Aging isn’t easy. Sure, you’re wiser and whatnot, but on the physical side it can be challenging for many. You have trouble moving easily, there are new aches and pains in your body, and all you want to do is just sit with your feet up, all day long.
But while that’s comfortable, sitting down too often or for too long is the worst thing you can do as you grow older. That’s because excessive sitting makes you age faster, and age badly. It also ups your risks of developing a chronic disease.
How much is too much?
Experts advise that sitting for more than 4 hours a day constitutes a sedentary lifestyle, and “even one hour of sustained sitting causes blood to pool in the legs.”
Meanwhile, research studies have shown that women who spend 10 hours a day lounging around are, on a cellular level, 8 years older than more active women of the same chronological age.
3 big ways sitting ruins your aging process
There are many reasons why too much sitting around can make you age poorly. The top 3 reasons are that spending hours on the couch destroys your muscles, shrinks your spine, and wrecks your skin.
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Your muscles atrophy
There are over 650 muscles in the human body, categorized into cardiac, smooth, and skeletal muscles. Skeletal muscles are attached to the bones and enable you to move. The more you use these muscles, the stronger they get.
Not using your muscles enough makes them waste away. This is known as physiologic atrophy, and it can start as quickly as within 2 to 3 weeks of inactivity.
To understand how not using your muscles makes you age badly, let’s take the example of the gluteal muscles on your backside and thighs, that help your legs move. When you sit for long periods of time, these muscles begin to atrophy from lack of use.
As a result, instead of being able to rise gracefully from your chair, you must heave yourself up. Your legs tremble to support you, increasing your risk of falling down and breaking a hip. Your stride shortens and instead of taking confident steps, you shuffle hesitantly in a manner more suited to someone 20 years older.
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Your backbone compresses
Your backbone, or spine, is made up of 33 individual bones, or vertebrae, stacked one on top of the other. Each vertebra is separated from the next with a layer of cartilage called the intervertebral disc.
Being seated all the time causes these discs to compress and sink downwards, especially if the muscles supporting your spinal column have begun to atrophy as well. This makes you hunch over and look older than your years.
A compressed spine also leads to neck pains, weakness in the shoulder and arms, and turns you into a Grumpy Gramps who’s always moaning about an aching back even though you’re barely halfway into your 60s.
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Your glow disappears
As the experts referenced above have pointed out, sitting too long makes blood pool in your legs. In this situation, the rest of your body — especially the area above your heart — is deprived of oxygen and other essential nutrients that are transported by circulating blood.
Skin looks radiant after a workout because of all the blood surging to it. Exercise makes your heart pump harder, and your blood vessels expand to accommodate the increase in volume and speed of circulation.
But if you’re sitting around all the time, your heart won’t make the effort to pump harder than the bare minimum. Your blood vessels remain contracted, your skin gets hardly any oxygen and nutrients, and you start to look dull, saggy, and older than your years.
Want to age well? Then get off the couch
An adequate amount of physical activity may help you counter the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle and help you grow older gracefully and healthfully.
Healthcare experts recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise over a 5-day week, which comes out to 30 minutes a day. Non-exercise physical activity (NEPA) also helps.
NEPA refers to physical activity that is not part of a structured workout regime, and can include such activities as washing the windows, mowing the lawn, painting the fence, etc. A few other ways of raising NEPA in your daily routine are:
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Walk when you talk
There’s nothing quite like curling up on the sofa with a friend on the line, ready to, as the youngsters say, spill the tea. But this isn’t the 1980s when you were restricted by the length of your telephone cord. You have a wireless mobile phone, so feel free to stroll around and for added activity, squeeze a stress ball — fidgeting counts as muscular movement too!
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Make multiple trips
When moving something from one spot to another, say taking laundry out of the dryer and putting it away, do it one item per trip from laundry room to closet. It will feel inefficient and a tremendous waste of time, so remind yourself that the reason you’re doing it this way is not to get the job done, but to get your muscles moving.
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Park far away
Instead of circling the supermarket parking lot for a space right by the entrance, park in the furthest spot and walk over. Put in your earphones and listen to music as you walk to the entrance, or make up games such as not going inside the store until you’ve tapped 10 cars of the same make or color.
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Window shop
Leave your cash and cards at home. If you have a payment app on your phone, leave your phone in the car. Stroll around the mall, the way you used to as a teenager. It’s fun and will get you a decent number of steps.
Aging brings challenges that are common across the board and people are often quick to dismiss them with “Everyone goes through it.” But sometimes the aging process can hide problems that have nothing to do with growing older.
Talk to your doctor about any new health issue that crops up, no matter how small or insignificant it seems, and follow their advice to help you age gracefully and healthfully.