Written by Delilah Theerasin
We already know that living a dormant lifestyle leads to a lot of physical health issues, but what about the mental health issues that are not more obvious. Here we will talk about the physiological effects of living a sedentary lifestyle.
What is considered Sedentary?
A sedentary lifestyle also know as an inactive lifestyle is when a person does little to no exercise, spending majority of their days sitting or lying down. Anything that does not involve movement throughout the day is considered sedentary but in order to be classified as an inactive lifestyle, someone spends a lot of their time doing nothing physical.
Affects on Mental Health
A research study was done on adults aged 18-67 with different BMI's (body mass indexes) as well as different levels of physical activity where they wore a tracking device for one week to see how often that person was staying dormant or doing something active (Gibson, Muggeridge, et al). As a result it was found that the more hours someone spends sitting or laying down doing nothing, the more they feel depressed and a decrease in their quality of life.
What to Do Now
Now that we know about how being inactive can lead to a decrease in quality of life and increase the feeling of being depressed, make sure to not spend more than half of your day sitting or laying down doing nothing. Even the smallest of movements like taking a walk will help benefit your mental health drastically.
References
Dunton, G. F., Do, B., & Wang, S. D. (2020). Early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on physical activity and sedentary behavior in children living in the U.S. BMC Public Health, 20(1), 1351. 10.1186/s12889-020-09429-3
Gibson, A., Muggeridge, D. J., Hughes, A. R., Kelly, L., & Kirk, A. (2017). An examination of objectively-measured sedentary behavior and mental well-being in adults across week days and weekends. PloS One, 12(9), e0185143. 10.1371/journal.pone.0185143