James Hosmer was a fisherman, a hunter, a gardener, and an office worker. He thought he was healthy most of his life. He couldn’t wait to retire soon. He had worked his whole life to get to this point. Then tragedy struck, he went to his doctor one day because he was having pain all over his body. That pain ended up being cancer. The cancer would stop him from planting his garden, the cancer would stop him from getting that big fish, and spending time with grandchildren. The cancer would also stop him from his lifelong dream of seeing his daughter Susana Nwosu graduate from nursing school. It was a slow and painful death. The person that was once full of life, happiness, and energy was gone. There was just a shell of a person left. He …show more content…
New evidence today suggest that the more hours that you sit, the greater likelihood of dying an earlier death regardless of how much you exercise, or how lean you are ( Masters, 2010). The fact is that millions of Americans think they are being healthy by working out at the gym on a daily basis. These people do not realize that the exercise they are doing in the gym is not able to counteract the effects of the “desk job.” These same people think they are living an active life by working out on almost a daily basis. The truth is that this is considered to be living an inactive lifestyle. The red flag is now raised. These same people that work out at the gym daily are now grouped into the dreaded sedentary lifestyle. Being a member of this group increases your chances of diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and coronary artery disease. On top of all this, it increases the chances of obesity. Obesity notably increases when a person is living a sedentary lifestyle. Now more than ever people are sitting for most of the day. Our grandparents and parents will tell you they spent most of their time outdoors. They didn’t spend time in traffic, on the computer, or electronic device. We are spending increasing amounts of time in environments that not only limit physical activity but require prolonged sitting-at work, at home, and in our cars and communities (Mayo Clinic, 2010). These are obstacles that we all face, whether rich or poor,
After a long day at work, people tend to participate in leisure activities such as eating at one of the restaurants or going to a bar for a few pints and don’t leave much time for fitness activities that has a bad effect on your
In Sumathi Reddy’s article “The Price We Pay for Sitting Too Much”, Reddy briefly examines the harms of sedentary behaviour. She suggests that in order to avoid them, one must do no more then increase the time they spend standing throughout the day. The article is aimed at working adults and suggest multiple schedules for increasing time on your feet and consequently, reducing sedentary behaviour. Some of the routines suggested are unrealistic for a busy person, such as the one preposed by Dr. Allan Hedge and Nasa. Hedge suggests that every thirty minutes, one should spend 20 minutes seated, 8 minutes standing and 2 minutes walking or stretching. Nasa’s recommended routine is simpler, but still slightly impractical. They suggest that one should
This data shows that both males and females are spending too much time being sedentary. This is a big issue and has been seen to cause increased rates of obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease later in life.
Susan Scutti in the article “Yes, Sitting Too Long Can Kill You, Even If You Exercise” claims that sitting can reduce one’s lifespan. Scutti supports her claim by presenting a data that shows that people who spend more time on a chair, died much earlier than people who were more active. The author’s purpose is to raise awareness that sedentary behavior has a negative impact on health. The author writes in an formal tone for the general
Sedentary behaviour is often linked with many negative health repercussions such as an increased risk to certain chronic diseases. These include obesity, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Overall, sedentary behaviour is a major risk factor for inadequate health and an increased mortality rate (Wilmot, 2014). Sedentary behaviour spans from many daily functions such as sitting down, traveling in a car or screen time which refers to spending time on a screen based device (Zoeller, 2008). Sedentary behaviour is defined by performing low energy expenditure activities for a prolonged duration. If an individual is performing activities in which the metabolic equivalent is less than 1.5x their resting metabolic rate, they are
Obesity is one of the biggest problems many Americans face today. America is one of the richest nations in the world, but also becoming one of the heaviest (some might disagree). The more money we Americans make, the busier we are, the less likely we are to find time to exercise and take care of our bodies. We fail to understand that exercising is as crucial to an individual’s health, as working is to making money. The more we work, the less time we have to stay fit or get in shape. Instead of working out, many Americans sit in front of the computer, go out to eat, or simply play video games for hours on the television. Technology is advancing, causing Americans to come up with more excuses not exercise.
