Sitting all day leads to headaches, many which start off being mild, but can lead to chronic pain. With chronic pain, usually stemming from spinal pain, being one of the most expensive medical problems in the western world, chronic headache is dangerous, yet entirely preventable. By using a product to help you get up and out of your chair throughout the day like fitminder, your risk of developing headache, and chronic neck pain decreases.

When you sit all day, no matter how tall you sit, your cervical spine (neck) is put under excessive load. Most people who sit all day look at a computer screen. After an hour of sitting looking at a screen, the chin falls forward, the lower cervical spine flexes and the upper neck extends. The very top two vertebrae of your neck; the atlas and axis, are jammed under the skull.

After sitting with your chin sagged forward for a few minutes, the muscles of the jaw, neck and upper back become tight as your body tries to subconsciously prevent your neck from bending any further. These muscles attach onto the neck vertebrae and pull on the spine. The nerves that originate from the spinal cord at these levels become irritated. These nerves also supply the head and face, and once irritated, cause radiating pain that can be felt into the front of the head, the temples, the eye sockets and into the nape of the neck.

Looking at a screen for too long can also cause headache. The back-lighting of computers can strain the eyes, and even lead you to be short-sighted. When the eyes aren’t challenged to look at a distance, and at close objects throughout the day, your eyes’ ability to focus on different ranges decreases. This leads to straining the eyes, and eventually headache.

Unfortunately, good posture isn’t enough to resolve headache caused by too much sitting. Our bodies just aren’t designed to sit for 9 hours a day, although that’s how much the average adult currently sits. The only way to prevent the forces playing on the neck and head is to get up and out of your chair. Once you’re up and walking around, your spine can restore its natural curves, plus your eyes can relax, and focus on object far away from you. It’s easy to forget to get up and get moving, so use a program like fitminder to help you stay healthy in the workplace.

Sitting at your desk all day can increase your risk of developing varicose veins. The longer you sit, unmoving, the harder your body has to work to redistribute the blood in your body. Luckily though, there is a way to prevent developing varicose veins, and it’s as easy as getting up from your desk more often throughout the day. The best way to limit your risk is to use a system that encourages you to get up and get moving. The most celebrated system to help you is fitminder; the perfect way to decrease your risk of varicose veins.

Because of gravity, blood would pool in your lower legs if you didn’t have a special pump in your lower leg muscles. This pump is activated when the leg muscles squeeze, and it pumps blood up, against gravity, and back to your heart and lungs. To add to this process, your lower legs have special valves in them that prevent the blood from flowing backwards. If the valves become weak, blood can leak back into your veins and collect there, called veinous insufficiency. When this blood collects and sits there, your veins can be made bigger and become varicose.

Essentially, varicose veins can be caused by weak or damaged valves in your veins. This damage is most often cause by sitting all day, or standing non-stop throughout the day.

The trick to preventing varicose veins from developing is to maintain healthy valves in your veins, mostly moving between sitting and standing throughout the day. By changing the requirements on your veins and valves, they are less likely to become weak and damaged.

Even with the knowledge that sitting can cause varicose veins, many people are still likely to sit for too long. An easy solution is to get help, and use a program, like fitminder, to help you stay healthy at work. The health benefits of using a clever program like this are important, and can be the difference between developing vein problems, or staying fit and healthy in the workplace.

Long periods of prolonged sitting, like at your desk at work, lead to stiffness in the neck and facial muscles. Not only can this lead to headache and chronic spinal pain, but it also can decrease the range of movement in your spine and lead to joint degeneration.

When we sit, whether you have good posture or not, your muscles experience fatigue and your spine loses its natural, gentle curves. As soon as your lower back slouches, your upper back and thoracic spine curves forward into a kyphotic posture. To counteract and counterbalance the change, your head and neck bow forward. Because your head and skull are very heavy, your neck muscles work hard to keep your head from falling forward, and pull heavily on the neck vertebrae.

