A Sedentary Life Robs You of Your WHealth

• June 3, 2015

We sit more in our daily lives today than ever before. We were designed to move, to exercise. This is what kept us young. To stay young, we must reverse this trend.

A sedentary life has become a core feature of modern society. Many people sit for long hours at desks at work, then go home exhausted to collapse in front of the TV. Scientists have worked to quantify the impact of these societal changes on our health.

Two years ago the British Medical Journal published an article that consolidated some of this research to give us an answer to this question. Aggregating the data from several studies on the same topic, they authors concluded that “sedentary behaviors are accounting for between 1.4 and 2.0 years of life expectancy”. Breaking this down further, the data show that if you are able to limit sitting to less than 3 hours per day, in theory, you could increase your life expectancy by about 2 years. Similarly, limiting television watching to less than 2 hours per day should, in theory, increase your life expectancy by 1.4 years.

This study was not designed to estimate the increase in the quality of your life, or your health, but from other research we know that both increase as you shift your life from your sedentary default back towards the activity levels we were designed for.

Golden Rule #1 of BodyWHealth is to take 10,000 steps on at least 5 days of every week. Exercise tips the delicate balance away from inflammation, which is responsible for physical decay, towards rejuvenation and health. Your WHealth is in your hands. Take the right decisions.

Have fun,

Roddy