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> removes strain from your heart

If anything, I think our largest (modern) collective societal health problem is that we do wayyyy to much trying to avoid straining the heart. For how much of human history were we not working mostly sedentary? It has a cost. The body is meant to be worked. It loses strength and stamina when it isn't. I don't think the answer is to do even less. Besides, do you know how many involuntary naps I'd take if I was laying down all day?

This is heavily contested, yes exercise is healthy but straining yourself regularly also has a cost. Most people either exercise really hard or not at all, I think what’s actually healthy is a moderate amount of exercise and the best type differs with age and occupation.

More importantly is having a variety of moderate exercise mixed in throughout the day.

Your lymph system relies on the movements of your skeletal muscles to push anything not water soluble through your body. This includes fats, various local inflammation signaling molecules, etc.

Interesting, had no idea about that with the lymphs

I think this is one of the most important health information most people have no idea about.

When you feel sick don't stay in bed, go for walks, a large part of your immune system is passive and rely on muscle contraction to work optimally.

> When you feel sick don't stay in bed, go for walks, a large part of your immune system is passive and rely on muscle contraction to work optimally.

Do you have a source for this? I haven't heard this before and genuinely want to learn more about it. A cursory Google search didn't find anything related to this

Not the OP, but:

https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/ex....

I have doubts about that. The feeling of sickness is basically our body telling us not to move. Sick animals also don't move much.

And a common reaction to being sick is shivering, so maybe the body is already compensating for the lack of movement.

Guts too. Whenever I walk/jog/ride my BM are better. Nature likes to scavenge energy it seems.

And exercise kind too. Walking is actually a good example, it's surprisingly deep and integrated. When I was ill, it was the only thing that was soft yet deep enough to maintain my cardiovascular system flowing. Other activities like yoga play on the geometry to change your blood circulation without doing anything. Crawling makes a lot of muscles coordinate in ways other sports don't.

Sawing trees also pulls muscles differently.

I'd love to spend a year on such life. More manual labour (but not harmful nor too risky), and see how your body and mind evolve.

I thought it is often important to exercise stronger when you have been out of shape for a while. Then once you have core goals met, you can find your stride and sustain.

Not really, ideally you'd want to start with what feels good to do and learn to maintain that then slowly push it until you increase your activity and intensity. If you train hard all at once up front, it'll be harder to build the habit and learn to sustain it.

It is other way round. You risk injury if you start too strongly while the body is unprepared. You should slowly increase the amount of exercise.

I don't know if heart working while sitting/standing to overcome other body parts not working to assist it like they would during and exercise is a good thing.

It's not really possible to understand human health without understanding Selye's General Adaption Syndrome and hormesis. In short, stressors that don't overcome an organism's ability to more or less maintain homeostasis cause adaptations that make that organism better suited to withstand similar stresses. Athletic training is a classic example of a stress that, if all goes well, results in improved fitness. But there is something called overtraining, which results when the athlete applies more of a training stress than his or her body can handle, and in that case one sees a rapid and even catastrophic[1] decrease in fitness.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis

To be fair most of us regular humans are way way too concerned about overtraining. It’s really hard to get there.

If you have a typical office job, you almost certainly don’t even have enough time in the day to overtrain.

Yes you could, because since you don't train regularly, going out for a 5k run could be very stressful. I've been there, when young 5k was, you could say easy, I could do it any day without warmup or specific training. But now, I can't run 5k without injuring myself. I need to prepare for several weeks before running 5k.

Well sounds like you should train regularly then :)

But overtraining isn’t just getting over exerted and having to rest for a few days or even weeks. It’s a very gnarly condition that’s ridiculously hard to get to. Most of us would mentally tap out long before.

It’s a lot like the difference between needing a break and being burned out. Getting tired and needing a break is normal, being burnt out is a serious condition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining

I would guess it also depends on concentration. If you're at the gym exercising a specific muscle group, you could over-exert that muscle easier than generic overtraining while playing a sport.

This makes sense, but I believe it’s incorrect. Overtraining is a fairly serious condition that can take months to recover from, not generic over-exertion of a specific muscle group that requires days of rest.

It happened to me with job and kids. It is very easy to over train or get injury. It does not require hours and hours, just intensity.

And if you had not done sport for a long time and suddenly get back to it, trying to "continue" where you left, that is when injuries happen.

I'm having similar issues but at the mental level. By studying too many topics at once i'm overloading my brain to the point of pain (unwillingly). Things have capacity.

Involuntary? I’d be taking voluntary naps all day long ;-)

> is anyone here using those 0 gravity setups where the screen is hanging above you and you are practically lying down ?

Just the fact that people unirionically ask this question these days make me feel uneasy. Your body is literally screaming at your to move more, not less, listen to it. Work in 30 min blocks and go for walks in between, anything other than "how can I become a passive typing machine which doesn't move a muscle for 8 hours straight" please.

There isn't enough money in the world to buy a setup that will get rid of these issues, just be active, that's all there is, if you know how to sit properly, take breaks and exercise regularly you could use a 5$ ikea stool and never have back/shoulder issues. People want the magic pill to be healthy but focus on all the wrong things...

Going for walks every 30mins will leave you with very little accomplished at the end of the day. The idea is if you're to spend prolonged periods of time at a computer its possible a lying position is most optimal.

> Going for walks every 30mins will leave you with very little accomplished at the end of the day.

I care more about my health and long term well being than my company and the code I write. Walking 5 min every 30min won't kill your productivity, it might have the opposite effect actually.

