‘Sitting is the new smoking’
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
Having said that, I think the 'sitting kills you' meme is mostly a fad. Yes, sitting perfectly still for hours isn't healthy, but if the way 'normal' office people sit were as unhealthy as the current fad implies, we would have seen that from life expectancies of white collar vs blue collar workers decades ago.
Also, there are different ways of sitting. For example, a couch potato is quite different from an Italian talking while sitting.
As to the evolutionary claims: most animals are incredibly lazy, with sprints in between. Looking at our close relatives, chimps and gorillas, I see days of sitting and lying with some strolling and an occasional run in between. Looking at wolfes, an animal similar to humans in the sense that is is specialized in long distance running, I read on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_wolf#Behaviour that gray wolves run about 25 km/day on average. At a modest 5 km/h, that leaves them 19 hours to, basically, do nothing.
Maybe, we should bring back the Roman way of lying down on a sofa at a table?
I am a naturally fidgety person, so at my standing desk I am constantly shifting my weight from foot to foot, and making other small movements. I am by no means running a marathon every day, but I'm definitely not sedentary either.
I also spend about 8 hours a week on my bike, so 20 minutes is relatively insignificant, but I'll take free weight loss any day. The benefits on posture are not to be dismissed, either.
I get tired standing in line or even just trying to sit with good posture in my office chair.
As a 22 year old, though, I expect I will need to make changes if I want to maintain my physical condition while spending all my time at a computer.
Five years later, I transferred to a standing desk after sitting in labs and office chairs for three years. After that three week point, once again, I noticed the uncomfortableness of it fade away. Standing desks nearly insta-improve posture if you setup your angles correctly.
The real problem with chairs: most people do not take the time to adjust the arms, height, angles, monitor angles, and keyboard/mouse position for correct posture. Usually, the adjustments are made for comfort. Temporary comfort does not equate to long term comfort. Our CIO suffers from extreme back problems in his older age.
For example, in this case just mentally substitute the phrase "well adapted for" for "meant to".
For example, you use the word "speaking" here, but nobody is actually speaking. This presents us with the choice of guessing your intent or pitching a fit. (BTW, apparently incorrect usage of words is your style. It's OK — occasional lack of precision is actually the entire human race's style.)
Should be "as if it /were/ intelligent." Neglecting the subjunctive mood isn't some random thing, and it isn't simply wrong, it's wrong in the way most people are confused about English grammar and it needs to be corrected.
blah blah blah.
Should we throw out the word "theory" because creationists refuse to understand it?
However, I'm not sure how to be equally productive without sitting in front of a screen.
(1) http://www.natap.org/2010/newsUpdates/SittingTimeCauses.pdf
So far, studies are just saying "here is some evidence that activity level does not have an extremely simplistic correlation with health." Puting it like that, it doesn't seem that surprising (or useful).
Love this line, in the same vein as your comment.
Then, about 1 year ago (age: early 30s) I started experiencing pretty bad back pain. I'd get out of bed and it would take 10 minutes before I could stand up straight, due to lower back pain. Similarly, when I stood up after sitting for more than 30 minutes or so, it took a while to "straighten out"
I tried stretches and a new mattress to no avail, before trying the advice of a co-worker: powerlifting. And holy shit! Within 3 months of deadlifts and squats, my back pain was totally gone. Furthermore, I now understand how some people have good posture - It just happens when your back and supporting muscles are strong enough. No focus required.
Anyone else having my kind of problems should look into that. If you've never done it before, pay a trainer so you can learn the proper form. Remember, it's a marathon and not a sprint - if you start at a lower weight than you can do, it's not really a problem, because the goal should be to make gym-going a lifelong habit.
Mine did too, until I learned 1) the proper way to perform complex human motions like lifting something from the ground and 2) increased all of the muscles from my core to my legs that are involved with those complex movements.
This is not strictly true. What works for you does not necessarily work for others, and hassling them for not doing something that hurts them isn't going to help.
I've been lifting for almost three years (started Dec 2010). I have very good form which I learned from a friend who was very experienced in lifting (and corroborated by several trainers and random dudes at the gym saying "wow, nice form!"). Before I started lifting I had been running for about 10 years (started running in middle school, didn't start lifting until after college). Everything was going great. Lifting three days a week, running another three days a week, and resting completely one day.
Then one day I took a weird step while running and my right knee started hurting. It's never stopped hurting. Two X-Rays, an MRI, two physical therapists later and they don't have any idea why I'm in constant pain (literally constant pain, I'm constantly aware of my knee hurting). I still lift, still with good form, still moving lots of weight around, but my knee still hurts. I can't run anymore, though, as that aggravates the injury.
