Sitting dow for long periods can cause weight gain

You may know that long hours of sitting down is not good for your health. It can cause back problems, neck problems, digestive problems and of course, if you are sitting down you aren't being active and burning up calories.

But there are more negative effects of sitting down for long periods. In fact sitting down for long periods is so bad for your health that it shortens your life span more than smoking cigarettes do.

By now you are probably wondering how sitting down can be more detrimental to your health than smoking. The reasons for this are because when you sit down certain biological processes are reduced, causing a host of health issues.

Sitting down causes your muscles to relax, which is a good thing for a short period but unhealthy for a longer period. It is the relaxing of your muscles that leads to other processes changing. After one hour of sitting down you process sugar less effectively and burn around 600 kilojoules less than if you were standing.

Your hormones that reduce your appetite decrease whilst your immature fat cells develop into fully formed fat cells at a faster rate.

If you are a regular visitor to the gym and/or take regular exercise in other forms you may think that this doesn't affect you, but it does. Even if you exercise every day for an hour or two, when you sit down for more than an hour at a time your body processes will start to be reduced.

But there are alternatives to sitting for long periods that will still allow you to work and prevent the hazards of sitting down for long periods. Try changing your habits to include the following:

• Stand up every 30 minutes and do some stretches, or take a little walk
• Move the printer away from your desk so that you have to walk to get the paper
• Take the opportunity to stand when on the phone or when talking to someone in the office
• Set your phone to remind you every 30 minutes to stand up and be active
• If you can't stretch or move away from your desk just stand up and stand up and down on your toes because this will work your calf muscles
• Have your tea breaks standing up

There is a move to change to standing work-stations, with people standing to work on their computer, standing a meetings and rarely sitting down in the office. Earlier this week a chiropractor shared with me that sitting down for long periods is so unhealthy that in a few decades it will be perceived in the same way that smoking is currently perceived.

You probably still have to sit, or want to sit for periods of time and the magic number is two hours. The risks increase after two hours so this is the longest that you should sit for before standing up and moving around. Sometimes this isn't possible such as during a long flight. In these cases move your feet in circles and up and down to get some muscle movement in your legs and stand up when you can.

Enjoy keeping your body processes fully functioning

Sarah