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7 Health Issues You Can Avoid With Desk Exercises

Health Issues You can Avoid with Desk Exercises

If you are working on your desk for too long, you have probably felt some back pain or a tightening in your legs. Most of the time, those go away with just a little stretching or by standing up for a while. For some who have already have a routine in place, you might have already incorporated desk exercise in your daily work life. Apparently, this is a good habit to have since there are a lot of health issues you can avoid with desk exercises.

Moreover, for those who work for long hours at a desk but do not have time to go to a gym to exercise, we have good news for you. It is more beneficial to have a little physical movement in between sitting for long hours rather than having a heavy workout after a long hour of work, based on numerous studies.

Whether you are already doing desk exercises regularly or would like to start out, the following are the health issues you can avoid with desk exercises.


What are the Health Issues You Can Avoid With Desk Exercises?

Inactively sitting for too long in front of your desk poses a lot of risks for your health. You might have already felt back pain or the effect In your posture, but here are more health issues that may concern you in the long run.

Diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes is oftentimes linked to an inactive lifestyle. If we don’t have an active lifestyle, it means that we don’t move our muscles that much. Therefore, our muscles will not require glucose for energy, and glucose that is not used by our muscles will just remain in our bloodstream. When we sit for a long time, our biggest muscle groups will be inactive.

You can prevent this by making sure to stand up once every hour or better yet, try doing wall sits. This simple exercise will work a lot of muscles group in a short time. Be warned though that this exercise might make your leg sore — but as they say “no pain, no gain”.

Cardiovascular Disease

It has been said that we need cardio exercises to keep our hearts healthy. Some are not really a fan of cardio exercise since it can make you sweaty. If you are working for extended hours on your desk, then it is really hard to fit it into your time as you need to factor in the time you need to take to shower and freshen up for your work.

The good thing is that there are desk exercises that will still keep your heart pumping without breaking a sweat. You can try desk exercises that can keep your heart healthy while you work such as desk push up, desk dips and leg raises.

Obesity and Excess Weight Gain

It is a no-brainer that sitting for too long does not help our midsection. Obesity and excess weight gain has been called a pandemic which we still have not really controlled yet. With the majority of people in the world being succumbed to a sedentary lifestyle, it is not surprising that there is more obesity now than ever before.

Fortunately, we can still avoid this by being active all throughout the day and doing light exercises on our desks in the middle of the day.

Deep Vain Thrombosis

DVT or Deep Vein Thrombosis causes blood clots in the deep veins that require serious medical attention. Pain, swelling, and redness of the leg are the common signs of blood clots. Even though it is usually formed in the legs, blood clots can also form in the arms or elsewhere on the body. What makes this condition dangerous is that blood clots may break and travel through the lungs and cause death in extreme cases.

To prevent DVT, you must improve your blood flow. It is advised not to sit for too long so try to stand up and walk for a bit once every 2 hours. If you can’t , hen you can also try these exercises to do every working hour.

Lower Back and Spinal Health Issues

This will be the most obvious and common health issue that you can experience by working for too long in front of your desk. Sitting for lengthy periods of time puts a lot of strain on the spine as well as other joints like the shoulders and hips, especially if you’re sitting with poor posture. You can alleviate this by doing some lower back stretches, but aerobics exercises are found to be beneficial for spine support.

Cancer

An article in 2014 said that too much sitting is linked to certain cancers such as colon and uterine cancer. Furthermore, in another study last 2018, they found that too much sitting and having a sedentary lifestyle is not just connected to colon and uterine cancer, but also to lung cancer. Thus, too much sitting with inactivity is now considered an individual contributor to cancer. To prevent this, you might want to explore deskcercises and add them to your daily work routine.

Anxiety and Depression

If we want to ensure optimum health, it should not just be our physical health that we work on. Our mental health is equally important. Indeed too much sitting can hurt our mental health. As have mentioned earlier, taking a break between sitting is better than being physically active after sitting for a long period of time. This seems to hold true if you want to combat anxiety and depression, based on published research findings.

If you feel your mood has taken a dip in the middle of the day and it is now affecting your productivity, try to break off your sitting and sedentary cycle and stretch while at your desk.


Having work that requires sitting for a lot of time should not be an excuse for us not to take care of our health. In fact, the above health issues you can avoid with desk exercises do not necessarily require a gym membership. Try to take a few minutes’ breaks and build a healthy habit of doing desk exercises, and you will definitely be on the road to optimum health. It will also enable you to sustain productively working in front of your desk and you might be able to enjoy the things you love outside of work more once you clock off as you have more energy and vitality!

Tricia Montano

Tricia founded Pain Free Working in 2019 due to suffering from degenerative disc disease in her L5-S1 from working an office job for the past 18 years. She and her team strive on finding and reviewing the best office equipment to help fellow pain sufferers find relief and to enable people like her to do their jobs comfortably.