Start walking!

Researchers have stated that sitting less than three hours a day may extend your life by two years. In this day and age of computers, wi-fi and social networking, that may be next to impossible. As I’m writing this, I am of course sitting down. So while I may be working to earn, I may actually be shortening my life by hours up to two days!

My brother has shared his frustration about how his kids spend so much time in front of their computers, be it desktops or laptops. In fact, he has never ever seen them play the games we used to play when we were kids. The hide-and-seeks, agawan base, patintero, tumbang preso and others. All those games entailed a lot of running. And they were fun, really. Today, the only muscles getting enough exercise on a daily basis would be their fingers! The keyboard has replaced the tin cans.

A sedentary lifestyle has its price. Sitting down a lot slows the metabolism of the body. When that happens, fat accumulates a lot faster, and in all the wrong places. Most dangerous would be the heart vessels, or coronaries. The heart then becomes a ticking bomb that could go off at any time. Blood sugar rises and so does cholesterol. I wouldn’t be surprised if the statistics show that more victims of heart attacks belong to the social network generation. I know people who spend more than half the day on Facebook and Twitter! Leg muscles may atrophy because they play no role when one is sitting down! Imagine all these kids with chicken legs!

We really need to get kids to go out and play. They should get those leg and arm muscles working, and working hard! I remember my brothers and I running around the house after school, to the dismay of our yayas and my mom when she gets home! I’m all for technology, being the wife of a “gadgeteer”. But the old games have to be revived, not just for play, but for health as well.  

So how can we entice this younger generation to go out and play? I really have no clear cut answers, except to literally scare them about the ill effects of a sedentary lifestyle. Shock and awe, so to speak. There really is nothing fun about getting sick, even worse, getting sick with no money. Because what makes all this time in front of computers, busy with all the social networking, is that you are practically non-productive! Unless you are selling online, all this is just that, social.

To quote Jay Leno in one of his monologues, “Just how lazy have we become?” So if you will excuse me, I’ll cut this a little short, stand up from my desk, and start walking. Might I suggest you do the same.