The one piece of health advice you need for 2026 – trust me ...Middle East

If I can give you one piece of health advice for 2026, it is this: look after your back. If I could give you a second piece of advice, it would be not to mix Jagermeister with battered cod on a night out, but mostly it would be the back thing.

I speak with some authority on the subject, having had a back disc removed in 2017; and do you know the number one thing you can do to prevent a similar fate for yourself? Move more. And I don’t mean signing up for a half marathon or joining CrossFit – just move more throughout the day.

Sitting in a stationary position, hunched over a keyboard for eight hours at a time – and then going home to sit on the sofa, until you finally go and lie down in bed – is a recipe for screwing up your health, especially your back. Heading out for a run or hitting the gym for an hour a day isn’t really enough, either, if you are sat still for the rest of it. Get up regularly, walk about, do a few stretches – just don’t sit still for hours on end. Trust me.

It wasn’t sitting still that originally caused my back disc to rupture. It was a twerk dance class. I promise that is true. It might be the most middle-aged thing that’s ever happened, but I tried to learn how to twerk and ended up in casualty.

If I’m honest, the injury had been a long time coming. I had been training for a half-marathon and had been ignoring sciatic pain and general twingeing for a long time. I stupidly thought, “I’ll run through it”. The dance class was the straw that broke the camel’s back – or rather, my back. Latto told me to “put it on da floor”, I duly did, and ping! Twelve months later I was finally being wheeled into surgery to repair the damage.

The operation was a success and the debilitating pain that had pretty much rendered me immobile was no more. However, my back was left vulnerable to a repeat injury. I had strict instructions to look after it – and to stay active.

In the intervening years, I have refrained from twerking and given up a job in academia to pursue a career as a freelance writer. Writing requires a great deal of sitting down. It is a very stationary activity, owing to the fact that it is very difficult to write while you are on a crosstrainer. In fact, most of my day is taken up with sitting down. I am sitting down as I write these very words, hunched over a computer like a demented gargoyle. I still exercise, but there is no denying the fact that I don’t move much for the other 23 hours in the day.

I had been operating under the idea that fitting in an hour of exercise in between near constant couch potatoing was enough, but it turns out it is not. I learned this from the physiotherapist who has been treating me for the past month, when the all-too-familiar sting of sciatica returned with a vengeance.

I was genuinely perplexed as to why my lower back had seized up and why I’d developed the gait of a wind-up toy robot. “But I’ve been exercising,” I wailed. When my physio asked how much of my day I spend sitting down, I was almost embarrassed to tell him. He quicky diagnosed the issue: the muscles in my lower back and in my core had atrophied and a few Zumba classes wasn’t doing enough to build them back up.

Your next read

At 61, I’ve suddenly realised how old I am – and what I actually want from life

Nigel Farage’s great project is to destroy the country he claims to love

I’m Gen Z – this is the sex we’re really having

Keir Starmer has realised Dominic Cummings was right all along

I am sharing this story because I know there are millions out there, just like me. We are a nation of sitters. We sit down more now than at any other period in history. We sit in our cars to drive to work, then sit at a desk until it is time to go home, then we will probably do a bit more sitting to round the day off. It is estimated that adults of working age in England average about 9.5 hours per day of sedentary time, and the health implications are profound.

According to the NHS, excessive sitting slows the metabolism, which affects our ability to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure and metabolise fat – “and may cause weaker muscles and bones”. In 2018, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study that found a connection between prolonged sitting and an early death. And of course, it is terrible for your spine. According to Dr Eric K. Holder, a Yale Medicine physician, “sitting can also lead to early muscle fatigue, a weakened core and tightening of the hip flexors, resulting in increased stress on your low back and reduced spine flexibility. It also affects the gluteal buttock muscles over time, leading to deactivation and weakening of these muscles.”

That’s me. I’ve spent the last 18 months sitting down to write a book – and my pelvic floor collapsed. I joke, of course, but my back is certainly suffering for it. The solution is remarkably simple, however: move more. Stand up on the bus, take the stairs instead of the lift, set regular reminders to change position – just don’t sit down all damn day. My physio has told me to get up and walk every 20 minutes (the NHS recommends every 30 minutes), which is actually a lot harder than it sounds, for the simple reason you forget to do it. But I am determined to succeed and rebuild my poor back muscles.

Until I started researching it, I had no idea sitting down for hours on end is so bad for you – and reading that it is a major contributor to an early death completely floored me. Sitting down is lovely! Humans have worked very hard to be able to sit down more, but we really aren’t built for it. We are supposed to move.

So, before you join a gym or sign up to scale Mount Everest in 2026, make yourself a promise that you will just move your body more throughout the day. It is honestly one of the best things that you can do for yourself – that and avoiding a twerk dance class if you are over 40.

Hence then, the article about the one piece of health advice you need for 2026 trust me was published today ( Tuesday 23/12/2025 - 10:06 AM ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The one piece of health advice you need for 2026 – trust me )

Also on site :

• Union boss ‘held up Communist flag alongside people singing pro-Russia chants in occupied Ukraine’
• Large house fire near Buckeye Lake kills one, critically injures second victim
• Regained momentum sets Yemen government’s eyes on Houthis in the north