Ergonomics Expert Shares Insights About How Balance Therapy Can Improve Productivity for Home-Based Business Owners
Attention home business owners: Did you know that growing bodies of research are finding a strong connection between long periods of sitting and a high risk of illness?
In fact, evidence in recent years states that sedentary behavior – such as time spent sitting at your desk – may be adversely associated with both your physical and mental health.
Furthermore, the Mayo Clinic suggests that any extended sitting can be harmful. According to the nonprofit academic medical center’s analysis of 13 studies of sitting time and activity levels, those folks who sat for more than eight hours per day – with no physical activity – had an elevated risk of dying compared to the likelihoods of dying from smoking or obesity.
These eye-opening statistics, along with numerous other emerging reports, link extended sitting time to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and even a shorter lifespan.
So, after reviewing this startling research, the question we need to ask ourselves is, how can we all sit less while working to run our home-based businesses?
There are a few answers, with the most obvious one being to simply stand up and start walking.
Getting up and out of your desk chair is like a natural version of a cup of caffeinated coffee for your body, and delivers numerous health benefits. Here are just a few of the benefits:
- Prevents the development of blood clots in the legs
- Strengthens your leg, ankle and foot muscles
- Enhances balance
- Squeezes valves in your leg veins, moving blood upward toward the heart
- Improves alertness
- Increases good cholesterol levels (HDL) and decreases bad cholesterol levels (LDL)
And while standing can clearly be ideal for our physical and mental health, standing all day is not necessarily realistic for everyone working in a home office setting.
With this in mind, the challenge lends itself to an innovative, new strategy: balanced active sitting, a technique that supports our body’s basic necessity for movement. Balanced active sitting enhances your posture, activates your core while you sit, and also improves your body’s circulation and energy so you can be more productive.
I can personally attest to the power of balanced active sitting – I have personal experience with the harmful health consequences of “sitting disease.” After working at a desk job for many years – and experiencing first-hand a decline in my physical health at that point in time – I made it my mission to educate others in the working world about how to combat “sitting disease.”
Combatting ‘Sitting Disease’ – Solutions Uncovered
There are an array of gadgets and tools available on the market at the moment to help battle the negative effects of sitting disease. Many types of unique office furniture – and specialty chairs – aim to strengthen your core by requiring you to balance on your center of gravity while you sit. They also help you stabilize your spine. The goal with using these gadgets is that you ultimately enhance your posture, burn calories, and stay more focused and alert, resulting in boosted productivity and better overall health.
I believe that challenging the body’s ability to balance is by far the most practical and effective method to strengthen the paraspinal muscles in the postural system. These muscles keep the vertebra aligned in the spine, support proper posture and are essential to maintaining good balance.
Some of the latest specialty office furniture – such as balance chairs – can help you activate this required balance, helping to control the amount of energy it takes to stay on your center of gravity.
Furthermore, this approach also helps promote increased brain activity and improved cognitive performance from the complex synchronization of mental function and the physical movement required for balance.
Striving for Long-Term Success
An increasingly growing topic of interest to many home business owners is maximizing productivity. Obviously, as entrepreneurs, we want to be more productive, and we’re willing to do anything to achieve this goal. However, many of us spend a significant portion of our time doing something that makes us less productive – sitting for long periods – while at the same time increasing the risk of reducing our lifespan.
The bottom line: today’s home-based business owners should continue to find ways to stay in motion throughout every workday. The most critical element to understand about sitting disease is that while it comes with long-term effects and health-related consequences, it’s relatively easy to prevent with the right strategies and tools in place.
By taking small steps daily, you can lower your risk of suffering from a variety of acute and chronic illnesses, and boost work productivity. Start today by creating new habits – and getting the innovative solutions you need – to set yourself up for ultimate health success.
