If you work in an office or at home, you probably know all too well what it's like to sit for hours on end.

If this is your daily experience, chances are you feel body aches and stiffness throughout the day.

In addition, studies show that a sedentary lifestyle can also contribute to additional health problems.

A report published by JAMA Cardiology in June 2022 showed how sitting for too long affected people from 21 countries.

Although the new study is one of the largest on the subject, it is not the first to reveal the hard truth about what a sedentary lifestyle can do to a person's health.

All experiments have found that sitting for long periods of time every day without breaks can quickly age your body.

How prolonged sitting can accelerate aging and have fatal consequences

The office schedule has always been a threat to us.

But given that working from home has become more common over the past few years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, even more people are forced to spend hours sitting behind a desk or couch.

Unfortunately, this can harm the health of many population groups.

A JAMA Cardiology study found that all population groups studied showed that more time spent sitting meant a greater risk of health complications.

According to an article in ScienceAlert that explains the JAMA Cardiology study,

sitting for six to eight hours a day “increases the relative risk of heart disease and premature death by about 12 to 13 percent

 compared with people who sit for less than four hours a day.

Many other studies have reached similar conclusions about the adverse effects of sitting for long periods of time during the day.

A report published in 2019 in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that long periods of daily sitting are associated with an increased risk of both diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Another 2017 study in The Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, which assessed the habits of office workers, concluded that sitting for six to eight hours a day was associated with hypertension and musculoskeletal symptoms.

Experts are warning people about the dangers of sitting for hours without a break, saying that this habit leads to health complications such as high blood pressure, obesity, high blood sugar, and excess visceral fat.

In fact, in 13 studies looking at sitting time versus daily activity, experts concluded that "those who sat more than 8 hours a day without physical activity had a risk of death similar to that of obesity and smoking."

Despite the alarming statistics, fortunately, changing your habitual sedentary lifestyle is easier than you think.

Add more daily movement to your life

Just an hour of movement a day can have an extremely positive effect.

For example, a 2016 study from the University of Cambridge found that 60 minutes or 1.5 hours of moderate exercise a day, which includes brisk walking or cycling, can help reverse the adverse effects of aging, as well as the increased risk of premature death associated with sitting too much. long.

Therefore, if you work sitting at a desk all day, try to take a walk in the morning or in the evening after lunch.

Also, when there is a choice between the stairs or the elevator, choose the stairs.

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