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Comment by kneel | Hacker News Reader

A little caution to those attempting to find the most efficient way to lie down catatonically for hours on end, you're slowly weakening your body.

The effects of this happen slowly over the course of years but you could potentially develop tight hips and a bad back, which can accelerate further mobility problems.

Common advice is to get up and move once an hour. Your productivity might dip but mental/physical health will benefit. Seating that forces you to change positions frequently (floor cushions) might be a save too.

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Of course if your intent is to be inactive then all bets are off. Even if you're not I don't think those little nudges are that effective.

Personally I've been working lying down for 20 years, almost all day, almost every day. I only have back problems when I use beds that are not very firm.

I'm over 6 feet tall and weigh about 120 kg and I'm in my early 50's. I run 10kms (without stopping except for quick drinks) regularly, in 1:20. I can do bench press, shoulder press, lateral pull down, seated row and seated dip machines with the weight set to my bodyweight (about 4 sets of 8 reps each machine, ramping the weight).

I actually don't do a lot of exercise on the scale of things, and I can regain the above abilities within a month or so if I become totally inactive for a long period. I'm actually a fairly large person which helps with the weights but makes the running pretty rigorous.

Like most things, if you work your body regularly you will be fine. How you don't use your body when you're not exercising doesn't affect that.

You’ve been lying down for the better part of the day for 20 years? What does that translate in terms of hours per day? 20 hours? 16?

Would you mind if I asked why you work lying down?

The idea was born because one of our inventors was rear ended on the freeway. He herniated L4-L5 and could no longer sit in a regular chair for more than 10 mins at a time or more than a few hours in a week. This included driven car so it was important to figure out how not to aggravate the injury while working.

This worked out well for me also, keeping my back in stable condition until I eventually figured out I could cure it by deadlifting.

For what it's worth I generally don't work laying down, am also around 6ft, weigh a lot less and would categorize your 10k pace as a brisk walk. Set some goals and you'll be below 100kg and 60min in no time.

It's definitely not just a brisk walk. Walking at that speed for extended periods of time is likely going to be painful and most people probably couldn't do it.

The average speed of 6km/h is so slow I don't think most people would be capable of running like that. So a brisk walk, or running with intermediate walking is probably a more apt description.

Edit: pretty sure I read it as 1:40 hmm

10k in 1h20m is not 6km/h on average, it’s 7.5km/h

And no one has mentioned gradient

The transition from walk to run occurs at about 13 minutes per mile. A 10km run in 1:20 is about 12 minutes 52 seconds per mile, which is extremely slow. This better be a recovery run or something, it’s barely enough to lift an average person out of a Zone 1 heart rate.

It's just that I remember a nice brisk 9k walk in hills which took 90mins. In 35c heat, with malaria. Main point here is I wouldn't describe myself as anywhere near fit. And "most people" is not a healthy benchmark, sadly.

4.7 miles/hour is a pretty typical relaxed jogging speed. This is not a runner’s race pace, but it is faster than almost anyone’s long-distance “brisk walk”.

There's evidence showing that exercise does not necessarily offset the damage caused by being sedentary all day. Running, lifting, etc. are good things for sure, but saying "if you work your body regularly you will be fine" is not a conclusion you should make at this point.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/much-sitting-linked-hear...

Is there any hope besides choosing to stand in any situation where we would normally be sitting for a prolonged period of time?

I just got into a cardio routine for the first time in my life in the hopes of becoming healthier, and this has all but destroyed my optimism.

If not even exercise and a good diet can save your life if you are still sedentary, then the advice should be clarified to also suggest sitting as little as possible. I ended up believing that checking both those boxes was enough.

If you choose to start exercising you will improve your health, full stop. Being stuck in a chair all day isn't good, but there's no need to change your thinking about exercise. They seem to be two independent things.

From what I've read (I'm no kind of expert, so don't just trust my interpretation), is that sitting can interfere with your blood circulation. It constricts blood flow to your legs, and when you're sitting you aren't contracting your leg muscles which is part of what helps move blood around your lower body. It's not so much that sitting itself is bad for you; it's sitting for so long without moving.

So just... move around. I love having a sit/stand desk but if that isn't something you can do then just get in the habit of frequently getting up from your desk and walking around a bit. If you need to think about something, do it while you walk. Pretend you have a smoking habit and you need to get up for a cigarette every 20 or 30 minutes. Once you get used to frequently moving around you'll start to become sensitive to sitting down for too long. I can't sit through a movie at a movie theater anymore because I get this overwhelming urge to get up and move around.

Everyone says that 'sitting is bad for you', and yeah, I can see being sedentary being bad for you, but if you get regular exercise, I don't buy it.

I feel like this is one of those things where they will later find out that some co-mingled variable is skewing results. See the studies years ago that said moderate drinking was good for you, but didn't control for socioeconomic status. Turns out the types of people who have a nice red with dinner every day are also high income and relatively health conscious.

There also seems to be evidence showing you can offset a days worth of sitting with 40 minutes of sweating exercise.

https://www.sciencealert.com/getting-a-sweat-on-for-30-40-mi...

Are you saying sleeping is bad for us?

Make that 30 years, early sixties, and about 75 kg, and it's me, except I've always absolutely loathed running. I'm in fine shape, thank you, and my experience in general very much resembles yours.