When in this posture for longer than a few minutes, particularly everyday, the musculature of the neck start to shorten. The large, global muscles of the neck like the scalenes and upper trapezius become short and lumpy. Because they’re not being used to maintain good spinal alignment, the small, deep musculature of the cervical spine like the deep neck flexors become weak and disengaged. This means the small vertebrae that make up your cervical spine become unstable, and you’re much more likely to injure your neck from seemingly safe activities, even sleeping!

When muscles around a joint are shortened for long period of time, it can cause the joint itself to get stiff and sore, and decrease its ability to move throughout its range of movement. In the neck, this is very important, as when the cervical vertebrae become stiffened, it decreases your ability to look both ways, look behind you and nod your head. After many years of this, you can even develop osteoarthritis and joint degeneration in your neck, as the joint is no longer healthy.

The only way to combat muscle shortening and stiffness in the neck is to get up out of your chair often throughout the day, and gently move the neck in small, controlled movements. By using a program like fitminder, you can get valuable guidance on how to keep your cervical spine healthy. Fister can give you the important motivation you need to keep moving!

The link between diabetes and sitting all day has been proven time and time again. Recently, it’s been found if you sit all day at your job, you’re 90% more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who don’t have a sedentary job. This statistic seems hard to believe, but it all comes down to the body’s strategies for dealing with insulin.

When you sit, your pancreas produces increased amounts of insulin, which can lead to pre-diabetes, and diabetes. To understand why this is so dangerous, it’s important to understand the effects of insulin on the body.

During digestion, carbohydrates are converted to glucose, or sugar. This increases your blood sugar levels which sends a signal to your pancreas. Your pancreas then produces insulin to help manage the level of sugar in your blood.

When sitting for extended periods, your pancreas produces too much insulin. This means, if you’ve already developed pre-diabetes, your blood sugar levels can be lowered too much, leading to hypoglycaemia, a dangerous state that can lead to loss of consciousness and even death.

The reasons and mechanisms that trigger the pancreas to overproduce insulin from long periods of sitting aren’t completely understood, but the outcome is clear; it directly increases your risk of developing diabetes.

Recent research found those who sat for very long periods of time are twice as likely to develop diabetes and heart disease, than those who move around throughout the day.

The statistics are overwhelming, but there is something you can do. By getting up out of your seat often during the day, you can lower your risk of developing diabetes in a meaningful, significant way. The easiest way to do this is by using a program like fitminder. fitminder helps you stay healthy while at work by reminding you to get up and move around, plus it gives you tips on how to stay active at work.

Physical activity is one of the most dependable methods to boost mood, and scientific evidence backs this up. Two recent studies published in JAMA Psychiatry reveal that exercise can help reduce and prevent depression.

Too much time at your desk can lead to vision problems that can worsen throughout your life. If you sit for most of your day, studies have found you’re very likely to suffer from eye strain and vision-induced headaches. Remember though, your job is not worth losing you eyesight! There are ways to combat these detrimental effects on your vision. By getting up and out of your chair throughout the day, your eyes can rest and recover, and you’re less likely to experience eye strain, and permanent changes to your eyesight.

Eye strain happens to most people throughout their day, if they spend most working hours at a computer. The back-lighting on computer screens is mostly to blame, and can end up giving you a computer-induced headache.

Eye strain also stems from the reflective surfaces or light coming into your eyes at your workstation. If the light is excessively bright, it causes you to squint, which makes reading your computer screen difficult. The harder you look to try to read it, the more likely you are to strain your eyes, and cause yourself to get a headache.

Headaches aren’t the only thing that results from excessive screen time, degenerative changes to your vision can happen too. Your computer screen is close to you, so the ciliary muscle in your eyes contract, causing the lens of your eyes to become slightly squashed. Like any muscle, the ciliary muscle needs to be worked at both its short, and long lengths. If you look at a close-up computer screen for 8 hours a day, the ciliary muscle is contracted and fatigued. When you then try to look at an object in the distance, the ciliary muscle finds it hard to relax, and you can find your vision becomes blurry.

