By Stephen Heron – Senior Physiotherapist

From the car, to the desk and back home to the couch. We are spending more and more time being sedentary than ever before. Recent studies suggest that up to 70 percent of people spend more than six hours of their day sitting and this could reduce life expectancy by two years.

Our society has swapped an active agricultural lifestyle to one of comfort. Every aspect of our daily schedule from our morning coffee to our daily commute, our office work hours to our relaxation time at home is targeted towards comfortable sitting.

The problem?

Our bodies are not designed to stay stationary, they are designed to move. It is only in the last 40-50 years that the digital revotion has so drastically changed our lifestyle creating a society that is increasingly inactive. We have known for a while now that sitting for an extended period of time causes the body to shut down at a metabolic level. Within as little as two hours we see significant changes to chemicals in our system, including an increase in cortisol (our major stress hormone) and less endorphins or ‘feel good hormones’.

In fact evidence on prolonged sitting suggests that it: