If You Want to Avoid Disability, Get Up and Move

This is bad news for us desk jockeys.

It turns out that just sitting on your duff for long periods of time increases your likelihood of becoming disabled. That’s true, even if you exercise every day.

I’m not surprised by this. I had my first symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis when I was 16. But it was never a problem for me until my first few terms in the Oklahoma House. At that point, the ra became increasingly painful — and I do mean painful.

When I quit the House to stay home and raise my kids, it was still with me. But as the years of being an active mom and engaging in daily walks went by, the symptoms receded and, in time, almost vanished. I still took my medicine, whether I needed it or not, and I had achy-breaky, flu-like symptoms every day. But the ra only really flared before big storms.

Then, I got myself re-elected. After just a few weeks sitting in that chair on the House floor for hours at a time, the ra was back. It’s been getting worse ever since.

I have never known if it was due to the prolonged sitting or the prolonged stress. For instance, I get a headache every year. The headache lasts from the beginning of session to the end. Then, when we sine die, the headache leaves. That’s stress, I think.

An article in live science seems to point the finger of blame (at least so far as the ra is concerned) at the long hours of sitting. According to new research, people who sit for long periods of time are more likely to experience disability, even if they engage in regular exercise.

Given our society’s enforced sitting, which begins in preschool and goes on throughout the working years for most people, I would guess that explains a lot of the joint replacement surgeries, walkers and canes that seem to be showing up with younger and younger people.

It’s difficult on most sitting jobs to find opportunities to walk around on a regular basis. Based on this study, maybe that should change.

From live science:

Older adults who spend a lot of time sitting may be at increased risk of having a disability, regardless of how much they exercise, a new study suggests.

Researchers analyzed information from more than 2,200 adults ages 60 and older who wore a pedometer to track their movement for at least four days.

While they were awake, participants spent about nine hours a day sitting down. Every additional hour spent sitting was linked with a nearly 50-percent increase in the odds of having a disability, the study found. The researchers defined disability as having significant difficulty completing daily tasks, such as eating, bathing or getting out of bed and walking across a room.

That means that, if there are two 65-year-old women, and one sits for nine hours a day and the other sits for 10 hours, the second one is 50 percent more likely to have a disability, the researchers said. About 3.5 percent of all participants had a disability.