Is your chair killing you slowly?
Indeed, you are sitting yourselves to death and losing two hours of life for every hour that you are sitting, said James Levine, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative, in his 2014 book Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It. Dr. Levine, credited with the tag line “Sitting is the new smoking”, encouraged Americans to create an office environments where people could actually exercise while at work.
As Kerala fights to shed its unsavoury reputation of being the “diabetes capital” of the country, the Health Department has taken the lead in adopting Dr. Levine’s wisdom and creating opportunities at workplaces for employees to stretch or shake a leg.
Walk into the inner courtyard of the Directorate of Health Services at 11 a.m. and you will find them at it... side stretches, back bends, touching the toe, twists, neck exercises...
“Initially, there was some smirking and embarrassment... till they began to see how that five minutes of stretching was actually making them feel good and invigorated. It has been a month since we initiated this routine -- two five-minute ‘stretch breaks’ at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. -- and everyone seems to have embraced it,” said Bipin Gopal, State Nodal Officer for NCD Control.
The idea of “stretch breaks” was introduced as part of the workplace interventions that the State Non-Communicable Diseases Control division has been planning, to introduce people to physical activity and to get people to move more to keep lifestyle diseases in check.
“We realised that the salaried class were at higher risk of developing lifestyle diseases because they had little opportunities for daily physical activity and most of them spent their entire workdays just sitting. It was worse in the case of women. A good number of our employees had been newly detected with diabetes, hypertension, spondylosis or insomnia,” saids Director of Health Services R.L. Saritha.
Routine preparation
The stretch break routines were developed in consultation with a professional yoga expert, with focus on simple full body stretches that anyone could do, to improve blood circulation and kick off lethargy. A video was initially made to educate all employees to show them how to do the routine.
On workdays, when the bell rings at 11 a.m., everyone gets up and does the stretches, following instructions from the audio clip played over the public announcement system.
The next step would be to create opportunities for daily physical activity for employees at the workplace itself.
