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Shock of traffic jams driving you to poor health

Whether at work, on the road to work or at home, most people in Nairobi are exposing themselves to ill health.

A survey released last week shows office workers in the city are spending more than an hour daily travelling to and from work.

Researchers assessed how physically active white collar workers are from the minute they leave for the office, at the work place and back home and how this affects their health.

“The workers were at risk of developing sedentary lifestyle health conditions such as fatigue and muscle soreness, low back pain, certain forms of cancers, high blood pressure, stiff neck and shoulder pain, and central obesity,” concluded the study presented at an international conference at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).

The study involved 820 office and laboratory workers in seven institutes of an agricultural research centre based in Nairobi.

As the workers left home for the office, there were significant differences on how they travelled to the office.

Most of the younger ones - about 67 per cent, aged  20 to 34 - were likely to walk to work compared to older employees who use motorised transport. Employees earning less than Sh15,000 per month were almost certainly to walk to work but this changed as the paycheck got bigger. There was a mix of walking, cycling and motorised transport to work among workers earning Sh16,000 to Sh45,000 but total vehicular transport for those earning Sh90,000 and above.

On average, the study found that 44.6 per cent of these workers spent more than one hour in traffic. “This could be attributed to traffic jams experienced during the peak hours in Nairobi metropolitan region, which add to the commuters’ sedentary time.”

Most respondents, about 78 per cent, the report says spent significant time sitting at the work place as compared to 15 per cent who walked within the office or laboratory and six per cent who lifted heavy objects. “This meant that occupational sedentary was high among the respondents.”

At the end of the working day, the researchers followed the workers home to assess their lifestyle and made interesting findings.

Weekend at home

Sixty eight per cent of the study participants spent most of their weekend at home, with only 18 per cent socialising with friends.

To make matters worse, about 65 per cent of those spending the weekend at home spent more than 15 hours watching television.

“It was evident that 88.5 per cent of the respondents who spent time watching TV did so while lying on a couch as opposed to sitting on an arm chair,” says the study. Only 14 per cent of the respondents spend their weekend involved in physical activities.

Despite spending almost 80 per cent of the week sitting down at the office, and significant amount of time in traffic jams, about 60 per cent of the workers delegated all housework to the house help.

Workers earning higher salaries, the report says, were also likely to have washing machines and dish washers, further reducing the chance of doing any physical work around the home.

Such a lifestyle, the authors say reduces the use of large muscles, back trunk and legs hence reduction of the body intake of sugar and fats, thus increasing the health risk and tendency to develop obesity.

The researcher deduced that this group of employees lives a sedentary life and is at risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes and other cardiovascular diseases.

In fact, the data indicates that more than half of the respondents suffered chronic low back pain after a working day.

“Respondents suffering from fatigue and muscle soreness after a day’s work were 72.5 per cent while 15.7 per cent said they had high blood pressure and 45 per cent suffered from neck and shoulder pain.”

The authors suggest, employers in the corporate sector to encourage physical activity among their workers to have a healthier and more productive workforce.

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