In class a few days ago, Mr. O'Connor briefly mentioned how little a distance people walk per week. Most of the time they are sitting in a classroom, behind a computer at work, or just watching TV at home. According to
this article, studies show that for people over the age of 25, every hour of television watched lowers their life expectancy 21.8 minutes. On the other hand, "smoking a single cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes." It seems that people may be more aware of how dangerous smoking is in comparison to how much people know about the dangers of sitting. Another
article states that sitting "slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 Diabetes." While it may be true that people are unaware, it could also be that people just disregard the information or are too lazy to do anything about it.
Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at UCLA does her work on a treadmill, as seen in the photograph below. Dr. Yancey even sits on her treadmill in her office at work, but some people, like students sitting all day in desks, don't have that choice. What, if anything, can be done to make people not sit as much? Even if people are more exposed to the idea that there are many hazards
of sitting a lot, do you think that they, like Dr. Yancey, will do anything about it?
First off, those are very interesting statistics that I was not aware of. Unfortunately, as you mentioned above, students must sit at a desk throughout the entire day, they don't really have a choice. The only suggestion I have for this issue is that teachers incorporate movement with their teaching through hands on activites. However, if there is a huge class, lets say with 49 kids in it, moving around in a small classroom would be very difficult, and I'm not sure what else can be done. While sitting for long periods of time seems to lead to many problems, I do not think many people will make drastic changes to avoid sitting. However, if people were very aware of how bad sitting can be for you I think more people would try to add a little more exercise to thier daily life. For example, people would may be more incline to walk their dog everyday, or take the stairs instead of the elevator.
ReplyDeleteI think that incorporating exercise everyday would help everyone more than making people do work on an exercise machine. I also do not know how believable the life expectancy change for watching TV is. How did they calculate that? On the other hand, movement does help with both health and focus during school. Last year, in one of my classes we had chairs on wheels allowing us to move whenever we wanted. I actually focused and was most interested in that class, possibly because of the chairs. Overall, I do not think any of these studies will change peoples' attitudes towards watching TV or sitting. Americans are often reminded to watch their diets and exercise, yet obesity and other health related issues continue to grow despite increases in public awareness.
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