Couch Potatoes- by Dr Avnee Sarin

Increase in weight becoming obese and overweight is the great concern of the hour.....especially the young kids, adolescents face this. Youngsters working in MNCs or the IT firms have most of their jobs seating with little mobility throughout the day. The basic cause is the lifestyle we have adopted which is sedentary with lots of stress. Moreover, we tend to be restricted to our houses, online shopping’s trends have further added to this getting all the things from grocery to clothes at our doorsteps . For kids outdoor games have decreased drastically as very less parks and playgrounds can be seen in our cities. The biggest side effect of all these have lead to our health....specially the youngsters and kids more. !!

Maximum time of youngsters are spent in schools where hardly 1 or 2 hrs per week are spent on sports activity....I did a survey in Ludhiana schools “prevalence of sedentary lifestyle among school going adolescents” where curriculum of the schools on average showed these results.

Other time students spend time on tuition and maximum time after coming back home is on TV, laptop, I pods and other games where least amount of physical activity is done....to this addition having chips, processed food, aerated drinks and other cheesy foods stuffs (junk foods) available in the market is acting as the toppings to increase weight leading to overweight COUCH potatoes. .....who hardly gets time to get up from their places to do any physical activity.

It’s high time for people to understand and check themselves......or else the young generation and everybody end up to get prone to number of deadly diseases like diabetes, early hypertension, joints related issues....bone weakness and many other diseases!!

We must take steps as early as possible encourage people and even the kids youngsters to come out of their virtual world....spend more time on themselves .......if we have a healthy body we will have healthy mind.....Our body is a temple and it must be treated like that only....

Become more aware....spread more awareness. Play games, exercise daily, schools must make curriculums in which students get time more to do aerobic activities and even the government municipal corporations should make more playgrounds in the city for the better and healthy city.

(Dr. Avnee Sarin is Jalandhar-based physiotherapist working as Assistant Professor at  DAV Institute of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation.)