entertainment or studying exams (which are not all screens). In the end, it is something that affects our physical and mental health, but there are studies that have calculated how much exercise we have to do to compensate for a day of sitting.
And you just need some free time… and discipline.
It takes its toll. We spend a lot of time sitting for various reasons. We have already explained some of them, but sitting in the car or public transport is something that, especially in large cities, consumes a good part of our day (and adds time to the sedentary odometer). The good thing is that we are increasingly aware of how sitting affects our health.
From the Harvard School of Medicine, they explained with data from different studies that spending so much time sitting causes overweight due to lower caloric consumption, but it also influences our cardiovascular health, increasing the risk of suffering traumatic events for our heart. A sedentary lifestyle is being studied with a possible link to the appearance of cancer and as a factor that can cause both anxiety and depression. Muscle and bone weakness, increased insulin resistance, increased blood pressure and joint pain are also linked. And, even older, premature death.
Exercise to recover. The good thing is that remedying it is something that is within our reach with exercises that do not have to be complicated – taking a good number of steps a day is a great help – and, if for whatever reason you have a job or activity that requires you to be 10 hours a day sitting, you don’t have to ‘kill yourself’ in the gym. According to research published in 2020, 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity” per day is adequate to offset those hours of sitting.
The study authors commented that “in active individuals who engage in about 30 to 40 minutes of physical activity, the association between high sedentary time and risk of death is not significantly different from those with low amounts of sedentary time.”
The study. The good thing is that, to carry out this study, they did not rely on the subjects’ statements, but on data from physical activity trackers of 44,370 people from four different countries. The accuracy of these trackers is not comparable to that of medical devices, but it is much more reliable than simple testimonials. In addition, this general recommendation of 30 or 40 minutes of daily exercise to compensate for 10 hours of sedentary lifestyle coincides with the between 150 and 300 minutes of moderate activity recommended by the World Health Organization.
What activities? That “30 or 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity” thing is pretty confusing. What may be intense for me may be moderate for another person, but the study points out a series of recommendations related to intensity:
- Mild intensity: does not cause a substantial increase in heart or respiratory rate. An example of this type of activity is walking at a normal pace.
- Moderate intensity: increases heart and respiratory rate, but allows normal speech. An example is brisk walking, dancing, or gardening activities.
- Strong intensity: substantially increases heart and respiratory rate. For example, cycling, jogging, carrying heavy objects, playing tennis, or climbing stairs.
Weekend. This is easy to say and it depends a lot on each person. Maybe if you sit for 10 hours out of obligation, the last thing you want to do is exercise. Either because you want to relax with leisure that, again, you do sitting down or because you have chores to take care of at home. Or because you feel like going out for a drink. If you don’t have time during the week, you might have time on the weekend. And recent studies suggest that “weekend warriors” also obtain important physical and mental benefits.
According to the study, exercising on the weekend can help us reduce the risk of dementia, stroke, Parkinson’s, depression or anxiety. That is to say, although the benefits on our body will not be comparable to if we exercised daily, they would have a positive effect on our mental health.
We continue investigating. Now, a nuance that the authors of the research point out is that we do not know for sure where the limit of “sitting for too long” is. Its implications on our health are known and that is why recommendations are made, but Emmanuel Stamatakis, professor at the University of Sydney, affirms that progress is being made to limit this “too much time sitting” and, thus, act with greater precision when it comes to sitting. to recommend a sports practice.
small gestures. Beyond the minutes of active exercise, we have at our disposal a series of actions that we can take to, even if we have to spend many hours sitting, alleviate that burden a little. An example is postural stretches that we can do at home or somewhere in the office. These are exercises that we can do in a few minutes and that help us take our eyes off the screen or take a break from what we are doing.
We can also continue working or studying, but instead of sitting, we can use something like a lift-up desk that forces us to change our posture. In fact, it is possible to go a little further by adding a treadmill to the mix, which is not comfortable for working, but we can use it when we are reading something, looking for information, or answering emails.
In the end, it is about taking small actions to complement sports practice to reduce the time we spend sitting in the same position as much as possible.
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