Have you ever considered standing, instead of sitting, while you work at
your desk? Numerous medical studies including ones done in Denmark and the
United States have shown that sitting all day in front of a computer has
terrible effects on our health.
Sitting Is Harmful to Your Health
According to an excellent article in The New York Times by James Vlahos
called “Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?[1]
Both James Levine, a researcher at he Mayo Clinic and Marc Hamilton, an
inactivity researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center have done
very thorough studies and discovered that when you are sitting, the electrical
activity in your muscles drop and go silent which in turn causes your metabolic
rate to drop. You burn calories of about
a third of what it should be and your ability to process insulin can be
affected in just one day. This not only increases
your chances of developing Type 2 Diabetes, it also causes the levels of
enzymes responsible for breaking down fat in your body to lower, which in turn
causes your levels of cholesterol to rise.
Hamilton actually discovered that even fit and thin volunteers for his studies
had a forty percent reduction in insulin’s ability to uptake glucose after just
four twenty-four hours of being sedentary.
Over a lifetime this type of stress on you system can add up and you can
find yourself more prone to heart disease, metabolic syndrome, babies with low birth
weight and a higher risk of mortality.
Yet another problem with this particular health hazard, is that you
cannot fix a day of sitting, with a day of exercising any more than you can fix
a day of smoking with a day of exercise. Sitting all day and staring at a
computer is just not that healthy for you and the damage that it can do to your
body is irreversible.
Standing Desks Might Be A Solution
Standing desks have been conceived so that people can write or read
while standing up or while sitting on a high stool. These can be tall tables or
resemble music stands. They usually come up to the level just about where your
elbows might bend to type on a keyboard.
They are available commercially online and in furniture and office
supply stores and are sometimes called a lectern.
The health benefits of standing up while you type have been known for
years and there were several famous people who adopted the practice of working
or writing while standing, including authors Virginia Woolf and Ernest
Hemingway, composer Oscar Hammerstein II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and
U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin.
Worried about obesity, high cholesterol or heart problems?
We can help. For more information or to book a consultation about anti-aging,
diet and weight loss programs or any health issue you may be experiencing,
visit the Pinewood Natural Health Clinic website that has a list of full
services and products at www.pinewood.ca or
call our Toronto Office at (416)-656- 8100. We also have
an office in Pickering, Ontario at (905)-427-0057. You can also email us
at info@pinewoodhealth.ca and we would be
happy to answer any question that you have about our holistic health services.
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