The Hustle and Bustle Lifestyle
To meet the demands of living in expensive urban cities in the 21st century, many people have to resorted to commuting long hours for work. It’s not uncommon these days to hear of commuters traveling upwards of 2 hours or more to travel for their job or appointments.
The purpose for this excessive daily travel is to make ends meet and many people do not have the option to work closer to home or work remotely.* Due to economic factors of urban housing markets, commuting long hours to make a living has become the new normal for most people.
Commuting can be a time for productivity and relaxation to take your mind away from stressors that could be affecting your mental (see The Link Between Mental Health and Exercise). However, the automobile being the most common mode of transportation for commuters is one of the leading causes of poor health and sedentary lifestyles at this very moment.
The phenomenon of the ‘super-commuter’ has been coined as the new normal, as employees for firms are traveling hundreds of miles per day due to high living costs and lack of access to public transportation.
While feasible for the short term, commuting for long periods of time can be detrimental towards your physical and overall well being. We’ll discuss in this article what are the effects of traveling daily for work and the healthier options for commuting on a regular basis.
Why Your Daily Work Commute Is Slowly Killing You
North America is currently undergoing a major housing crisis and many other countries around the world are experiencing similar dilemmas. This has an effect on the amount of people that can afford to live in close proximity to their employer as limited housing has a major impact on rental prices and mortgage notes for available property.
As a result, millennials and Gen X’ers are choosing to living in suburban areas that are within driving distance from the cities. This makes economic sense, as many workers are not able to afford (or want to pay) the cost of owning or renting in an urban city.
In addition, many professionals find the trade-off worth it, since some of these jobs offer higher salaries and benefits that are difficult to refuse.
This commuter lifestyle has created a huge demand on the highway road system, as more than 75% of morning/evening travelers are commuting with their vehicles to work. This is devastating towards health, as car commuters have been reported to have higher stress levels than rail commuters.
One of the main stressors of commuting by car is the long amount of hours spent sitting down. Sitting down for long periods of time is notoriously bad for you, as just one hour spent sitting down can take away 22.5 seconds from your lifespan. When a worker arrives to the office, the rest of the six hours is also spent sitting at a desk or sitting down for an hour at lunch.
The stress of driving to work in traffic can induce heart racing, anxiety, sweating, and irritability from your stress hormones being triggered. The external stressors of commuting come from the traffic, noise, and the driving behaviors of other anxious commuters.
With a majority of people traveling on average about 2 hours day for work, this makes it even more difficult to cook proper meals from the comfort of your home.
An individual may have knowledge of healthy foods for their dieting needs, but without the proper time to prepare, cook, and cleanup it can be a challenge to stick to a healthy diet. This is especially true for single parents that are raising children at home.
This has led to the surging demand of fast food restaurants in urban cities and suburban drive-thrus across North America that are contributing the obesity crisis.
People don’t have the time to prepare food and are becoming addicted to foods that are low in nutritional value and laden with chemical additives. Tie this to the sedentary lifestyle of the Western civilization and you have the root cause of the weight problem in the United States and Canada.
Healthier Transportation Options
Whilst majority of people are getting in their vehicles to take on the morning or evening traffic each day, there are thankfully alternatives that you can use to keep your physique from going to absolute shit.
Every extra minute of commute time reduces job satisfaction, reduces leisure time, reduces mental health, and increases strain. Even bus commuters feel the negative impacts of commuter journeys in comparison to other transportation modes likes biking or walking.
Commonly in many other countries outside of North America, commuters often rely on biking or walking to get to work and experience a deeper sense of job satisfaction. This could be most likely from the regular exercise regiment of commuting to work with cardiovascular exercise and not being trapped in traffic 5 days of the week.
If it’s possible, try to switch to these methods of commute if it’s most convenient. If the commute is more than 20-30 minutes of biking or walking, you can always bring a bicycle onboard a commuter train and ride in for the duration of the trip.
The Wrap Up
Commuting back and forth to work contributes to the dangerous sedentary lifestyle that the average North American experiences. This can affect you mentally and physically as your overall satisfaction for work will continue to decrease and your physique will start to deteriorate slowly but surely. Sacrificing high compensation for a peace of mind may be worth it to your health in the long run, especially if you can use an alternative method of commute such as biking or walking.
What else do you want to know?
The Link Between Mental Health and Exercise
Why You Should Adopt Detoxing Everyday Into Your Fitness Lifestyle
