Sitting Your Life Away
Have you ever thought about how much time you spend sitting? If you haven’t, take a minute to think about your normal daily routine. You wake up, get out of bed and sit down for breakfast. Maybe you even read some news for a bit but then it’s off to work. So you get in your car and you sit for your commute which may last hours depending on distance and traffic. Then you when you get to work, you sit at your workstation. Maybe you sit through the entire day until it’s time to leave. Then it’s back into the car for the drive home where you sit down for dinner. After a long day of work (mostly sitting), you relax in front of the TV for a few more hours before bed. Then the cycle repeats, day in and day out. Does this sound familiar to you?
It may come as no surprise that today’s average American sits roughly 10 hours a day! As a result, there has been a fatally drastic increase in musculoskeletal dysfunction that nearly everyone now experiences at some point in their life. For people who sit so often, this dysfunction can occur on a debilitating daily basis. Now, today’s doctors are all agreeing that sitting is the new smoking. Dr. James Levine, director of Obesity Solutions at the Mayo Clinic of Arizona State University, knows more on the subject of sitting than probably anyone else in the world. Dr. Levine’s words shocked the Western world when he reported, “Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death.” However, these negative health effects don’t only come with sitting. Research shows that even standing still too long poses its own collection of harmful side effects. So what’s the bottom line? The less we move, the more ill we become. Luckily, proper posture paired with functional movement effectively combats the negative health risks associated with too much inactivity.
If we could get everyone in the United States to simply walk 30 minutes each day, we would see something like this:
- 91% of all cases of obesity and Type II Diabetes prevented
- 50% of all Heart Disease gone
- decreased risks of stroke by 25-30%
- decreased deaths due to stroke by 50%
- reduced risk of hip fracture by 30%
- decreased cases of colon cancer by 25%
- reduced mental stress & increase cognitive performance
- reduced high blood pressure
- improved lung function
- improved sleep quality
- …and literally 100’s of other health benefits!
With house call chiropractic care, you can discover better health from the comfort and convenience of your home or office. Our chiropractor helps you change your lifestyle, alleviate your pain and prevent further discomfort. As a highly trained chiropractic physician, Dr. Mike identifies the most unnoticed habits weighing you down.
4 Outcomes of Sitting 
Too Much
- Your hip flexors shorten causing groin pain
- Your muscles weaken and your pelvis becomes unstable, often tilting forward
- Your hips unbalance (leaning to one side, sitting cross-legged, etc.)
- Chronic shoulder and neck pain can manifest
4 Easy Tips for Correcting Too Much Sitting
- Stand up to take phone calls
- Take the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator
- Get up and move for 10 minutes every hour. The blood flow will help with cognition and energy
- Adjust your chair and computer height for more proper posture