And before you say it, I hurt my knee after I had been running in vibrams for three years. I was running 6-7 miles 3x a week in vibrams and all it took was one weird step to totally ruin that.
After the injury, on a PT's advice, I tried switching back to "normal" running shoes. They didn't help at all. I played around with my gait, trying to run with a wider stance since they were guessing my narrow gait was putting stress on the bad point in my knee; that didn't help. Stretching doesn't help, drugs don't really help (the most effective drug so far is Aleve). Lifting seems to have no effect on my knee. I tried not lifting or running for three months and my knee still hurt. I picked lifting back up and it made no difference to my pain levels.
Anyway, I'm just trying to say that we all have different physical ailments that cannot necessarily be solved by general advice. Maybe your friends' knees hurt because there's something wrong with them and lifting will make it worse.
FTFY. No, really, sitting on your ass may be uncomfortable but it's not 1) addictive 2) marketed heavily to teenagers 3) causing life-long debilitating diseases 4) cheap and abundant.
Ok.
> 2) marketed heavily to teenagers
Its compulsory for teenagers (via mandates for school), as well as marketed heavily to them (in terms of sedentary occupations.)
> 3) causing life-long debilitating diseases
> 4) cheap and abundant.
No, sitting on your butt is actually both of these.
1) Being sedentary is not directly addictive, but it is self-perpetuating. Being sedentary reduces your overall energy levels, and that leads to more sitting. There are also a ton of psychologically addictive activities that require sitting.
2) What about playing video games, watching movies, Facebook (or whatever the kids do these days), etc.? And don't forget studying. We actually force teenagers to sit for 6-9 hours a day for 75% of the year.
3) There's a good bit of evidence that supports that chronic sitting does, in fact, cause long term harm.
4) What's cheaper than sitting?
That said, there's still one thing smoking has over soda as well: second hand smoke is both annoying and harmful to nonsmokers. There's not an analogue to this for drinking soda or sitting.
Trying to avoid the sweet-foods avalanche is very difficult because it's everywhere.
My friend said on Facebook a while back that "Relationships are harder now because conversations become texting, arguments become phone calls & feelings become statuses and tweets." It occurred to me that isn't the case at all - relationships have always been hard; we now just have all these ways to avoid nurturing them.
In the same way technology is giving us an excuse to not work on our physiological wellbeing, and I can't help but agree with this article (even though they didn't make that association).
I think it's time for a new "brogrammer" movement where we instead focus being on healthy (which I am seeing a few examples of - inspiring to say the least).
*written on my cell, excuse any typos.
Perkash said that Lumoback’s goal is use technology in a way that helps, rather than destroys, our body.
This is just awful journalism. First, the typo should not be there (it's the fifth paragraph!). Second, the choice to let the press release/feature drive the story is just too much. Third, that statement would've been killed in any high school English/journalism class for being obvious/redundant/unnecessary. "You mean they don't want us to destroy our body? How great of them - I'll take two, please!"
No surprise though - she posted four "articles" today and four yesterday: http://venturebeat.com/author/rebeccaggrant/. The only way you could really do that is if you (a) read the press release, (b) fired an email off to the press contact asking a few basic questions or read the company's media kit, then (c) wrote the article based on that info alone. You don't have time to actually do any "real" journalism when you are on a "four article per day" quota.
"'Personal posture trainer' startup LumoBack released the results of a study today that examined 'Silicon Valley Syndrome,'...The results are shocking: 60 percent of participants reported that they have experienced adverse health effects as a result of technology."
So a company that did its own study found that their service would help 60% of people? Big surprise.
But there's more wrong with this. "60% of participants reported ... adverse health effects ... of technology." 60% out of how many? And does that mean that 40% of users reported no bad effects at all? I mean even if you don't feel back pain and posture problems, you probably get eye strain when looking too long at a screen from time to time. Of course, eye strain isn't a hugely debilitating problem, so counting it with more serious things is deceptive.
This is a terrible article.
Of course there is some truth to those problems, but this hyperbolism makes them look like a joke to me..
A smoke break is a break from sitting. Smoke for your health!
Mixing it up is the key. One thing isn't necessarily better than the other 100% of the time.
I still haven't found a chair I like, so my actual desk is what I use least. Maybe 2 hours a day.
(1) I have two bulging discs, one extruded disc, and one fractured disc. This is all L5 through L2, at the very bottom of my back.
What I really need is more exercise, but when is that study going to come out? I'd love to add a treadmill to my work rig ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Chair-Rethinking-Culture-Body-Design/d...
It is also worth noting that Humans were not meant to stand for 8-12 hours a day non-stop either.
For those like me, I'll recommend this book. It made my life slightly less painful "8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back". Look it up online. I'm not affiliated with them in any way.