The Covid-19 pandemic has introduced a range of new behaviors into daily routines, such as physical distance, mask use and hand disinfection. Meanwhile, many old behaviors, such as attending events, eating out, and meeting friends, have been put on hold.
However, one old behavior that has persisted and may have been reinforced by COVID-19 is sitting, and it’s not surprising to see why.
Whether sitting during transport, work, screen time or even meals, everyday environments and activities are almost exclusively suitable for prolonged sitting.
So seated behavior, such as sitting, makes up most of the day for many people.
The current daily sitting time is likely to be even longer than before the pandemic due to home stays, restrictions on business and recreational facilities, and increased health concerns.
Health vs. wellbeing
This situation is a problem as excessive chronic levels of sedentary lifestyle are associated with an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, death and even some cancers.
Do you think you could reduce the time you spend sitting down in any way?
However, for many people, their own judgments and feelings about their quality of life (also known as subjective well-being) may be more important and relevant to decision-making and health behavioral behavior than the possibility of developing chronic illness.
Subjective well-being includes the self-assessment of a person’s quality of life.
It includes concepts such as affection (positive and negative feelings) and satisfaction with life.
Interestingly, these assessments may conflict with physical health results.
For example, a person may have diabetes but still report high subjective well-being, while someone without physical health problems may report poor subjective well-being.
This is important because it means that the way a person thinks about their own health does not always match what their body can demonstrate. Therefore, evaluating subjective well-being is essential to paint a holistic picture of health.
Different contexts we are in
Relatively little research has investigated the relationship between sedentary behavior and subjective well-being.
Exploring this relationship is important as different contexts where one isa sitting – how to socialize or spend time versus a screen – can generate different feelings or judgments about subjective well-being, in contrast to the relationships between physical health and sedentary behavior, which tend to be more consistent.
Reading sitting down for a while may not adversely affect perceptions of well-being.
Because health psychologists focused on physical activity and sedentary behavior, we reviewed the scientific literature describing the relationships between measures of sedentary behavior – such as physical inactivity and screen time – and subjective well-being as measured by affect, life satisfaction, and subjective wellbeing. are in general.
Our review highlights three important findings. First, sedentary behavior, physical inactivity, and screen time showed weak but statistically significant correlations with subjective well-being.
In other words, the ones who they said sit more often and spend longer periods without physical activity they reported less positive effect, greater negative affect and less satisfaction with life than those who sat less and moved more.
We also found that this relationship was more evident in studies comparing very sedentary people with those with more active lifestyles.
Sitting isn’t always bad
Our second most important finding relates to the context of sedentary behavior.
While many studies examined sedentary behavior in general and physical inactivity, other studies looked at specific contexts in which people spend time sitting and their relationship to subjective well-being.
Some activities, even when we do them while sitting, such as playing an instrument, can positively influence the feeling of well-being.
These studies showed that different contexts of sedentary behavior have unique relationships with subjective well-being.
For example, screen time was consistently and negatively associated with subjective well-being.
Contexts such as Socializing, playing an instrument and actually reading showed positive associations with subjective well-being
These results differ from traditional research on health-related sedentary behavior, where all sedentary behavior is considered harmful.
Our review suggests that some types of sedentary behavior can be beneficial to quality of life.
Instead, not all contexts a person is in are the same in terms of subjective well-being.
So when people strive to shorten their sitting time, they should consider not only how much to shorten, but also what kind of sitting time to shorten.
Sitting less is better
Our third most important finding concerns general sitting and self-reported levels of sedentary behavior.
Prefer to talk while sitting or walking?
Most studies found a weak and statistically significant association between longer overall sitting time and lower subjective well-being.
In studies where participants were asked to compare their sedentary behavior with the amount of time they normally spend sitting down, those who considered themselves more seated than normal reported significantly worse subjective well-being.
These findings suggest that the amount of time a person generally spends sitting on its own may not be as important as the comparison between how long they sit and the usual level of a sedentary lifestyle.
This means that everyone, regardless of the amount of time they normally sit or physical activity, can potentially benefit from sitting less.
Covid-19 continues to affect life and daily routines. Even as businesses and gyms finally reopen and we feel more comfortable meeting other people and eventually stop wearing masks, we will almost certainly continue sit down and sitting will keep changing the form how we feel
While we may not be able to eliminate all the time we spend sitting down, we can all be aware of how much we can reduce it and where we can reduce it to be healthier and feel better.
* Wuyou Sui is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Behavioral Medicine Laboratory, School of Exercise Science, University of Victoria, Canada
* Harry Prapavessis is Professor of Human Movement Sciences at Western University, Canada.
* This article was originally published in English on The Conversation and you can read it here