It’s important to challenge your vision throughout the day by looking at near, and far-away objects to avoid degeneration of the ciliary muscle, and eye strain. The best way to do this is to get up and walk around, particularly for a walk outside. This ensures your eyesight, and eye muscles are challenged throughout different scenarios, and preserves your eye’s ability to adjust. It also eases the contraction of the ciliary muscle, reducing strain, and thus reducing headache.

It can be hard to remind yourself to get up from your desk, so utilise a program like fitminder. This program makes staying healthy at work easier, and you’ll get tips to help you remember how to maintain your eye health at work.

Standing desks have become increasingly popular in the last few years, but you’re probably wondering if they’re really good for you. Don’t believe the media hype, the answer is No!

Long periods of standing still mean you’re in one position for long periods which causes the same problems as a sitting desk: Back pain, foot pain, eye strain, headache and decreased metabolic activity.

Because the average western-world office worker sits for between 9-10 hours a day, scientists have been pouring money into researching the health effects of our sedentary lifestyles. What they found is quite terrifying, and compelling. There are indisputable links between sitting and: Developing Type 2 diabetes, greatly increasing your risk of heart disease, depression, anxiety, obesity, varicose veins, headache and chronic back pain.

So! With all these facts on the effects of sitting, the standing desk has begun enjoying more popularity, but unfortunately they’re just a super expensive alternative, which doesn’t actually counteract the negative health effects of sitting.

BACK PAIN Standing all day places strain on your lower back, much like sitting. When you stand, your lumber spine sways into an extended position which puts pressure on the vertebrae and discs in your back, causing discomfort and eventual pain. This proves a standing desk isn’t the answer; if you really want to decrease your back pain at work; you really need to get moving. The easiest, most affordable way to do this is with a program like fitminder.

HEART DISEASE We know the links between heart disease and diabetes have been proven from sitting all day, but unfortunately standing doesn’t change these either. You’re still in a stationary position, and your heart and cardiovascular system aren’t challenged in standing postures. To combat the increased risk of heart disease and diabetes at work, the best thing you can do is do simple, effective exercises throughout the day to stimulate the cardiovascular system. Programs like fitminder help guide you through these easy workouts without disturbing your flow at work.

COST EFFECTIVENESS Standing desks are incredibly expensive, but we now know they don’t reverse the negative health effects of being stationary at work all day. With many automated and modifiable options out there, standing desks can cost as much as ten times the price of a standard seated desk. But why pay the extra money when they don’t actually work?

What does work is getting moving, away from your desk. This stimulates your heart rate, activates your muscles, regulates your metabolism and insulin balance, and even decreases depression rates.

EYE STRAIN & HEADACHE You know it’s easy to have bad posture and slouch when you’re standing. Add this to staring at a computer all day while you’re at your incredibly expensive standing desk, and your risk of developing eye strain and headache actually increases at a standing desk vs. sitting. Headache at work? No thanks! The best way to combat eye strain and headache is to do easy, effective exercises away from your desk, coached by a program like fitminder.

Standing desks don’t decrease the negative effects of sitting; the only things that REALLY work are gentle exercises that challenge your body and metabolism, coached by a program like fitminder. Don’t believe the hype from the media; standing desks aren’t the answer. They’re a super expensive alternative to sitting desks that don’t actually improve your workplace health.

Trust a genuinely effective method of supercharging your health at work. Trust the computer program fitminder. Created after years of careful research, fitminder reminds you how and when to get moving while you’re at work to boost your health in the workplace. This one program could mean the difference between a serious health problem, and you’re best workplace health. Plus, it’s so much more affordable than buying a standing desk! Don’t believe the hype about standing desks; they don’t work! Choose a real, effective way to get healthy at work. Choose fitminder.