“He has cancer! The doctor said he has a week to two months to live,” my mother blubbered. I will always remember the feeling of emptiness that followed those words. My uncle, Tony, had been in and out of the hospital for over a month with doctors saying things like “it won’t hurt him to lose any weight and he is depressed from having his teeth removed.” A million questions started running through my head. “Why him?” I mean he has already been through so much and having Down Syndrome makes it so hard for him to understand what is going on with him. “Why did it take them so long to find it?” He was literally there the night before and they sent him home with an antibiotic. “How does someone who has never smoked get throat cancer?” This question
“The simple truth is that sitting is affecting the health of millions of Americans and millions of people in high- and middle-income countries around the world. This unlike other things, is something we can do something about.” -Dr. John Mercola
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women and has an average of 610,000 casualties in the United States every year. As adults, we tend to lead a very demanding lifestyle. Inside our home, the office, events for the holidays, and perhaps even school, we have a never-ending to do list that makes up the majority of our day. But we also have a responsibility to ourselves, but sometimes that doesn’t quite make the priority cutoff. From what I’ve heard, I’m supposed to exercise at least three times a week. About one in every three U.S. adults, including myself, has reported that no leisure time was spent doing physical activity. The first hour and half of my day is driving to work where I’ll spend the next eight
II. Yet an estimation of 2,600 daily deaths in the U.S result from an inactive physical lifestyle. [Ref.#3]
Inactivity causes loss of muscle mass, balance, energy and increased in bodyweight, cholesterol and blood pressure. Consequently, putting them at risk of other diseases and falls. “Some studies with a moderate quality of evidence indicated a relationship between sedentary behavior and metabolic syndrome, waist circumference, and overweightness/obesity” (Rezende, Rey-López, Matsudo & Luiz, 2014).
According to Tom Rath, author of Eat Move Sleep, “Sitting is the most underrated health threat of modern time” (as cited in Stearns, 2016, p.12). Researchers are unsure how long people can sit without any consequences to their health, but know that two hours is too long (Lytle, 2017). According to James Levine, an endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic, sitting for even one hour straight is too long (Stearns, 2016). The workplace is a cause of the “sitting disease” (Selby, 2015). This is not only because a chair and table are the number one workstation for the office, but also because technological advances have led workers to rely on desktop computers (Karol and Robertson, 2015; Studebaker and Murphy, 2014). Sitting limits blood flow to the lower body (Komath, 2016). High sitting chairs, where feet do not touch the ground, cause people to rest their feet on a stool or other part of the chair, which does not allow for posture changes (Corlett, 2009). Many business leaders, including Lucas Carr, an assistant professor of health and human physiology at the University of Iowa, believe that workers should not be required to sit in a chair all day (Lytle, 2017). Carr says, “We were not designed to sit all day. We were designed to move” (as cited in Lytle, 2017,
It’s very important to keep the body healthy and functioning. Over the years, people of all ages have changed their lifestyle. They moved from keeping their body in a healthy shape, to just not caring. When adults are getting off of work, they are not spending enough time doing a physical activity or exercising like they should. In the article, Obesity in America: What’s Driving the Epidemic,” over the decades, the fraction of Americans who say they meet national guidelines for leisure-time exercise has remained stable at 25%—but objective measurements suggest the actual percentage of adults who get enough exercise is closer to 5%” (Harvard Men’s Health watch). When an individual has a desk job, their body needs the physical activity on a daily basis to keep the body healthy. A decrease in physical movement at work, will not lead to obesity. It’s the lack of exercise when they get home. The average weight of an individual is more because we sit and eat
Physical activity has been ranked as a leading national health indicator by Healthy People 2010 and 2020. Regular physical activity is associated with enhanced health and reduced risk of all-cause of mortality. Beyond the effects on mortality, physical activity has many health benefits, including reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, ischemic stroke, non–insulin-dependent (type 2) diabetes, colon cancers, osteoporosis, depression, and fall-related injuries (Khan et al., 2002, para. 1). Due to modern technological advancement and ease of access, humans have evolved from having a very physically active lifestyle to a technology dependent, less active beings. Starting from the car we use to go to the grocery store
Sedentarism has been viewed as a major risk factor to a wide-spread of health-related issues in society and could have harmful long-term effects. This is specifically troubling as some societies are becoming increasingly sedentary (Ricciardi, 2005). According to Cao et al. (2015), sedentary behaviour could be defined “by an energy expenditure of less than, or equal to, 1.5 METs (metabolic equivalent of task) while in a sitting or reclining posture”. Sitting for prolonged periods of time has also been shown to