Online Shopping And Ruining Our Muscles

While online stores have offered much-wanted convenience, they are ruining our muscles, physiotherapists have warned.

Fail to carry home their own groceries is stripping people of muscle-strengthening exercises that help keep them healthy into older age, according to the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.

Internet shopping was hailed as an end to the back-breaking schlep from the supermarket or department store weighed down with cumbersome carrier bags and boxes.

Its poll of more than 2,000 people found 24 per cent of those aged 65 and over admit that they now do no strengthening activities at all each week.

This puts them at increasing risk of falls and other health problems, the society has warned.

Professor Karen Middleton, chief executive of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said: “Online shopping may be very convenient but it does mean that we are losing some of the methods that used to exist for strengthening our muscles.

“We’re carrying fewer bags home from the supermarket because it arrives at our door.

“We’re also waiting at home for other goods to be delivered when in the past we would have gone out to buy them.

“This isn’t an argument against progress. It’s just to show that maintaining strength and being active doesn’t have to mean going to the gym, and we should look for ways to build it into our everyday lives.”