How long do we spend sitting? At work, reading, watching television, telephoning ... with very few health benefits. However, small changes are enough to improve our body's lifestyle, mood and health, as evidenced by a recent scientific research published a few days ago in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine by a team from Iowa State University (Meyer et al, July 2020).
The researchers recruited 423 young adults, aged 20 to 35, all in good health, and followed them for ten days. The volunteers wore a bracelet that measured their energy consumption during the day in order to objectively evaluate the time spent sleeping, engaged in light or moderate physical activity or sitting. What has emerged is that small actions are sufficient to have significant benefits from the psychological point of view. In fact, replacing the time spent sitting with sleep has helped to reduce stress, has improved mood and reduced body mass index. This was accomplished, for example, by going to sleep earlier instead of staying up late watching television. Not only that, replacing sedentary life with light physical activity has also given the same benefits. And how do you get this? Simply, instead of talking on the phone while sitting, you can walk back and forth around the office or home, or while preparing lunch or dinner, do not take advantage of every pause to sit down but remain standing, walking or doing some housework. We are talking about activities that are often not even considered by people as physical activity, they are indeed so light. However, as demonstrated, they can bring important benefits if introduced into daily life. If, on the other hand, sedentary life is partially replaced with moderate to intense physical activity, such as a brisk walk, then the benefits observed not only concern the psychological aspect but also the health of the body, with a reduction in body fat and body mass index.
In short, to improve your life you can start from small changes in the daily routine, really small, so small that often we do not even consider them as real changes. Yet these small changes can bring great benefits, also because they are easier to undertake. In fact, often the big radical lifestyle changes are not even started because they are considered too difficult. Today's article shows that we can start from small things!
