Have your groceries delivered? It could ruin your muscles

PUSHING a trolley around a packed supermarket and lugging home heavy bags of food can be a bit of a bore.

So for many, the opportunity to pick your groceries at the click of a button from the comfort of your sofa and have them delivered to your door seems like something of a blessing.

But there is a dark side to the rise of online shopping, physiotherapists say. It is ruining people’s muscles because they no longer exercise them regularly by carrying their groceries.

This weakness then puts them at an increased risk of falls and other health problems in old age, they warn.

A survey of 2,000 people by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy found that a quarter of those aged over 65 do no muscle- strengthening activities at all each week.

NHS guidelines suggest people do two strengthening sessions a week, for example exercising with weights or carrying heavy loads such as shopping. For those aged 65 and over, the sessions can also include activities that involve stepping and jumping.

Professor Karen Middleton, the society’s chief executive, 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 carprogress. rying 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 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.’

She said people should not think becoming frailer is an inevitable part of ageing and suggested ways to maintain strength, saying: ‘To start, it can be digging in the garden or simple body-weight exercises such as standing up out of a chair ten times.

‘There are easy ways to do it but the essential thing is to get started and this poll shows a lot of work needs to be done to get that message out.’

‘Build exercise into our everyday lives’