I started exercising when I saw that most of my older peers in the field were fat/obese, had poor posture and no stamina whatsoever, these people are literally rotting day by day sitting in front of a computer

It seems so insane to me that some people internalised the idea that companies and productivity are the #1 priority in life, I can't even begin to wrap my head around that. As if selling your time wasn't enough, now you have to sell your body. Unless you live in some weird hellhole of a country without mandatory rest breaks laws I don't see why you would put yourself through sitting more than a few hours at once

This. Reading about 0 gravity setup immediately reminded me of the suspensors used by Vladimir Harkonnen in the Dune.

I have been using standing desk for a year, trying to switch sitting and standing frequently, in my case at least every hour. Why ? Firstly, my physiotherapist said her stance on the long term standing is negative since it can lead to imbalances - humans tend to put more weight on one feet, for instance. Secondly, there was a long article in local weekly magazine about sitting and standing, basically saying that the human body will adapt to whatever condition there is. For sitting, this means the muscles etc. will eventually "freeze"; the only way how to fight that is constantly subject the body to change in posture.

The most recent episode[1] of the Huberman Lab Podcast[0] talked about this briefly, in the context of alertness and focus:

...I haven't figured out yet how to develop a workstation where the computer is above me. I think the only way to really do that is actually to tilt one's body back, but actually that's not a good idea either. They have done studies recording from areas of the brain associated with alertness. Areas like locus coeruleus in the so-called reticular activating system. What they found is that depending on how reclined you are or upright you are, you will decrease with reclining and increase with sitting forward your levels of alertness. So body posture and whether or not your upright or reclining will impact your levels of alertness in the predictable ways. And where you position your eyes, whet her or not your eyes are upright, so to speak, looking up or directly forward or looking down, will dic tate whether or not you are feeling more alert or more sleepy, respectively. So try and arrange a work station or a position of your body in your chair or your standing desk, whatever it is, that allows you to work with a heightened state of alertness.

(text pulled from Youtube captions)

[0] https://hubermanlab.com/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXvDEmo6uS4&t=2250

I sit on a wooden kitchen chair at a kitchen table. This is extremely uncomfortable, and thus forces me to get up and move around frequently. I saw this somewhere and really took it to heart: "the only bad posture is the one you spend too much time in."

The best setup is an office where you set it up a bit like a gym. You have your basic standing desk, but also various weights and resistance bands and a pull-up bar close by. As you think about solving problems or throughout the day, you can play around with random exercises to keep your conscious mind occupied so your subconscious can focus better.

That already exists, of course ;) https://youtu.be/ntc1dRSbo2U

It would provide way more health benefit to have a treadmill at the desk and walk at 1mph while working.

Removing all strain would be the worst thing you can do health-wise.

Adding support tends to weaken muscles. Use it or lose it.

> What I'm now wondering about with all this talk about gravity and blood circulation - is anyone here using those 0 gravity setups where the screen is hanging above you and you are practically lying down ?

I just put laptop on my bed, put a half-pumped sitting ball on the bed near the laptop and lie belly-down on it. About half the working time I just sit normally near my desk and the other half I change to this bed "setup". No back pains for over a year now (but I also started walking ~8 km a day so it probably helped too).

I'd guess the walking probably contributed more.

I've had issues with my back for most of my life. When I'm physically active (walking, resistance training, etc) and strengthen my core, I find that the problems subside to the point where I rarely hurt myself. It still happens but with much less frequency.

Posture and avoiding RSI-like outcomes helps too, but I genuinely think strengthening related muscle groups helps more. Not a doctor though, so take this opinion with an equivalently-sized grain of salt!

I’m skeptical. When I lay down and not think I fall asleep. If I have to think hard and work I’m pretty sure something is keeping me awake but I’m not sure if it’s good for my health.

I think similar thing happens to a degree when sitting.

I don't think this is fully lying down [1], looks more like dentist chair kind of a setup. My chair can almost recline that much and it feels weird looking up but I would probably get used to it so I'm not that skeptical it would work.

I just wonder if the benefits are there and if there are any drawbacks.

[1] https://altwork.com/

$4950 wow! I mean that’s crazy…

Yeah looking into the alternatives it doesn't seem like there's anything significantly cheaper (maybe I missed it).

I'm hoping that the next generation of VR headsets will be good enough (mainly in terms of resolution) that I'll be able to use one for coding. Seems the majority of the $5k is just for the fancy hanging screen.

How does the magnetic desk work? I’ve got a Moonlander keyboard that’s mostly plastic, how would it stay in place?

I saw this post at some point and thought it was pretty interesting. It gives ways to do this for much less than 5k

https://mgsloan.com/posts/supine-computing/

I use a zero gravity. Specifically, MWE labs. Downsides were taking it apart to get it to my second floor home office. Upsides are comfort and not getting pain from working long hours. I've owned for over 2 years now. I don't use the zero gravity aspect of it a ton, though. It's still worth it in my opinion for the ability to make micro adjustments and overall ergonomics.

>We spend 8+ hours 5+ days a week at the computer

This is the real problem. Any ergonomic solution is treating the symptoms rather than the cause.

>>"would pay off if it prevents back pain, removes strain from your heart and keeps you more rested while working. "

If that's the case, astronauts should come back healthier from space instead of less healthy.

Yeah, astronauts are definitely the ideal control group.

Sounds like it would dry out your eyes.

Which chair do you have?