Sitting, the Most Comfortable Way to Die

Everyone loves those invitations from friends that start with, come over, let’s sit down and have a cup of coffee! After you read this, the only invitation you extend to friends will start with, Want to go for a walk? Sitting is now being called the new version of smoking—it’s dying comfortably and constantly. Yes, everyone is dying every day, but there is no reason to speed it up any further by sitting down for too many hours in a day. For those who have sedentary jobs like writers and similar positions, this can seem like a difficult obstacle to get around. However, you can fix this by just getting up every half hour to either walk around the room or do a chore. Let the blood flow to your legs, feet and all through your body and get your heart rate up a bit. Even if you regularly visit the gym after sitting all day, you’re still not doing yourself any favors. Why? Normally, when a person sits all day, they feel guilty when they go to the gym and they work out extremely hard. This puts their body into shock. By the time the body recovers from the shock of the workout, they are right back into their same old routine the next two days, before they visit the gym again. It’s a vicious cycle where you don’t burn the fat you want, you don’t burn the calories you want and you’re basically going nowhere. When you sit for long periods during the day, your body doesn’t produce nearly as much good cholesterol and you actually start losing your sensitivity to your own body’s insulin—which means you’re going to crave more processed sugar. It’s bad for your back as well, causing imbalances between your psoas muscle (flexors in the lumbar region) and your glutes. By sitting there so long, your glutes are underactive, causing them to get long and weak. Your flexors, or psoas muscles, are overactive and they get short. This action combines to create an “S” shape in your lower back and that’s where the majority of your sitting pain comes from. You’re not standing up and stretching out, allowing that blood to flow properly through each section of your body. The spine is the most important nerve center to pay attention to, and you’re basically hurting it spending all the time in the chair. In order to combat the negative effects of sitting for your job, especially when you don’t have a choice, try to reconfigure how your work is done. Can you stand up to work with a taller desk? Are you forced to sit down for every phone call? Ideally, you’d be able to get up every day for an hour or two and engage in something active like a game, a brisk walk, anything that lets you get your heart rate going. Don’t take years off your life for the sake of constant comfort—sitting isn’t even comfortable all the time. Get up, head to the gym and do something on your feet and you’ll have a better quality of life overall.