Excerise cannot undo effects of prolonged sitting | Hacker News Reader

Excerise cannot undo effects of prolonged sitting

theatlantic.com

54 pointsastdb39 comments

Refuting the HN headline with a quote from the article:

>Last month in The Lancet, researchers tested whether any amount of exercise could ameliorate the risk of premature death that comes with sitting for eight hours a day. Their epidemiological analysis found that 60 to 75 minutes of concerted daily exercise might to the trick.

Yikes. I exercise 4 hours a week which isn't nearly enough, not to mention I sit for more than 12 hours a day.

See my other comment re the quality of this "refutation". You're doing fine (better than most) at 4 hours a week.

Just sit less. Get up and move around more during the day. Consider both sitting and standing desks....

Refutes the headline? Only if you failed to RTFA. There are two critical points.

Point the first, and IMHO the most important, is the rest of the paragraph that makes the "60 to 75 minutes" statement: the people weren’t necessarily healthy, just alive.

In other words, the exercise was sufficient to reduce risks of mortality, but insufficient to actually improve health.

That's a damning condemnation of the effects of excessive sitting if ever I've read one: Sit too long and your health is pooched, even if you exercise enough to survive.

Point the second, the writer points out that exercise recommendations are a balance between what will bring the most benefit and what (most) people will actually do. Very few people will exercise 60 to 75 minutes a day...

...and I suspect that if they knew that that amount of exercise would have positive survival benefit but negligible health benefit they'd say to hell with it, and just keep sitting.

Hence explicit and implicit recommendations from the article: Exercise 150 minutes a week (more if you can), sit less (a lot less).

>the people weren’t necessarily healthy, just alive.

Well, yes, when you do a study based on mortality you get a result based on mortality rate. For all we know all the other studies mentioned in the article were also based on mortality. The article was being a bit dishonest by implying that mortality rate is a bad metric without addressing the issue of why that might be so in this case.

The actual point is, as you point out, that sitting is bad. The headline is still wrong and pointlessly so.

A while ago I got a sit-stand desk: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/24/geekdesk-max-sit-stand-des... and it's been great. I'd never willingly go back to full-time sitting.

Even apart from whatever health benefits accrue, switching between sitting and standing to work feels much better than sitting alone.

I recently got one as well. I haven't used it long enough to report much about health benefits, but I absolutely enjoy standing up while keeping focused. The one I found is FAR more affordable than the others with similar quality / features, even with all the bells and whistles (automated, memory settings, stylish desktop, tall enough for me at 6.6").

Only problem was that it took about 2-3 months to get here. But they were always responsive when I asked about the delivery schedule. All-in-all, it was absolutely worth the wait.

https://www.autonomous.ai/smartdesk-sit-to-stand-height-adju...

- I have nothing to do with this company except as a fan of my desk.

Much the same as the main message (as I remember) of the "The Healthy Programmer" book (which you should totally read by the way ... most researched, elaborate and "balanced" (AFAIS) reading on the topic I've came across).

https://pragprog.com/book/jkthp/the-healthy-programmer

Eat right, exercise, achieve healthiness, die anyway. We're all food for worms, boys, and any action we take now will certainly be found (in the fullness of time) to be deleterious. It's a matter of balancing what set of regrets we can live with the most. At the end of our run we still have to give our atoms back, and the universe will continue to turn.

I wasn't sure from the article how specific they were about sitting. Are all types of sitting equally harmful? Does the chair matter? Does posture matter? According to the article, the primary conclusion of the health experts is that you should sit less and "move" more, where "move" means anything that "increases your metabolism 1.5 times that of being absolutely still". What about fidgeting while sitting? When working on a problem, especially when excited, I tend to bounce my legs while sitting. I wonder how much that increases my metabolism.

I read somewhere that standing alone burns about 20 calories per hour. That doesn't seem like much but according to the article, this slow burn is necessary and somehow promotes heart health in a way that is not matched by sitting for an hour and then burning far more calories later.

Question : is laying worse than sitting?

An answer to this would be great... I'm extremely curious myself

To be fair a quick google search points at various similar answers. Apparently, with prolonged sitting the problem is not so much the posture, as it is inactivity. Presumably lying may be slightly better as it does not stress the back.

Personally I hate sitting and when I really have to I always tend to find the most laid down position possible on whatever chair I'm on.

Based on my own experience, I'd imagine that laying is hard because of the way you have to twist your neck. But, like others said, it really seems to be more about not moving around.

In this context, laying 14 hours a day in addition to sleeping ? Yes it's worse than sitting. Only thing worse would be being in zero gravity ;)

Exercise, eating, laying flat when not exercising or eating all day is not worse.

  Yes it's worse

  Exercise, eating, laying flat when 
  not exercising or eating all day is 
  not worse.

Wait, what?

With all of these studies on the affects of "sitting," I'm curious if there is any distinction made between "passive sitting" and "active sitting." E.g. a yoga ball vs. a chair. If you are sitting in a position that forces you to work muscles, is that only marginally better?

