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My Back is NOT killing me!



I am about 6 feet 3 inches; hence I regard myself as being a tall person. Being tall means I have a longer spine and hence, among other factors making me more prone to back problems. Since, I started working as an IT Consultant I had been actively swimming and running. Also doing Swimathons and 10K running, believing since I was exercising, and strengthening my back muscles that I was reducing the incidence of lower back pain. To tell you the truth, it did work, I was becoming fitter and fitter, I never developed back problems when I was actively going to the gym. The problems did start when I was bed bound and unable to exercise. Then, it would seem that the back pain came back with a vengeance. Part of my recovery would be doing back exercises initially non-weight bearing, swimming, cycling, etc then graduate to running.

Recently, I decided that I would no longer sit down at my desk at home, and work standing up. I put a tea table on top of my desk at home and brought some bar stools, if I did need to sit when my legs were feeling lazy. At the same time, I was unable to exercise or go to the gym. I found out, that I did not develop back pain. I did not need fancy back exercises and various sitting postures. I just needed not to sit down so much.




The BBC ran a section stating that “Sitting is the new Smoking“. Prolonged sitting is being blamed for increasing the risk of heart disease and cancer, as well as diabetes and obesity.That new data has suggested that people are putting their lives at risk by sitting down. Our bodies have suffered a lot from inactivity and our sedentary life style. It even indicated that regular exercise does not fully offset the damage done by inactivity. Hence, if you believe that by going to the gym in the morning and subsequently lugged away at your desk, it would have been better you forgot about the morning exercise. Because all the benefits that the morning session in the gym has done would have been lost by your stay at the desk.  Although it not actual sitting down alone that cause the damage but the sedentary position, hence it is believed it you do have a stand up desk moving will help a lot. “ No matter how much you exercise, sitting for excessively long periods of time is a risk factor for early death, a new study published in Annals of Internal Medicine found.” 
http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/2653704/patterns-sedentary-behavior-mortality-u-s-middle-aged-older-adults


The REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) did a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. This study showed that as we age we become more sedentary. As total sedentary time increased, so did early death by any cause, the results indicated. And the same was true for longer sitting stretches. To measure sedentary time for these adults, the research team used hip-mounted accelerometers. A threshold was "To give you a specific number, those who sat for more than 13 hours per day had a 2-fold (or 200%) greater risk of death compared to those who sat for less than about 11 hours per day."
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/11/health/sitting-increases-risk-of-death-study/index.html


The type of sedentary behaviour was also noted "Persons with uninterrupted sedentary bouts of 30 minutes or more had the highest risk for death if total sedentary time also exceeded 12.5 hours per day," noted wrote Dr. David A. Alter, an associate professor at the University of Toronto in Ontario. "Conversely, in those whose daily sedentary volumes were low, uninterrupted bout lengths had little if any associated effects on mortality." Hence it might seem my back pain is improving my life style again, apart from leading me to exercise now it is causing me to change my sitting patterns.






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