Is a passion for Netflix placing a hand on the clock and counting the time you have left? Well let me tell you how a sedentary lifestyle can affect you, the 19 diseases it can cause you, and how to prevent them.
Caught up in today’s structure, it is an irony that many of us spend hours moving less and not so much engaging in- long hours at the workplace or even an activity such as watching a season at once of our favorite shows. Experts in health are concerned over the burden of physical inactivity which is greater than anyone comprehends and current research elucidate a rather dire fact about it: stagnating for long amasses more than excess body fat – it is a risk factor for a number of lingering ailments such as CVD, diabetes and much more.
This ‘pursuit of a healthy life’ was briefly explained in a report by the University of Iowa where it was evident that physical activity had a strong effect on one’s wellbeing which is not particularly surprising. It is not so hard to understand when thinking of how small changes in lifestyle can potentially bring about larger benefits.
The hidden costs of a sedentary lifestyle: Are you spending too much time on the couch?
In our contemporary society, physical inactivity has now become one of the top causes of mortality as it has been associated with disease such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes. There is sufficient evidence supporting the fact that engaging with activities that require physical exertion assists in the prevention and management of more than twenty chronic diseases. It is disheartening to see that we have abundance of evidence supporting the advantages of being physically active yet health establishments are not screened and placed at the forefront. Usually, those ventilation gaps are misconstrued as a lack of exercise, but they are just misses for intervention.
Exercise is medicine: Reconstructing the paradigm of doctoring
As a solution to this problem, the American College of Sports Medicine proposed the initiative where, like heart rates and blood pressure, results of exercise would be one of the vital assessments which would be monitored routinely. This step was catalyzed in 2007 and is accompanied by a slogan ‘Exercise is medicine’. By identifying these patients, health care providers would be able to either construct a personalized exercise plan or direct them to appropriate community based structures aimed to facilitate such exercise.