Is Working From Home Killing You?

^{Stock content is used under licence provided by Fadi Dahabreh / Scopio}

With the Covid 19 pandemic,
many of us find ourselves working from home.

Many of us have embraced this new opportunity to work from home, in our PJs, sleeping in later, and actually making ourselves a healthy breakfast before tackling our work from our home offices.

If you’re like me, you’re probably enjoying the fact that you don’t have to fight all the commuters on your way into the office anymore.

You’re also more likely to save some money because you’re eating out less, no longer have to pay for as much gas, nor do you need to spring for a monthly bus pass.

You can even get your coffee just the way YOU like it, from the comfort of your own home!

Working From Home
Comes With Very Grave Health Risks!

The dark side of this new “At Home Work Eutopia” is that most people don’t realize just how many opportunities to stay healthy that were lost, now that we’re no longer going in to the office!

Fact is, the office setting was actually providing many of us with several “unwitting” occasions to do some type of physical activity, each and every day!

With the shift to the home office setting, many of us no longer have to:

• commute, so we no longer get that precious 15-20 minutes of exercise walking and stair climbing to/from work to the bus or subway;
• no longer get interrupted at work, so we don’t get up from our chairs as often;
• take the stairs between office floors; and
• no longer need go out during our 30 minute lunches, and 15 minute coffee/health breaks.

All these activities used to ensure that we’d at least get 30 minutes of light-to-moderate physical activity each and every working day. Heck, I used to blow my 15,000 steps a day when I took the subway!! Now, I’m lucky if get half as much!

Fact Is: Many of us Have Seen our
Daily Physical Activity Plummet Significantly.

And that’s my main concern really!

I mean, I’ve seen how retirement has affected my mother, who wasn’t the most healthy woman to start with.

As soon as she stopped going to work, she quickly started a very unhealthy sedentary lifestyle. The very little physical activity she did get by going to work (commuting every day, walking around the office, etc), got cut down to almost zero.

Given COVID, now she’s avoiding the outdoors entirely.

I noticed just how badly things are getting for her with her lack of daily physical activity, when I helped her with her groceries.

The simple act of pushing a shopping cart, and walking around the grocery store completely wiped her out! By the time we got to her apartment, she was gasping for air, and wheezing so much that I stayed with her until I was certain she wasn’t having a heart attack.

She’s not even the one who carried up the groceries!

Lack of Daily Physical Activity:

• significantly increases the chances of muscular and cardio-respiratory illnesses;
• negatively affects bone and functional health;
• increases the risk of hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, various types of cancer (including breast cancer and colon cancer), and depression;
• increases the risk of falls; hip or vertebral fractures; and
• leads to an unhealthy body weight, which has it’s own high risk health issues.

It’s now evident that my mother’s sedentary lifestyle has worsened her condition, and I’m not sure if the episode scared her enough to take action, or if she’ll simply bury her head in the sand.

Personally, I don’t think she can afford to ignore her body’s warning signs if she wants to see Christmas 2021! Nor can we!

Hence the importance of staying active while working from home!

People Need 15 to 30 Minutes
of Physical Activity EVERY DAY

My mother’s situation is making me take a serious look into my own health. Now I’m worried that I’m not clocking enough physical activity each day, and you should be worried too!

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), adults (including seniors aged 65+) should get at the very minimum between:

• 75–150 minutes per WEEK of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity; or,
• 150–300 minutes per WEEK of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity;  or,
• A combination of the two, plus muscle-strength activities twice a week.

For those of you reaching for your calculators, that’s 15 to 30 minutes per day of vigorous-intensity activity (or double the moderate-intensity). A combination of the two is also acceptable!

We should also include muscle-strengthening activities at moderate or greater intensity that involve all major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week.

Replacing sedentary time with physical activity of any intensity (including light intensity) provides health benefits, and helps reduce the detrimental effects of high levels of sedentary behaviour on health, [BUT] all adults should aim to do more than the recommended levels of physical activity.

— November 26, 2020, World Health Organizations

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So, How Many Minutes Are You Clocking?

If you’re working from home, take a moment to take this self-assessment test! It will give you a pretty good ideas of whether you need to make some serious changes, or if you’re actually getting enough physical activity every day to stay healthy.

If the above self-assessment is confirming that you’re getting a good daily dose of Moderate to Vigorous physical activity, well done!! Keep up the good work!!

However, if you’re suddenly realizing that all your activities are mainly in the Light Intensity category (or that you’re not even getting that); it’s time to take a hard long look in the mirror and start making some serious changes.