How much time do you spend sitting down all day? It turns out that more than half of us spend over six hours a day sitting, which can have significant effects on your health and body. Read on to learn how damaging it can be to sit all day — from your head to your toes and learn how a simple foot treatment can help.
POSTED BY: HEALTHLINE
[ORIGINAL ARTICLE]
10 Things That Happen When You Sit Down All Day
1. Weak Legs and Glutes
If you don’t use them, you lose them! By sitting all day, you’re not depending on your powerful lower body muscles to hold you up. This leads to muscle atrophy, which is the weakening of muscles. Without strong leg and glute muscles to stabilize you, your body is at risk of injury.
2. Weight Gain
Moving causes your muscles to release molecules like lipoprotein lipase, which helps process the fats and sugars you eat. When you spend most of your day sitting, the release of these molecules is lessened and your rear end is at greater risk of widening, according to research. You’re also at greater risk for metabolic syndrome, even if you exercise. One study found, unsurprisingly, that men who spent more time sitting than usual, gained more weight around the middle, which is the most dangerous place to store fat.
3. Tight Hips and a Bad Back
As with your leg and glute muscles, your hips and back will suffer from sitting. Sitting causes your hip flexors to shorten, and your seated position can also hurt your back, particularly if you have bad posture or don’t use an ergonomic chair. Also, poor posture while sitting can cause compression on the discs in your spine and can lead to premature degeneration which results in chronic pain.
4. Anxiety and Depression
Lesser understood than some of the physical effects of sitting, are the mental effects. But the risk of both depression and anxiety are higher in people who sit the most. This could be because the mental health benefits of fitness are lacking when one spends their days sitting down rather than moving. If so, these risks could be mitigated with regular exercise.
If you have a desk job, no one can argue with the fact that it’s a good idea to be proactive by getting up and walking around during the day. Simple things like taking a walk around the block on your lunch break, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or suggesting a walking meeting with a colleague are all ways to get up and get moving.
If it’s actually painful for you to walk because of foot pain or even pain in your knees, hips, back, and neck, then you may benefit from a device called HyProCure®. It essentially puts your feet back into alignment – approximately 40% of the population has misaligned feet– which in turn aligns your body and corrects foot problems and other issues.
The stent is placed into the naturally occurring space between the ankle bone and heel bone to keep the ankle bone from excessively rolling inward (also known as over-pronation) which corrects the misalignment. It’s a minimally invasive outpatient procedure that works for kids and adults. You’ll happily walk out of the procedure in a walking boot and be back in your own shoes within 3 to 5 days.
We encourage you to get out of your chair and get walking, even if you have to be creative about it.
