How often do you find yourself stuck in an awkward sitting position and can’t seem get yourself up? This has happened to every single one of us, and now, even more than ever! The current COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to spend all our time at home, obviously resulting in prolonged sitting hours.
Sitting is very much part of our everyday life; usually at our workplace, transportation and advances in domestic technology have made us more sedentary (Owen et al., 2010). However, this does not only mean that we are getting lazier, and let’s face it - plumper, there are other effects that would take us by surprise. Over the past decade, media coverage of sitting research has been widespread, and the hard truth is that health consequences of sitting are being compared to those of smoking!
Sitting is detrimental for our wellbeing, physiological, and musculoskeletal health. Levels of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are on the rise, because we are mainly sitting on the sofa watching Netflix and binge eating. A higher risk of both depression and mortality are also caused by prolonged sitting (Heneghan et al., 2018).
Long hours of sitting and doing less than 150 minutes of physical activity a week are associated with increased neck, shoulder and lower back pain. It is correlated to posture and an increased stiffness of the spine, especially the thoracic part (the spinal region that is attached to your ribs).
Stiffness of the thoracic region contributes to pain surrounding the neck as it is responsible for about 33% of functional neck movement and 21% of neck rotation. It is also reasonable that dysfunction of the adjacent spinal regions would occur, resulting in lower back pain. Evidence suggests that as sedentary lifestyles are increasingly becoming the norm, and sitting for even just an hour leads to increased spinal stiffness (Beach et al., 2005).
With all this being said, prolonged sitting is a means of getting through to the detrimental effects of smoking on your health. Although there are negative effects of sitting, the effects of smoking are so much worse including dementia, pulmonary diseases, asthma, adverse reproductive outcomes, and cancers (Courtney, 2015).
If smoking causes one billion deaths in the 21st century (Eriksen et al., 2012), why do we still smoke? And with all the adverse effects of prolonged sitting and lack of exercise, why are we still sedentary? You’re probably sat reading this - get up, stretch and make sure you walk for at least 2 minutes every 30 minutes!
References
Heneghan, N., Baker, G., Thomas, K., Falla, D. and Rushton, A., 2018. What is the effect of prolonged sitting and physical activity on thoracic spine mobility? An observational study of young adults in a UK university setting. BMJ Open, 8(5), p.e019371.
Vallance, J., Gardiner, P., Lynch, B., D’Silva, A., Boyle, T., Taylor, L., Johnson, S., Buman, M. and Owen, N., 2018. Evaluating the Evidence on Sitting, Smoking, and Health: Is Sitting Really the New Smoking?. American Journal of Public Health, 108(11), pp.1478-1482.
Beach TA, Parkinson RJ, Stothart JP, et al. Effects of prolonged sitting on the passive flexion stiffness of the in vivo lumbar spine. Spine J 2005;5:145–54.
Chau JY, Reyes-Marcelino G, Burnett AC, Bauman AE, Freeman B. Hyping health effects: a news analysis of the “new smoking” and the role of sitting. Br J Sports Med. 2018;bjsports-2018-099432.
Courtney, R., 2015. The Health Consequences of Smoking-50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General, 2014Us Department of Health and Human Services Atlanta, GA: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for. Drug and Alcohol Review, 34(6), pp.694-695.
World Medical & Health Policy, 2013. Michael Eriksen, Judith Mackay, and Hana Ross. 2012. The Tobacco Atlas, 4th ed. Atlanta, GA: World Lung Foundation. Downloadable pdf, available at http://tobaccoatlas.org/. 5(3), pp.274-275.
Owen, N., Sparling, P., Healy, G., Dunstan, D. and Matthews, C., 2010. Sedentary Behavior: Emerging Evidence for a New Health Risk. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 85(12), pp.1138-1141.
Written by: Bernard Von Brockdorff