The study seems to focus on cardiovascular health and not so much muscular dystrophy and posture. Also, have you seen people sit on yoga balls? Most of them end up leaning on the table for support.

I don't doubt sitting with good posture is helpful, but the main thrust of this study is to tell people to move. Get up every 15-20 minutes to pace, go take that walk around the block, take the stairs, walk home if you can.

I dream of the day that I can program while backpacking through the Appalachians.

Also, title should be fixed -- "Excerise" -> "Exercise".

Oh man, Wandercoding, I'm sold.

BBIAB. Gone codeabout.

Honestly, unpack: What keeps you from this?

For a developer without the luxury of a standing desk, what alternatives do I have?

Get one?

Makeshift one.

I put two large speakers I have (similar to amazon eco) and a flat table on top of my desk. Presto!

Be creative and you can build one super easy. Only need a flat table and something to cover the height.

Work in 30-minute intervals (these are great for achieving focus too). After an interval has elapsed, get up from your desk, relax, stretch and wander around the office a bit. Don't read HN during the break.

Maybe not so hip as a standing desk but it works.

If you are willing to make your own, very non fancy setup, you can have a standing station for quite cheap compared to a proper standing desk. You can use a custom made piece of wood to put on top of your current desk, use books, boxes, even soda cans :) https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcoarment/3234209861

Personally I like to alternate standing and sitting. Since this is not going to be an adjustable desk think about having a way of quickly repositioning monitor/laptop keyboard and mouse on 2 levels instead of just the standing level.

Standing desks are not luxury anymore. You can get a decent new adjustable legs for around $250, and get a table top from ikea for $40. I don't really think that it is luxury for a developer. Even if you charge $20/hour, it's only two days of your work, which I think is a very little price to pay for an improved health.

I used this and found it to satisfactory, assuming you use a monitor and a keyboard.

http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dolla...

If you arrange the cables right, switching position takes only a minute.

Apparently I need to be logged in to see the "action shots" of the standing desk because it's flagged as "adult content"?

I can see the pictures on the webpage. But if I click on them ,I get a adult content page in flickr.

I had no idea that "action shots" of standing desks could be consider racy!

All it takes is a cardboard box (maybe 2 if you want keyboard at a different leve). Your employer can't prevent you from putting that on your desk. More solid ideas: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/diy-ways-to-convert-any-desk-into...

If you're in an open space office, likely standing desks are already en-vogue - just ask for one. My employer used to require an ergo audit (which by itself was informative for other parts of my life/posture that weren't ergonomic) but now they hand out stand desks to anyone who asks.

My issue with standing desks is that to me that would not nearly be enough. Physiologically there is quite a gap between standing and walking, the latter being a lot easier and also a lot more effectful. The whole story is much more complicated when looking at body and brain. We can say for sure we do way too much sitting, but standing is not even half the solution. Actual movement is required, for a lot of physiological functions as well as for the brain.

Anyone who learned to ride a horse should have learned that you letting a horse stand still for prolonged periods, specially with you on top, isn't so great for the horse, it can carry its weight (and you) much more easily when moving. I doubt that I'm different from the rest of humanity when I say that I can't (just) stand for nearly as much time as I can walk, standing is actually really hard (just for me? I don't think so).

I also noticed that even for productivity I need both sitting and walking, I have yet to discover a need for "standing". When I'm looking for inspiration and "to loosen up" after having worked for too long on one problem I start walking, and often find an easy way out of my problem within 15 minutes of walking. But when I need to be "in the zone" and know exactly what I want I need to sit. Walking won't do - too much distraction. Standing won't do - too hard.

I see a place for standing, but if I could do a perfect mix of sitting, standing and walking than standing would be the state I spend the least amount of time in. Maybe a little more with those crosses between sitting and standing, and a lot of changing posture. But in the end sitting and walking are my key states.

"Yes sitting at work is bad, but is standing actually better?":

  > “Standing all day isn’t the answer,” said Alan Hedge, a design and ergonomics
  > professor at Cornell University. “That’s where we were 100 years ago, and we
  > needed to develop chairs to prevent curvature of the spine, backaches, and
  > varicose veins.”

The article has a lot more detailed and varied information, as my long text already indicates, the problem isn't black/white and has plenty of nuance.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/1...

When I visit others, I just put a chair on top of the table. Works well for me. I do it at home too when I work outside.

Cinderblocks. I went to Home Depot, spent $5, and jacked my desk up 18". I figured I'd take a flier on the standing desk idea, but it's working out so well that I don't think I'll bother with anything fancier.

Some kind of an anti-fatigue mat is kind of a must if you're standing on a hard surface. You don't have to go big on that necessarily, either - mine came from the home goods aisle at Wal-Mart.

I mean, I work as a developer at a company - so I can't get them to raise the desk for me or turn up with cinder blocks

> or turn up with cinder blocks

Why not?

Excerise? Ex cerise.

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