Impact of Sedentary Desk Jobs on Posture and Consequences

“Human body was never created for a sedentary lifestyle. It was created to move!” If you have a job with you that requires sitting for long or sitting in front of the computer for all 8-9 hours of the duty then you are surely someone who must be having complaints on back pain, and other issues linked with body and the posture. There are several health impacts of sitting on desk for long which we will be studying in the current article. However, we will focus primarily on the impact of sedentary desk jobs on posture and know about how to get rid of the ill consequences of the same.

There are a lot of harmful effects linked to sedentary desk jobs or excessive sitting all the day. Let us here check some of the ill effects of the sedentary desk jobs on health below.

• You are more at a risk for growing diabetes with a continuous sitting job. It is found that sitting for two hours on back improves the chances of growing diabetes by 7%
• Obesity is one major ill effect of sitting long. The important flab-burning enzymes which are responsible for breaking down trigycerides, simply begins switching off. You cannot burn enough calories or fats from body this way.
• There are increased chances of heart diseases with prolonged sitting everyday
• You also are more prone to depression with sedentary desk jobs. The blood flow to brain is less because of weak circulation or slow circulation while continuous sitting and thus grows chances of depression because of fewer flow of feel-good hormone to the brain.
• The prime most impact of sedentary desk jobs in on your posture. We will study on this in the following paragraphs.

“Unless some misfortune has made it impossible, everyone can have a good posture.” Why would one look for misfortunes knowingly? No one would do it! But some things do not come in our way as we want. Sedentary desk jobs are one such jobs where even without wanting one has to break his normal posture by sitting on the same pose all throughout the working hours. It is known that prolonged sitting affects very hard on the normal posture and leads to various ill effects linked with your posture. Let us study in detail about the impact of sedentary desk jobs on posture in this section. We will have a fine mentioning of ways to come out of the ill effects of sedentary jobs in the later sections of the article.

While you are sitting for long hours one surely gets into body pain, nerve issues, painful joints and herniated discs problems. At this position, our spine meets with a lot of pressure. Our bodies are naturally built to move and stand; so maintaining a sitting position for long part of the day surely is highly stressful. What happens while standing is the weight is equally distributed all throughout the body. However in case of sitting, the case is absolutely different. While sitting we distort our natural curve of the spine. This means our back muscles have to strive a lot to hold our back in shape as while sitting we are not using our normal curves of the spine to lift our body up against the gravity.

We now know that while sitting long we grow a bad posture. This bad posture in turn causes various spinal problems including the slipped discs. What exactly happens is when we sit long all the day is the hip flexors and hamstrings get shorten and tighten, the muscles supporting the spine become stiff and weak and this in turn results in chronic lower back pain. Fascia is one tough connective tissue covering all our body muscles. It is pliable and tends to set in the position or the or state your body muscles are in most often or in the posture you maintain for the most part of the day. So, in case you are more into the sitting position all day then fascia gets adapted to that particular position.

Now considering our hips and thighs position in relation to the torso while the seated position; they remain bent which in turn causes the hip flexors muscles of the thigh front to contract slightly or to get shorten. The muscle no more stretch as they must naturally do. This in turn results in improper walking and irregular posture which can be marked clearly while walking. One who is more into sedentary desk jobs fail to walk tall and straight because the fascia is adapted to the sitting posture which differs from the standing. This becomes the normal posture for the person which in turn leads to various other consequences.

Various consequences results from the impact of sedentary desk jobs and the bad posture caused due to it.

• Poor balance
• Poor mobility
• Pain in neck, hip and lower back pain etc
• Muscle stiffness, body ache etc.
• Growing risk of injuries due to lower balance.
• Decreased athletic performance and agility.
• Affected person is less efficient for exercising.

A typical official job which requires a worker to work at desk sitting for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is enough to cause the ill effect of bad posture due to sitting or sedentary desk jobs. It is advised to follow some necessary steps and manage self while working at the desk. We will talk about it in the following section.

Check out some of the most effective ways to prevent the risk of sedentary desk jobs below.

• Know the desk exercises: Having frequent stretches at your desk every 20 to 30 minutes would help greatly in keeping a move while sitting for long. Stretches are considered the most effective desk exercises.
• Have a standing desk: One can prevent from the impact of prolonged sitting at sedentary office jobs with the standing desks. This allows people to work at standing positions.
• Standing station is a smart idea: Standing station is something where you can do your work from any location of the office in standing position. That means you can carry the laptop, cell phone etc and remain connected with the work and your team you from any area of the office and at anytime.
• Treadmill desks would help: Treadmill desks are great ideas for office jobs that requires sitting for long. Employers can design such desks where it allows the employees to walk at a slow pace, one mile per hour while working on sedentary jobs.
• Having frequent office laps: A great idea comes with the frequent office laps. Take a walk in office at times of work so as to take a break from sitting
• Engaging with active meeting with colleagues: Having active meetings that gets a physical work into your discussion will help you take a break from sitting long in the desk or at the conference room. Walking from the conference hall to the concourse is one way to adopt walking into your meetings.

“We cannot avoid our duty, but we can transform our mode of working for a better health.” Hope the above mentioned ideas can help one prevent from the risk of bad posture due to sedentary desk jobs. Be informed, take the right steps and prevent you from the impact of prolonged sitting at work desk.

Also Read:

• Hunchback: Causes, Symptoms, Signs, Investigations, Treatment, Exercises, Posture Brace
• Sleeping Postures To Prevent Back Pain & Neck Pain
• Forward Head Posture: Causes, Symptoms, Treatment, Exercises
• How Can Bad Posture at Work Affect You & How to Improve it?
• Importance & Benefits of a Good Posture
• What is Posture, Know the Types of Posture Deformities, Its Causes, Treatment