Increased sedentary behaviour alters metabolism and body composition (2018)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
But seriously, I think this sort of adds to the pile of evidence that even small amounts of exercise on a regular basis has marked health impacts.
I'm a Type 1 diabetic so I have the benefit of a sensor that continuously tells me my blood glucose, so I can see the difference between when I'm walking on a daily basis to and from the office, and when I'm working from home. Same breakfast, very different blood glucose averages on those days.
It is worth noting that exercise of almost any kind causes my insulin to potentiate, so that is part of why my glucose levels are lower. But I wouldn't be surprised to hear that my over all insulin sensitivity is higher on walking days (as I gather from this study) which helps to drive my lower glucose numbers.
Here's one https://provider.dexcom.com/education-research/cgm-education...
Also an interesting article about people hacking together their own artificial pancreas https://medium.com/neodotlife/dana-lewis-open-aps-hack-artif...
If you end up buying a blood glucose meter, the best way to get a good idea of your blood sugar movement in your body (if there is any) would be testing at several times throughout the day after specific events (like eating and/or exercising). Waking up (for fasting glucose), pre-meal (to get a baseline), post-meal several times (15 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours). I would also experiment with how it reacts to different types of food and beverages. For example, try drinking a glass of orange juice and testing 5-15 minutes after. Some non-diabetics still experience very small blood sugar spikes from liquid carb sources.
All sensors that I know of are invasive though, so they have to be replaced every 7-10 days, which requires a needle and other things to cover it.
You could also just buy a glucometer (though you'd need a prescription for the test strips, at least in the US) than test once or twice a day and keep a log.
I've bought them on Amazon before, no prescription required. This is to monitor blood sugar right?
Oh, so we are finally over that hurdle. Last time I checked there were some liability concerns that prevented manufacturers from closing the loop – the user had to input the numbers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20551311
The underappreciated role of muscle in health
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8748147
I live without a car. I have no desire to change that fact. My condition is incurable. Running errands on foot plays a critical role in staving off deterioration that, among other things, puts me at risk for a form of diabetes.
How do we interpret and apply information like this? Many people work in front a computer these days so it can't actually be applied to them (read us).
In practice it would mean taking periodic breaks to walk around a bit, and trying to arrange things such that you could walk some of your commute, or walk to the store, etc
Obviously harder for people in suburbia.
True, takes some adjustments... When I drive somewhere, I try to park at the back of the parking lot for a bit of a walk (bonus: keeps your car dent free too).
When I go check my mail, I walk to the end of the block first and get it on my way back (bonus: get to keep an eye on my neighborhood and say hi to some neighbors).
When I drop my daughter at school we park a block away and walk in (bonus: get to spend more time with my daughter and meet some other parents).
These changes all sound trivial, but from my fitness tracker I can attest that they make a quantifiable difference, especially when you look at it over a month. Additionally, those other little bonuses contribute to overall happiness.
Here's another: when I'm in a multi story building, I almost never take the elevator down. If the building is less than five stories I'll generally take the stairs up too, often at a light run.
One more: stairs instead of escalator. At minimum, walking on an escalator.
But the difference for cardiovascular and respiratory systems and especially back and neck muscles is big with something as simple as basic walking exercise.
Exercise is not for weight loss, it's too stay fit and healthy. And yes, small regular exercise beats hard exhausting bursts.
Specifically for me, I like the fact that my Apple Watch reminds me to stand after it has detected I have been siting for a long period of time. It also prompts me to take a brisk walk as well.
At first I was known as that pushup guy at the office, then all the guys did it with me. It was almost a joke. "Alright, it's pushup time!" and my group did pushups. We even got a pullup bar installed. Some people preferred to take those times to walk a lap outside.
If we're going to generalize about what can/can't be done at a software developer job, punctuating the job with some brief exercise is in the "can" camp.
The "not sitting" part is achievable, I believe there are countries (Denmark maybe?) that even mandate that computer desks in offices be adjustable so everyone can choose whether to sit or stand.
That said, I've been working at my standing desk for over a year, I wasn't very fit before, and I don't feel any different now. I don't think that literal "not sitting" has great benefits in itself. Standing is not exercise, you would have to move more to get a real benefit. This study might be measuring a difference in steps taken rather than in "sedentary" behavior vs. standing in place.
However, I also notice that if I'm standing I am more likely to walk away from my desk and move around a bit more.
I work in a pretty traditional office space and our desks are not adjustable. I also can’t get any work done if I’m up moving around so I’m at my desk 90% of the day since it seems pretty standard for nobody to take proper lunches.
Get into a problem and suddenly I’ve been sitting for five hours straight. Sometimes longer! Plus you need to be looking busy.
I don’t know how other people do it. I work out in the mornings (hampered now by an ankle injury) but even then I still gain wait and feel just worn at the end of the day. Motivation lowers further when I don’t get regular workouts in.
And I used to work jobs that had physical demands, do other physical activities outside of work. I could eat anything and not gain a pound.
I love the creative and craftwork of developing a sound solution to emergency problems but I hate being so sedentary. It actually drives me crazy and the physical implications just compound that.
An anecdote: I had a short term knee issue that kept me off my mountain bike for most of the summer. What I didn't do was figure out a replacement activity for the 6-8 hours / week that I used to ride. I just did ... nothing and that had the predictable effect. Now that I'm recovered and riding 6-8 hours / week again, everything is returning back to normal.
or all 3
Maybe we need to update OSHA regulations to cover inherently sedentary office work and boost the agency's enforcement budget so that they can do their jobs and protect workers like us.
