Go for a walk or something

You don’t have to be 10,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean to be vulnerable to DVT.

In the e-Alert “Air Time” (10/9/03) I told you how sitting in a constricted space for long periods (such as an airline seat during very long flights) creates stresses on your circulatory system that can lead to deep vein thrombosis (DVT). This condition prompts blood clotting in the legs and sometimes leads to death from pulmonary embolism (PE).

But you could easily be a victim of DVT without ever leaving your home.

According to researchers at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in New Zealand, anyone who sits in one position for extended periods could become a DVT victim. Based on the case of a 32-year-old man who regularly worked at his computer for a dozen hours at a time and eventually died of a pulmonary embolism, the New Zealand researchers are reviewing the medical records of people who have suffered PEs.

And they’ve come up with a clever name for those very specific cases that involve PE and too many immobile hours at the computer: eThrombosis.

Malaghan team leader Richard Beasley believes that with widespread computer use, eThrombosis might even be more common than DVT associated with air travel. Somehow I think that might be a stretch. After all, it’s not computer use that causes PE; it’s those hours and hours of immobility in front of the computer.

Nevertheless, the point is well taken. Workaholics, e-Alert readers, and others who can’t tear themselves away from the mouse and keyboard need to keep their legs active and get away from the computer for some exercise every now and then.

So, please, especially those of you on the Forum, get up and stretch every so often. You certainly don’t want to wind up eDead from eThrombosis.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson

Health Sciences Institute

Sources:
“Computer User Suffers ‘eThrombosis'” NewScientist.com News Service, 1/29/03, newscientist.com