Healthy Lifestyle

Well, there doesn’t seem much in the way of arguments about the detrimental effects to a person’s health when they spend all day, every day stuck in front of a computer, whether it be their job, or a way of whiling away the hours playing computer games or idly surfing the Internet for whatever.

It all adds up to a sedentary lifestyle which is definitely bad for you if you do it for a prolonged period. When weeks turn into months, then you are going to need to think of ways to counteract the lack of exercise that sitting still for several hours (or more) every day entails.

The obvious thing to do is to take regular breaks from teh computer and go out for walks if the weather is fine, or go to the local pool for a swim to shake out the cobwebs and give your muscles a reason for existing, other than to move a mouse around on its mat!

Other things you can do without even leaving the house is to take a few runs up and down the stairs until you are out of breath. Then rest until you catch your breath and try it once or twice more.  You could do the dreaded housework with some gusto, making a concerted effort to swish that broom with purpose and really force that vacuum cleaner head into the carpet! It all burns calories and forces your muscles to work, which is what you need to do to avoid the debilitating consequences that doing nothing will inevitably bring about.

So make a point of reminding yourself, next time you have a marathon go on the computer, that your body was designed to move around and go and do something!

As a follow up to my last post, another form of enforced immobility can come not from illness, but from the very jobs some of us do. Those of us that work at a computer all day are most susceptible to all the perils that can afflict anyone who leads a sedentary lifestyle. Worse still are the potential problems that await those of us that work for ourselves at a computer. For us, the working hours are not limited to general office hours of 9 to 5, but can often be elongated to more like 8am to 8pm or later, depending upon how engrossed we can get in our work.

I know from personal experience of working in this way that some of my working days can easily extend to 12, 14 or even 16 hours with scant let up. I’ve had days where I’ve eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner at the computer whilst being heavily involved in something I was determined to get finished. I’ve even taken a siesta in front of this thing - too tired to get out of the (very comfortable) reclining office chair to go to bed!

A while ago, I was shocked into finding ways to counter these extremely long periods of immobility by my body screaming at me to do something before I ended up welding myself to this damn chair! Ok, I was walking teh dogs early in the morning before I got started with the day’s work, but it was far from enough.

It took some enforced metal effort to prise myself away from “work” in what had become the middle of the afternoon for me. The reality was it was more like the time when most people were home from work and sitting down to their evening meal But prise I had to.

Two very happy dogs now benefit from that decision by enjoying two hour-long walks every day and not just round the block like before. Now we walk down to and then along the beach which is very nice, especially in the Spring when its not too hot but the sun is warm enough to be tee shirt and shorts worthy!Don’t know why I wasn’t doing that before, as it seems such a shame to waste living where I do and not take advantage of the close proximity of a nice beach and long promenade.

Anyway, just wanted to share that with you as I know plenty of you are slaving away at the computer for too many hours and not getting enough “me” time.There is always “me” time to be enjoyed in every day!

After a period of enforced immobility, it is often difficult to get back to doing the daily routine which includes getting out for some healthy fresh air and exercise, but as soon as you are able, it is what you must do.

Having been a sufferer of gout on and off for the past 16 years, I thought I knew what it was like to be prevented from doing something I enjoyed, like walking, for the duration of the gout attack. Well it can get worse, as I discovered last summer when I was actually taken out of teh picture for a full three months. In that time, only being able to hobble around slowly and with a lot of associated pain, I lost a lot of muscle density in my legs and the strength went with it.

Getting back to fitness was a long and hard road, but I found that by taking my time and doing things gradually, I managed to regain that lost strength and muscle density and am now able to walk normally once more.

For people who suffer similar periods of inactivity for whatever reason, the return to fitness can seem an almost impossible task at times, especially when something as simple as walking down a flight of stairs becomes a major hazard with your knees threatening to buckle on each step. But as long as you harbour genuine feelings of hopefullness and are determined to let nothing beat you, then you will oversome the negativity that any illness naturally bestows on you.

Then you’ll be able to come out fighting in the full knowledge that you will get back to where you were and mean to stay there!

Now that I’ve gone through just about every aspect of unhealthy living that we on this planet are battling against every day in this blog, with my last post The Air That We Breathe, hammering the final nail in the coffin of mankind, its time to change tack and write about some healthy ways we can hit back and lead a more fulfilling lifestyle.

So where do we go and what do we do to counter all the pollution and chemical poisons that surround us and invade our lives in more ways than most of us could possibly imagine? Well, while we can’t avoid it completely, unless we’re willing to move to Antarctica (and even there the air will follow us!) we can exercise some damage limitation that can really be quite effective.

The first things we can do in the home are the most simple and yet are effective. When it comes to water pollution in the stuff we need to drink, a filter jug is a great way to remove most of the nasties from the drinking water. The best part is that they are relatively cheap to buy and do a pretty good job of removing excess chlorine, calcium, heavy metals and fertilizer residues as well as a good number of harmful bacteria. They won’t get rid of it all, but the body needs something to continually fight against to keep its immune system in peak condition!

There’s not much we can do about the air that we breathe, but if the option exists to get out of the city and into the countryside, take it as the quality of the air is infinitely better away from so much traffic.

When it comes to our food, there is a lot we can do with the many healthy plants that grow in abundance and that’s what I’ll be looking at in my next post here at Healthy Lifestyle.