The Dutch are perceived as a nation of wholesome giants, leaping on their bikes to cycle energetically throughout flat lands. However new analysis suggests they’re the truth is the “sitting champions of Europe”, with a sedentary way of life that causes hundreds of early deaths.
Well being consultants are calling for pressing motion to cease so-called “chair-use dysfunction” spreading throughout western international locations. A report by the analysis organisation TNO, printed on Friday, discovered an excessive amount of sitting prices the Netherlands €1.2bn (£1bn) yearly and results in 21,000 untimely deaths a yr from heart problems, sort 2 diabetes and most cancers. It’s riskier, researchers discovered, to be a lawyer than a lorry driver.
“We’re the European champions of sitting,” stated Leonard Hofstra, a heart specialist, who has referred to as extreme chair use an dependancy. “Sitting is dangerous for us as a result of the blood stream is stagnating. Whenever you train, hundreds of miles of blood vessels in your physique generate a substance referred to as nitric oxide – one of the vital wholesome substances you would think about. It dilates the blood vessels, so blood stream will increase, it prevents dangerous ldl cholesterol from getting worse, it prevents the formation of clotting and irritation: that’s the influence of train on our well being. So it is a very dangerous factor to have as a rustic.”
TNO believes workplace sitting tradition is damaging sufficient to be an occupational hazard and urges employers to institute train breaks, use standing desks and maintain “strolling conferences”.
“The Netherlands and the UK are comparable, though right here within the Netherlands the share of people who find themselves sitting over eight hours per day is 64%, so virtually two-thirds of our inhabitants is in danger,” stated Lidewij Renaud, a researcher. “It’s a person downside but additionally a societal downside.”
The reason being not essentially too little formal train as a result of, not like the British, the Dutch are amongst Europe’s sportiest nations. The problem is what individuals do the remainder of the time.
“We have now these pointers to be lively with reasonable to vigorous depth for half-hour a day from the World Well being Group, however that’s a really small portion of the day in case you are awake for 16 hours,” stated Renaud. “We aren’t actually aware about our sitting behaviour. You’re not sitting on the sofa – you’re watching your streaming service. You’re not sitting on the desk – you’re consuming your lunch. You’re not sitting at your desk – you’re working and being productive. Solely within the final 15 years have we come to the conclusion that – oh, my God! – it does matter what we do for the opposite 15-and-a-half hours a day.”
In 2022, employees within the Netherlands sat on common for 8.9 hours a day, greater than half of this throughout working time (and for an hour commuting). Attorneys, economists and IT employees are sitters par excellence, clocking up 7.3 hours a day – much more than lorry drivers at 7.2 hours. A Eurobarometer survey discovered that 26% of Dutch individuals over 16 sat for greater than 8.5 hours a day – effectively above the EU common of 11%. Decreasing this quantity by 1 / 4 might forestall 5,200 “sitting deaths” a yr, in response to TNO, which based mostly its calculations on British methodology.
The issue, which is linked to a prevalence of service trade jobs, seems to have worsened on account of elevated dwelling working after the pandemic, plus expertise – from dwelling leisure to superfast supply providers – that dispatch necessities to your couch.
Earlier this yr the Dutch sports activities council urged the federal government to make individuals get up extra. Erik Scherder, a council member and professor of neuropsychology on the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, says train additionally impacts the mind. He invitations his college students to do three minutes of squats for each half an hour of lectures.
“If youngsters are sitting all day at college and play [computer] video games at dwelling as a substitute of enjoying exterior, that is alarming,” he stated. “The networks in your mind which might be concerned in motor functioning present a big overlap with these networks which might be concerned in arithmetic and language comprehension. Should you skip bodily functioning, you actually hurt the event of your different features.”
