Sitting is Bad/Standing is Good? So What?
I read the article in the New York Times entitled “Taking a Stand for Office Ergonomics” (thanks to the reader who sent it to me):
But a closer look at the accumulating research on sitting reveals something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active when they’re not sitting down. That point was reiterated recently in two studies, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.
Suppose you stick to a five-times-a-week gym regimen, as I do, and have put in a lifetime of hard cardio exercise, and have a resting heart rate that’s a significant fraction below the norm. That doesn’t inoculate you, apparently, from the perils of sitting.
The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
“The science is still evolving, but we believe that sitting is harmful in itself,” says Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles.
It seems like everything we do these days is harmful. I’m just waiting for the government to demand that all offices come equipped with something like this FitDesk. Don’t get me wrong. I actually have this FitDesk and use it occasionally but you can bet that contrarian that I am, if someone told me to use it, I might just stop. Sitting might be bad for you, but so is a constant barrage of negativity from the media telling you that everything you do is somehow bad for you and then using the information to implement policies that restrict people’s individual choices.
And, as the saying goes, “Life is a sexually-transmitted disease with a 100% mortality rate.”
And also : “The reason you see only healthy and robust people doing this sort of thing is that it has killed everyone else who ever tried it”
“…but you can bet that contrarian that I am, if someone told me to use it, I might just stop.”
So I’m not the only one…!
I’ll bet the study is limited, anyway, without factoring in eating habits and such.
My profession demands that I spend much time in a library, in an office or at home SITTING. In this harmful position I am able to carry out my duties and passion. If regulations were set up to regulate sitting, scholarship would take a dive. Given the tenuous scholarship of liberals, it might indeed be good to force them to stand, on their head! Dr. Helen is right, alas. The desire to regulate everyone’s life seems to be catching. Let me get sick with a pile of books in my arms and a desk where I sit. That is paradise.
I’ll take a stand and sit this one out.
One can already imagine the faceless drones behind Obamacare writing new rules for mandatory “activity monitors” that must be worn at all times by everyone to make sure they are getting “enough” exercise and aren’t sitting too much, etc. It will track how much (and where) the person moves, and given how cheap computer memory is, it might even include audio recording, you know, to gauge the inmate’s stress levels by tone of voice (theirs and those around them), ambient noise, politically incorrect words and phrases, etc.
My company already does this. Right now pedometer use is voluntary, but monetarily encouraged. We’ll see where this goes.
Am I the only one who noticed that as we shifted from a society where jobs were active to one where jobs were sedentary our lives got longer?
Imagine there’s a world where we could take these studies at face value instead of shuddering at the thought of what the nanny state will do with this information.
The fitness desk idea was first “proposed” in a 70′s Woody Allen film called “Bananas.” It was meant to be laughed at as a big joke, and it still is.
Buried in an article about the above “study” is this comment from one of the “researchers,” “sitting begets a sedentary lifestyle,” or words to that effect. Wrong. That is exactly backwards. Sitting is a part of both a sedentary lifestyle, AND an active one. Sitting in-and-of-itself is not the culprit except under unusual circumstances.
Those of us who are phisically active to a very significant degree need not worry about sitting at a desk 2-3 hours at a stretch. The mere act of getting up to go to the restroom and/or visiting other offices is sufficient to alay any “issues” if also coupled with regular exercise.
I personally walk an average of 10 hours a week, in 30-to-45 minute stretches simply as a way of getting around. I intersperse that with short bursts of other types of intense physical activity most days of the week. I have nothing to fear from “sitting,” period.
Definitely agree about the nanny state implications, but on an individual level, it’s interesting to me to see studies like this. I noticed a few years ago that when I was able to stand to work I had less back pain and stiffness, and since I’m self-employed, my best-of-both-worlds solution was to set up an IKEA adjustable workstation with the desk at standing waist height for me and then I use a bar-stool type chair so I can switch from standing to sitting as I wish.
Granted that my chair isn’t as ergonomic as a standard office chair and not everyone has the option to set things up like I did, but who knows, they might be onto something, though it’s probably not exactly the top of the list of health risks.