Health Effects
A lack of physical activity is one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide.
Sitting still may cause premature death. The risk is higher among those that sit still more than 4 hours per day. It is shown to be a risk factor on its own independent of hard exercise and BMI. The more still, the higher risk of chronic diseases. People that sit still more than 11 hours per day have a 40 percent higher risk than those that sit fewer than 4 hours per day. However those that exercise at least 5 hours per week are as healthy as those that sit fewer than 4 hours per day.
A sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical activity can contribute to or be a risk factor for:
- Anxiety
- Cardiovascular disease
- Mortality in elderly men by 30% and double the risk in elderly women
- Deep vein thrombosis
- Depression
- Diabetes
- Colon cancer
- High blood pressure
- Obesity
- Osteoporosis
- Lipid disorders
- Kidney stones
Read more about this topic: Sedentary Lifestyle
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or effects:
“... work is only part of a man’s life; play, family, church, individual and group contacts, educational opportunities, the intelligent exercise of citizenship, all play a part in a well-rounded life. Workers are men and women with potentialities for mental and spiritual development as well as for physical health. We are paying the price today of having too long sidestepped all that this means to the mental, moral, and spiritual health of our nation.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Society’s double behavioral standard for women and for men is, in fact, a more effective deterrent than economic discrimination because it is more insidious, less tangible. Economic disadvantages involve ascertainable amounts, but the very nature of societal value judgments makes them harder to define, their effects harder to relate.”
—Anne Tucker (b. 1945)