This sort of advice can be literally applied to anyone who doesn't have severely limiting physical limitations. Sure, working in front of a screen is a constraint you may have to work around - but the rest of your time you make a lot of choices about.
Just a for instance, I had a colleague recently who lived in typical suburbia and worked as a programmer. He changed two things: First was that while he still drove in every day, he left 30 min earlier and parked about 20 min away from the office. So he walked about 45 min to and from his car every day regardless. Second thing was to get up and walk nearly every day during lunch, just a little 15 min loop or so.
He visibly lost weight, and claimed to feel great (and that his commute wasn't actually much longer - better traffic)
Sedentary desk jobs should be considered work hazards and employees should be given desks that can easily be changed to a standing desk and also be allotted a walking break every 15-30min, or install rows of treadmills with an ergonomic laptop holder.
The problem is finding space to walk in. Most offices are not designed for hiking.
Being a little less flippant, my suggestion is to fight for livable cities where car ownership is one option out of many others, including walking and riding bicycles. If you get out of bed, then straight to your car, then drive to work, to then sit some more (x5 days each week), just to reverse it, it's going to be detrimental in the long run to your health - there's just no other way around it.
If that seems unbelievable, think of the diseases of affluence we, as a culture, have: Type II diabetes, heart disease, etc. Our bodies were born to move, not to code all day to then vegetate all night.
There are also bike options if that's preferred
When I had a corporate job, I got up every hour on the hour to go the bathroom. It was a huge building, so that got me more walking in than you might assume from the description.
Unless those people are tied or in cages, it can be. First of all, you can take breaks and walks even around the office (e.g. once an hour).
Second, there are standing desks, which are trivially accepted in most workplaces.
Third, "avoid periods" doesn't have to be "avoid several hour stretches".
It can just be "avoid day stretches", in other words, sitting for 8 hours and then going for a walk after (or before) work, is still ok.
You are perhaps thinking about the psychiatric usage implying a significant mental disorder, but here it just means that the system (i.e. metabolism) has been disturbed in its function, e.g. that it is out of normal range.
> It accurately conveys how completely abnormal the changes are.
that would make no sense in the medically accurate context. Derangement being used as "something disturbed in its function" is literally anything being wrong, no matter how minor. It doesn't have to be "completely abnormal", merely abnormal by some means. The post I was responding too clearly doesn't believe it to be a minor dysfunction and wasn't understanding it in the technical context either.
>Pooling data from both groups, following step reduction there was a significant decrease in whole-body insulin sensitivity (Matsuda index) (p < 0.001), muscle insulin sensitivity index (p < 0.001), cardiorespiratory fitness (p = 0.002) and lower limb lean mass (p = 0.004). Further, there was a significant increase in total body fat (p < 0.001), liver fat (p = 0.001) and LDL-cholesterol (p = 0.013), with a borderline significant increase in NEFA AUC during the OGTT (p = 0.050).
Those are incredible p values to find in a human study.
I remember reading that when you start/stop exercising, your muscles retain a different amount of water depending on how much work they typically do. So is what they got an actual change in body composition?
When they report lowered VO2max of 2.2ml/min/kg, that's ±4.7 according to Table 2. Isn't 2.2ml/min/kg an improbably large change for two weeks, compared to how quickly your VO2max will improve if you, e.g., start running? And why is the SD on that so large?
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00125-018-4...
>Physical activity was assessed in participants’free-living envi-ronment. A mean daily step count >10,000 was required forparticipants to be eligible. Screening was blinded and consistedof monitoring from midnight to midnight on 4 consecutivedays, including 1 weekend day. If eligible, participantsunderwent their initial assessment visits before being instructedto reduce their activity to ~1500 steps for 14 days
>Mean daily step count was similar between the two groups at baseline: FDR+ve, 12524 ± 2137 vs FDR−ve, 13036 ± 2481 steps (p= 0.391).
>During the step-reduction period, average daily step count decreased by 10285 steps(95% CI 9389, 11182;p< 0.001), a reduction of 81 ± 8%. Inparallel, daily sedentary time increased by an average of223 min (151, 295;p< 0.001) and daily total energy expen-diture (TEE) decreased by an average of 2697 kJ (3008, 2385;p< 0.001). All activity >1.5 METS (i.e. light, moderate andvigorous) decreased during the step-reduction period (allp< 0.001).
What about eating less and more fasting to combat sedentary.
What about a balance board while standing?
I don't think you can undo sitting 50-100 hours a week with a few hours of walking any more than fasting a few hours would make up overeating for a month. I'm thinking we need a BIG acute stimulus to counteract a sustained chronic stimulus of inactivity. The dead lift is a VERY BIG stimulus.
It is a shame that PE is continuously being removed from many K12 school curriculums. If you get people into the habit of exercising and being active when they're young it's much easier to maintain that habit into the future.
On the other hand, moving about is exhausting and hurts so why would I want to do it? I fully plan on killing myself before 30 so it's not like I'll see the knock-on effects.
Edit: Less flippantly, with age comes some benefits. Yeah, while I had a lot of energy in my younger years and could eat whatever I damned well pleased, as much as I damned well pleased, my attitudes of that time period, which were very much born of my inexperience, had some long term costs I am still paying for. But the tradeoff is that with those lessons, I can make better judgements on what actions contribute or detract from longer-term goals, or even what longer-term goals might be worth having.
If you play your cards right, getting older can be a good thing. So rather than thinking of being old as some terrible thing to be avoided at all costs, look to see how it could be played to your advantage. Come 30, what things would be fulfilling to be doing or having? If your answer is "nothing", then I think I can justly accuse you of not even trying to look.
There is no real substitute for doing the science.