> tight hips and a bad back

To the contrary, that's from sitting.

Remember we already lie down for 8 hours a day while sleeping. It's restorative, not harmful.

What you do need to be careful of is generally weakened bones and muscles. But provided that you're getting up every hour to walk around for five minutes (and stretch, ideally), or at least every two hours, and you go to the gym moderately, then there's absolutely zero problem.

> Remember we already lie down for 8 hours a day while sleeping. It's restorative, not harmful.

Every morning when I wake up my back and hips are extremely tight and it takes me about 2 hours to loosen them up. However if I spend those two hours laying down waiting for my body to loosen on its own, I get up 2 hours later with the same problems.

I agree with you that sitting also causes the hips and back to get stiff and tight.

You should try a stiffer mattress / topper. I had the same problem because I was sinking, ending up with a weird hip angle. I discovered this once I went wild camping with some friends. Sleeping on a thin air mattress made me realize that.

Thanks and I will.

That's definitely not normal. Have you seen a doctor or physical therapist about that?

There are lots of possible causes, with possible fixes including a different mattress, changing your sleeping position/posture, specific stretches, and massaging specific muscles.

yeah but I got the runaround. You're right and I should see someone else. Thanks for the encouragement.

I have a similar issue with being stiff in the morning but I have ankylosing spondylitis... Maybe talk to a doctor.

Thank you for the pointer and I will.

I'm pretty sure future generations that look back on the health foibles of our modern era will not conclude that the solution to the health problems caused by sitting and working on a computer all day was lying down and working on a computer all day.

Sleep is restorative. Lying down all day is not. Just ask literally any nurse.

But the question is whether lying down all day is better than sitting down all day, if you already have no choice but to work all day.

As long as you're taking breaks to be active, it's not harming you the way that sitting can do great harm to your back and shoulders and neck. That's the point.

We have lots of data on sitting all day because we have a large percentage of otherwise healthy adults who sit all day. We don't have the same data for lying down all day, because that's not a thing that healthy people generally do. "It's probably fine" isn't a wise conclusion to draw from this state of affairs.

I’m not sure about that. When my body gets tired of sitting all day my natural inclination is to go lie down for a bit somewhere. I’m inclined to think that a few million years of evolution gave us the right inclinations.

Sure we lay down for 8 hours but what is the marginal utility of another hour? Or 8 more hours? Is 16 hours restorative?

I'm not saying you need even more restoration. Just that it's not harmful.

If lying down were harmful then we'd wake up in the morning with big problems.

Granted some people do wake up with problems but that's not normal, and often has to do with specific sleep posture problems (mattress too soft, stomach sleeping, sleeping too curled up, etc.).

That isn't the question though. 8 hours may not be harmful but does that mean 16 hours is also not harmful? What about 24 hours? Where is the line? Is there one?

But nobody is suggesting that lying 16 or 24 hours without pauses is going to be a-ok. Just that it's better than sitting the same amount of time.

tight hips and a bad back -> these occur because of sitting for a long time not lying down.

All my back problems have disappeared after WFH since now I can lie down and code. Also, I have observed, I move more lying down. Since one tends to shift position, legs and back more often on the bed without explicit mental effort.

A chair tends to confine you more like a straitjacket. 2 hours on a chair and my lower back aches.

My understanding was that tight hips were related to the position of the hips and legs while sitting for extended periods of time. I'd expect this wouldn't be as much of a problem in a laying down position.

Maybe someone with more knowledge on anatomy or physiology could chime in.

Honestly, when it comes to productivity, your working life is a marathon, not a sprint. Realistically you'll be sitting (or lying down, as it stands) until your mid to late sixties, even if right now you may be betting on early retirement. That retirement will be pretty shit if your body isn't up for doing stuff by then.

disclaimer: I haven't exercised regularly since the 'rona hit. Trying to go swimming a few times a week now at least, in theory the chlorine kills the virus well enough.

Get a bigger chair and arrange things so that you can wriggle some; curly legs under you or straighten out, lean left or right, etc. Static for too long is the problem; we're meant to move more but that need not require a lot more space.

One of the advantages of lying down is that you can take a lot more positions (especially your lower body) compared to sitting.

I'm intrigued. Would you mind posting a picture of this workstation?

I totally agree with the movement / wriggle throughout the day idea. When I'm in my Altwork, I use standing a couple times a day. I type with my back up and legs out or crossed or even hanging of the sides. When I do something like reading docs or watching videos I lean back more to get the weight off of my butt and lower back. Everyone tends to focus on the full recline mode but that is only one of the options.

That's why I love the Steelcase Gesture so much. I haven't encountered another chair that enables and promotes moving around as much as that one.

I already have tight hips and a bad back from sitting too much. It's a modern phenomenon not limited to lying down.

I expect the problem rises faster if lying down as much as we sit down.

My ideal would be to have a lie-down setup like this in which I spent ~1 hour max, then I get up and do some fairly strenuous exercise, take a walk, make lunch, etc, then lie back down for another hour.

I agree this would be probably overall negative if you lie in it for hours and hours all day.

Another warning: I discovered that lying down for too long during the day was a trigger for my depression (independent of my level of exercise).

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