grow older better

Tag: sitting

  • Sitting Longer and Disability Risk Factor

    I saw this research the other day and my first thought was:

    sitting_and_working“uh oh you’re in trouble – you’ve been sitting a lot again”

    I had a lot of work to do, and for some reason, even knowing that sitting is bad for me, I was sitting for long stretches to do the work on my laptop.

    Not good – and here is another reason why sitting is not good:

    Regardless of how much time older Americans spend being active, those who sit for more hours each day are more likely to be disabled, according to a new study.

    Researchers found that every hour people 60 years old and older spent sitting daily was tied to a 46 percent increased risk of being disabled – even if they also exercised regularly.

    So instead, for the last 2 days, when I was finishing up some of that work, I put my laptop up high enough so that it was at the right level for me while standing – and I stood all day to finish the work.

    feeling_virtuous

     

     

      I felt so virtuous.

     

  • Learning The Hard Way – Again

    hibernating

     

    Are you a winter hibernator?

    I am – and it is not a good thing for our bodies.

     

    [Maybe bears can do it –I can’t.]

    In the winter, I tend to just take walks and do some stretching to keep my hamstrings flexible – but otherwise I kind of become someone who sits too much – and as we know, that is not good for a body.

    As we get older, it seems we need to keep all parts in flexible working order and to do that, we cannot hibernate!

    downward dog poseI re-learned this recently when I started back into doing yoga! 

    I had lost a real lot of my flexibility – and could not easily [or even] do much of what was so easy before I hibernated!!

     

     

     

     

    The obvious moral of the story is that we all need to do a variety of exercising to stay flexible – and as we age, it seems we cannot take off for a long period of time without it having a major impact.

    OUCH!

     

    Comments? Thoughts? Thank you…..

     

     

  • Infographic: Inactivity Is Bad

    sitting for 3 hours is bad for you

    This is a follow up, in infogrpahic format, to the post on Inactivty is bad…

    These images, as fun as they are to make, still take way way too much time…

    but we are never too old to learn – right???    

     

    comments? thank you.

  • Inactivity is BAD

    sitting too many hours

    I posted about sitting more than 3 hours a day as being bad for us…

    then this came across my screen:

    Inactivity is BAD BAD BAD

    Inactivity is a major cause of death worldwide, with new research suggesting that a sedentary lifestyle is on par with both smoking and obesity when it comes to raising the risk for disease and mortality.

    Since posting the first bit of research I have tried to not sit as much and move around a lot more yet here I am sitting …. again.

    No matter how health conscious we are, it takes a whole lot more being conscious of how much sitting we do and how inactive we really are.

    All this research is forcing me to take a look at my lifestyle and make changes.

    I'm getting a new laptop and I plan on standing a lot more when I am on the computer…that's hard to do right now…

    And as it is summer and nice out, I am walking more, biking and kayaking – but sitting is still something I am doing too much of..

     

    Thoughts? Comments? Thank you….





  • Stop Sitting So Much – and So Badly

    sitting-at-desk

    Do you want to live longer and be healthier?

    Then sit less than 3 hours a day – and when you do sit –  sit with better posture.

     

    Recent research shows that sitting for long periods of time is unhealthy and that sitting for fewer than 3 hours a day may add up to 2 years to your life.

    A wave of new research indicates that sitting all day is actively damaging your health. By forcing a body designed for movement to hold a crushingly immobile position, sitting strains muscles, slows your metabolism, increases your risk of heart disease, and even shortens your life span. "Sitting is a health hazard on the order of smoking," says Marc Hamilton, PhD, a microbiologist at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

    Wow!

    From about the 1st grade on most US schools have kids sitting hours and hours a day. And often physical education or even outdoor recess time are among the first "extras" to go when budgets are tight.

    [Or when we teach to the tests.]

    Sitting badly

    Sitting itself is a problem as our metabolism slows to a halt when we sit – and then most of us sit in bad positions posture-wise when we do sit.

    Add to this that we sit more than 3 hours a day makes this sitting-issue a double-plus whammy.

    Get out of your chair and move around! work while standing and when you sit:

    Here is a better way to sit

     

    Comments? Thoughts? Thank you