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Comment by credo | Hacker News Reader

This is a (somewhat) misleading headline and report.

The report refers to a study which says that sitting is no worse than standing without moving the body.

However, the report does nothing to contradict past studies which show that sitting is bad for the body (in comparison with standing up and walking every n minutes).

A better way of reading the study would be to say that "sitting" and "standing without moving" are equally bad. A lot of other research suggests that sitting for hours is definitely worse than taking a break every hour (or n minutes) and walking for a couple of minutes in that break.

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Ok, we replaced the title with your description, in accordance with the HN guideline, "Please use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Right, I felt like the report just basically said that standing all day was not going to improve your health dramatically. Which I agree with. Standing is a sedentary activity.

But the article made it seem like "your standing desk is a waste of money!" Which I disagree with, mostly based on personal experience. [1]

[1] I started standing about a year or so ago after getting into more athletic endeavors like olympic weightlifting. My flexibility today is far, far better now that I stand... and lift regularly. Sitting = tight hips.

I think sitting might be bad for you in some ways. When you sit, your glutes are not activated so they become weak since they're not used (in the absence of any exercise) so your back suffers. At least if you stand, your glutes are used/activated. It might not increase your longevity but you'll probably have better posture.

Those studies never really proved sitting was itself bad for you. Just correlated with bad health. Since standing without moving is just as bad, I'd hypothesize that sitting isn't bad for you at all.

Sitting just happens to be highly correlated with a sedentary lifestyle.

> standing without moving the body.

But this is also hard to do unless you're John Carmack giving a talk.

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