Sitting in offices is very dangerous to the heart - Dr.Gikonyo

According to Dr. Gikonyo, there has been a change of disease patterns over the past few decades which are mainly caused by newly inherited lifestyles.

Speaking to Citizen TV on Wednesday, the prominent cardiologist noted that the new lifestyle has been met by a myriad of hindrances among them living lazily, change of diet and not engaging in physical activities.

"We have seen a shift of diseases. In those days there was a disease called the rheumatic heart disease where it was all vulvar, the valves were destroyed by infections in the throat but that has changed because we have moved to a new lifestyle," he said. 

"The new lifestyle is made hard by made many things among them is people are living longer and people have more time to degenerate this diseases. Worse than that is that we are living lazily, we don't do things that engage our bodies, we don't walk much, we have cars and motorbikes."

Dr. Gikonyo singled out sitting in offices as one of the fastest ways to contracting heart diseases.

He underscored that the laxity adopted by individuals working in offices provides ground for heart complications to creep in, noting that people consume unhealthy foods rich in sugar yet fail to put their bodies to exercise. 

"And of the dangerous diseases nowadays is brought by these chairs we are sitting on. Most of us nowadays work in offices yet the human body has been adapted to exercise and walk but now we have changed that completely and make it to seat. We have to be active," he said.

He however highlighted that the diseases eventually become grave to the patient as they will need to incur higher costs for medication and other avenues of treatment.

"Bad thing about it is that these lifestyle diseases are expensive to treat and maintain because they are chronic. There are medications that we have to import and they become very expensive."

According to data from the Cardiovascular Journal of Africa almost 90% of adolescents in Kenya are not physically active (60 minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity).

Among the things causing Cardio Vascular Diseases (CVDs) are Diabetes, Raised blood pressure and cholesterol, Overweight and Obesity.

Adults aged 18 to 69 years had a prevalence of overweight and obesity that was 19% and 8.9% respectively. More women were respectively overweight or obese 13.7% than men at 4.3%.