If you’re reading this sitting, go ahead and stand now. It’s good for you.
Late last month, the World Health Organisation (WHO) shared one of the not surprising facts that have come to define modern life as we know it: in 2022 nearly a third (31% of the world’s adult population did not meet the recommended level of physical activity. Concern over the sedentary epidemic and its link to cardiovascular diseases and mortality rates had led to a resolution at the 55th World Health Assembly in 2002 that called on member states to collaborate with WHO “in developing a global strategy on diet, physical activity and health for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases…”
WHO went on to recommend, based on scientific evidence, that adults should have, ideally, at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity each week. Further, in 2018, the organisation developed a global action plan on physical activity that it hoped would achieve a 15% reduction in inactivity by 2030. As part of the plan, it urged countries to introduce, at the national level, policies that would ensure roads have designated spaces for walking and cycling. These are two very basic modes of exercise that people of all income brackets would be able to afford. To date, it has not produced the expected results.
The Industrial Revolution was perhaps the harbinger of today’s sedentary lifestyle. The invention of machines and then rapid advances in the electric and automobile industries soon led to the age of technology and the beginning of people’s fixation with screens. Long before the development of the current handheld hypnotic devices that very few, if any, of us can live without, people had begun forsaking nature to sit for hours in front of their idiot boxes.
Soap operas depicting unreal, cringeworthy lives drew, and continue to draw, millions of viewers every day. As a case in point, the CBS daytime drama, “The Young and the Restless” has been running for 51 years, having first aired in March 1973. It is perhaps the highest rated show of its kind on American TV, watched by an average of 3.5 million people daily and not just in the United States. If it ever ends, there are at least a dozen others waiting to take its place, not including its rivals.
The phrase ‘sitting is the new smoking’ has been making the rounds for several years, but are we paying attention? Most, if not all, individuals who spend endless hours glued to screens choose to have their meals right there. There is also ongoing snacking. The rotation from office chair to couch, in some instances, clocks ten to 12 hours a day, or more, hence the sedentary epidemic. Science has found that apart from cardiovascular diseases, couch potatoes are at increased risk of obesity, developing Type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers, including breast, colorectal, lung, prostate, endometrial, and ovarian. Physical inactivity is also linked with cognitive decline (this further explains the TV being called the ‘idiot box’).
Research has found that middle-aged and older coach loafers exhibited reduced medial temporal lobe thickness, which heightens the likelihood of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Furthermore, prolonged sitting, especially while looking down at screens causes neck and back pain, and deep vein thrombosis. Explicably, physical inactivity is also linked to mental health disorders. In addition, according to WHO, it is now the fourth highest risk factor of mortality and is associated with 3.2 million deaths, as well as 32 million disabilities per annum.
While the highest rates of the inactivity plague are understandably to be found in high-income countries – more disposable income equals more gadgets – low-income countries have also seen increases in the scourge. In lieu of data, one just needs to look around this country for examples of the inculcation of that bad habit. Before the introduction of the minibus – a good concept gone horribly wrong – people thought nothing of walking half a mile or more daily. Unless they were infirm or incapacitated, the distance between Stabroek Market and the Georgetown Public Hospital, for example, was covered on foot and without complaint. Individuals using the big yellow buses, or later Tata buses, walked to bus stops or terminals and waited. Owners of private vehicles parked them correctly, even if some distance away, and walked to where they needed to be.
Gone are those days. Today’s citizens expect minibuses to stop willy-nilly at any corner (and they do), park their vehicles blocking store fronts, adding to the chaos on the roads, all because walking seems to have become inconvenient. In fact, as noted above, it is the other way around.
It is not all gloom and doom. Already, some countries have begun to turn things around by creating more walkable areas and spaces for biking. Denmark is a remarkable example. In the 1970s, people began replacing their cars with bicycles, returning to what was an old tradition, in response to the Middle East oil crisis. Today, with the addition of climate change concerns, the bicycle is Denmark’s primary mode of transport and used in all seasons.
This is not only an intuitive approach, but one that also makes economic sense. No new roads should be built, or old ones upgraded, without including pavements and bike lanes, preferably with bollards for protection. Perhaps there might also be leadership in getting active from the top; an alien, but not impossible concept.
