I know that I have touched on numerous topic that encourage people to exercise for numerous reasons, but a new study has just come out that was performed over a two year period in Australia looking at the risk of rectal cancer and having a sedentary lifestyle. I know that many people cannot change the biggest factor, which is being sedentary due to work; if your job requires you to sit at a desk to perform your job, there is not a lot of leeway BUT there are plenty of ways that we can get moving outside of work.
What was the study?
The study looked at around 2000 people over the course of a 2 year period studying their colon and rectum looking for any changes in the cellular make up and looking for signs of cancer. Some of the participants had active lifestyles with non-sedentary jobs and the other population had sedentary job for at least 10 years. Sadly, it was found that the population that had sedentary jobs had over two times the risk of getting a colorectal cancer than the active group. From this study we can gather that long term sedentary work, leads to a much higher risk of colon and rectal cancer. That’s pretty scary and makes me want to walk around as I am writing right now!!
What can I do?
If you have a sedentary job, make time to get up and walk around and try to change your position frequently. I know that your empoler might not like wheat I am going to tell you, but people who smoke take frequent smoke breaks, so why can’t you take a frequent walk break? Sometimes when I have a day where I have to be at my desk a lot, I just drink a ton of water so that I remind myself to get up and get active (hey, walking to the bathroom is better than just sitting there and powering through work!) Take walking lunches, or stand to change your body position and get blood flowing. Really try to get a good 30minutes of cardio exercises in per day, which I know can be hard to do, but if you can take the time to watch TV after work, you can take the time to go for a brisk 30 minute walk, do yard work, garden, park really far away from stores when you are doing errands.
Being active is not only healthy, it is preventative medicine as you are preventing bad things form occurring to your body by doing what is natural, walking around and keeping your body moving. I hope that this encourages everyone to include working out, and I’d love if we got a few runners 😉 but I would be happy if everyone could just make a commitment to make being active a priority in their lives, you will feel better and your body will thank you for it!
Yours in Good Health
B
