The habit that kills – It’s not smoking

As the world evolves, the technology is growing more and more. This progress has two aspects: On the one hand, it comes to facilitate our lives and make our everyday life simpler and on the other hand this simplification makes us more and more inactive. The result; Today, we have ended up spending a large part of the day sitting on a chair or sofa, looking at one screen.

Innocent as this development may seem, it is actually setting in motion, slowly but surely, a health crisis characterized, among other things, by alarming rates of early onset diabetes and hypertension. In addition, the end of each such day is accompanied by a strong feeling of fatigue. The World Health Organization estimates that if this sedentary lifestyle continues, approx 500 million people will develop heart disease, obesity, diabetes or other non-communicable diseases over a decade, costing governments $27 billion a year. At the same time, this unhealthy lifestyle will be transmitted to the next generations, depriving future people of the opportunity to feel strong, healthy and mobile.

Many are those who use a smartwatch to measure them steps that they do every day, but also to remind them to regularly get up from wherever they are sitting and move. However, they often ignore these reminders and continue in the same, unhealthy pattern. Others work out in the morning, before anything else, believing that this is enough to counteract the woes of an otherwise inactive day. And then there are those whose daily life is characterized by intense standing, which in turn is unable to cope with irregular blood sugar and lipid levels.

A team of researchers from Columbia University, in an attempt to find out what is the minimum movement required to compensate for the damage of sedentary lifestylefound that five minutes of gentle walking every half hour can make a difference.

But to what extent is it possible to add regular movement breaks to our daily routine?

In an attempt to answer this question, researchers asked US National Public Radio listeners to participate in a three-week study in which they were asked whether they could incorporate regular movement breaks during day, as well as to state all the reasons why they succeeded or could not. More than 20,000 people took part in the study, whose answers formed interesting conclusions:

• Movement breaks have been shown to benefit, in addition to physical, mental health. It found that participants were in a better mood on days they took exercise breaks, reporting more positive and fewer negative emotions. They also felt more energized, reporting a 25% reduction in fatigue.
• Breaks did not appear to negatively affect task performance. In contrast, participants reported feeling more engaged in their work and showed slight improvements in the quantity and quality of their work on the days they took movement breaks.

Despite all the well-known and proven health benefits of movement breaks, many seem to struggle to incorporate this habit into their daily lives. Indicatively, only 50% of the survey participants reported being able to take such frequent movement breaks, while the main factors cited as barriers were pressure to be productive at work, a sense that the workload is such that it does not allow for a break, and concerns about disrupting informal workplace norms.

Many of the participants found that moving breaks every hour or two was a more realistic goal, less disruptive to their daily routine. 70-80% of the participants responded positively to this objective. However, feeling overwhelmed and pressures to be efficient at work were still regularly cited as inhibiting factors, even for these less regular breaks.

The researchers point out that it is vital to identify those factors that prevent the integration of this simple movement, which can protect health from a number of important risks. Experts emphasize that people should not sacrifice their mental and physical well-being on the altar of modern obligations and because life today has been structured in such a way as to promote a sedentary life. They finally highlight the need to change a sick mentality, clarifying that school and work environments should allow and promote the regular movement of their human resources.