Friday, February 9, 2018

Health Risks for Writers

From Always Write:
If you’ve been hiding under a rock recently, you might have missed the most trendy health risk that has just been “discovered”.  Sitting for too many hours in a day, particularly for too many consecutive hours is slowly killing us all off. The ill effects of too much sitting include some of the worst health villains of our day – obesity, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, “all-cause mortality” (another term for death by whatever means). A meta study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine earlier this year concluded that: “Prolonged sedentary time was independently associated with deleterious health outcomes regardless of physical activity.” In other words, you can’t spend ten hours writing and then make up for the sedentary time by going to the gym for an hour.  You should be moving over the course of the day.

Sports medicine specialist Jason Matuszak, M.D., offers similar advice: “People who don’t exercise can be healthier even if all they do is reduce the amount of time they sit. People who do exercise can be healthier by decreasing the time they spend sitting, too.” He likes to ask his patients: “What fits your busy schedule better: exercising an hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?”

The often-reported solution for this problem is to get a stand-up desk.  Journalist Sydney Trent describes why he opted for a stand-up desk: “Over the years, I had concluded that sitting all day made me sluggish, less focused. On top of that, my neck and shoulders were routinely tight, and sometimes the pain interfered with my sleep.” (Read more.)
Share

No comments: