Can Sitting At Your Computer Kill You?

by Bonnie Boots

A few months ago, in the midst of a massive workload, I began to experience excruciating pain in my legs. I could barely walk. Luckily I work from a home office, so my “commute” to work involved little more than rolling out of bed and walking down the hall, but even those few steps made me wince.

 When I finally finished the project that had glued me to my computer, (a book of my own that had to be completed around work I was doing for clients,) I immediately made an appointment to see my doctor.

 When I described my last 2 months, seated in a computer chair for 12 hours a day with minimal breaks,  my doctor looked at me with alarm. “Are you crazy?” she asked bluntly. “Do you have any idea the risk you’ve been taking with your body?”

In fact, I didn’t. Only when my doctor rushed me out the door with a written order to have a sonogram of both legs and a lung x-ray taken immediately did it begin to dawn on me that perhaps those piercing pains had been more than an inconvenience. They’d been my body’s desperate attempt to warn me that sitting at my computer could kill me.

I was lucky. The sonogram showed no blood clots, which is what my doctor feared might have been causing the pain. Instead, she diagnosed muscle contractions caused by lack of use. Her stern warning to me was to set an alarm so I’d get up from my chair and take a break every 30 minutes, and to start an exercise program.

Of course, the first thing I did when I got home was sit down at my computer and research the situation. What I found was a syndrome the media dub “geek thrombosis,” but more accurately known to the medical community as deep vein thrombosis.

Deep vein thrombosis describes a blood clot (thrombosis) deep within the muscle of the  thigh or calf of the leg. If part of the thrombosis breaks off, it becomes an embolism that can travel through the arteries and cause a pulmonary embolism or even stroke.

The cause of deep vein thrombosis is typically long periods with lack of movement. I’d heard warnings to frequent flyers that long hours seated in an airplane can be a health hazard, but until my doctor’s stern warning I didn’t translate that scenario into my personal situation. But when I searched the internet and found it being called “geek thrombosis,” it hit home.

The term “geek thrombosis” came into play after a British computer programmer nearly died from deep vein thrombosis. But the truth is, you don’t need to be a “geek” to suffer from “butt in chair” syndrome. Office workers around the world spend most of their working hours seated in front of a computer. And my conversations with fellow netrepreneuers shows we’re even more likely to subject ourselves to work days that extend past 8 hours, putting us at high risk for this silent and often symptom-less condition.

When symptoms of deep vein thrombosis do appear, they may include pain or tenderness in the leg (usually felt only when standing or walking), a swollen area of the leg that is warmer than the surrounding area and red or discolored skin.

It’s important to know, however, that fewer than half of the people diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis show any symptoms. Far more typical is the patient that only finds out they had a deep vein thrombosis after a clot has traveled to the lungs to cause a pulmonary embolism. Symptoms of pulmonary embolism may include shortness of breath and chest pain when you take a deep breath.

Deep vein thrombosis is entirely preventable. When the cause is inactivity, the cure is movement. I’ve taken steps—literally—to amend my inactivity. I set an alarm and force myself to get up and move around every 30 minutes. I put an exercise bike outside my office door and work diligently not to turn it into a coat rack. And I set a foot rocker under my desk, a gadget that lets me rock my feet back and forth in a stepping action even when I’m on the computer.

March is Deep-Vein Thrombosis (DVT) Awareness Month. Each year, up to 2 million Americans are affected by DVT, and of those, approximately 300,000 will die. More people die annually from DVT/PE than from breast cancer and AIDs combined. DVT can be prevented. To learn more about deep vein thrombosis, including the signs, symptoms, risk factors, and prevention methods, visit  ClotCare Online Resource at http://www.clotcare.com/clotcare/index.aspx

 FootSmart offers the LightFeet Exerciser and other sit-and-stroll exercisers at http://www.footsmart.com/P-LightFeet-Exerciser-30045.aspx.

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