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Sitting Down Too Long Is Bad Even If You Exercise
Ant tips the week-old news that sitting down too much is not good for you, even if you are otherwise fit. A blog at the LA Times reports a followup from Swedish exercise experts: they propose "establishing a new way of thinking about sedentary behavior. They suggest abolishing 'sedentary behavior' as a synonym for not exercising. Instead, sedentary time should be defined as 'muscular inactivity' to distinguish it from not doing any exercise at all." These experts warn that the excessively sedentary are running serious health risks, irrespective of how much exercise they get when they're not plonked behind a desk or lying on a sofa.
I honestly can't help but wonder if this will eventually be used as an excuse to hike insurance/worker's comp rates for desk jockeys...
Please don't mod parent "Funny".
He's actually pointing out a major cause for mankind's current crisis. No matter if it's financial, political or climate trouble, you can always look at it and find one root cause: All these are issues we are biologically ill-equipped to deal with. Long-term problems with no immediate danger. When the human brain evolved, it didn't have spare room for that kind of processing, except in the general "deal with all the other complicated stuff, if you feel like it" area we call reasoning. Our main problem was not being eaten today, finding a mate soon and getting the tribe to that other place by the end of the month. "Next year" was about as far as our ancestors ever needed to plan, so we don't have any brain matter specialized to doing it. "May hurt me in 10 years time" is a waste of energy to think about when your survival until next week is far from certain.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I don't think we really consider the impact of what it means to be in front of a computer day in and day out. yesterday a coworker and I put together some cabinets for a lab. It was outside the normal routine of programming/code work that we normally do. After four hours of this, we were both pretty beat, though there was nothing of extraordinary physical prowess required in putting the stupid cabinets together. We had to use a screwdriver, lift metal panels into place, etc, but nothing like my old grandpa used to do day in and day out on his farm. Feeling winded just climbing the steps to my office, I am starting to regret a lot about this particular field.
Sure one can exercise, but even so, it's always forced and "unnatural" in the sense that it's not required effort for what i do all day long. It's a bit like the guy who engages in body building just long enough to get a movie deal or go on his honeymoon, and then the moment he stops he's worse off than when he started, because all that unnatural muscle turns flabby, because it simply isn't used.
The other effect that comes with low-activity levels is that I am crankier--less willing to get up and help the kids, keep moving. When you're out of shape you tend to think of the shortest path to doing everything. I noticed this first when I saw an obese couple leaving a shopping market. Both were bickering over who put the groceries away. Then they had to climb up into their pickup, and the cart they were to put away started to drift. Since they'd already both gone to all the effort of climbing into the cab of the truck, neither of them wanted to climb out and get the cart so they yelled at each other. Someone in decent physical condition would not have thought twice about jumping out, grabbing the cart and putting it in its own spot.
I don't know how one might solve these issues outside of making programming a full-body sport, but the concerns are legit, imo. Exercise really can't be something you tack onto the end of your day. It really should be part of the whole work experience, and there really aren't a lot of trivial solutions to that problem.
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The American Heart Association does not profit from this news, and it is not trying to sell anything with the results. If there was a particular medicine, exercise, food, or other product implicit in their recommendations I would be dubious. I don't think your accusation of bias is justified.
On the other hand, I am personally troubled by the results. Between work and leisure I spend 50-60 hours per week in front of a monitor, and if the study is accurate than I would guess that most of the negative results of television watching transfer to computer use. I may resort to something absurd like an alert system every hour to force me to take a walk.