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.

Comments

My excuse

[hedgemage]

I can't remember things when I'm standing. I think its because I keep all my thoughts in my lap and when I stand up, they fall on the floor and roll under the desk.

Re:My excuse

[happy_place]

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.

Re:My excuse

[xaxa]

A little over a year ago, a month into my first job since graduation, I decided I was long overdue some exercise (I'm 24). I've always been a healthy weight, and I've never had trouble running up stairs, to catch a train, when I'm late, dancing in a nightclub etc, but I'd not done anything more than that since school. I knew that I didn't feel fit and energetic, even if I looked OK.

I also hate doing exercise for the sake of it. Playing sport for fun is OK, but I wanted something that would force me to do exercise as often as possible. Someone suggested I cycled to work, and lent me their spare bike. This was excellent: an hour's good exercise every day (2×30mins), and it was quicker, cheaper and more reliable than any other way of getting to work -- excellent incentive to continue.

For the first couple of weeks I was really tired when I got home -- I had only enough energy to cook something and then slob in front of the TV. But after the initial shock I seemed to adjust to it, and felt better in the evenings than I used to. After a month a few people commented that I looked healthier, and I definitely felt healthier.

For extra exercise I tried cycling to other towns (which has purpose: I can look at tourist stuff, and the countryside is pretty along the way). I also tried cycling to the coast (80km/50miles) but lost the map halfway. I really need a companion if I'm to do it again, it got a bit dull going alone.

Re:My excuse

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I started running after I got my first cubicle jockey job. Thirty minutes of pushing myself hard after work every day and ten minutes of stretching before and after. This qualifies as the 'exercise you tack on the end of your day' category, but I feel great. My legs are in excellent shape. I have more energy than I ever used too. I have a much more 'get shit done' attitude. I'm not nearly as lazy. Of course for the first few months I was just tired and sore all the time. Nowadays, however, after a year's worth of running, I feel great. It works for me =)

I agree, a sedentary lifestyle is a problem as well as unhealthy. My recommendation, start doing outdoorsy stuff on weekends and afternoons. Pick up some sort of board sport or something. If you are new at it, it will always suck for the first couple of months. Have some perseverance though and soon you will find you have a great new hobby. The plus side of a steady workout is that you can indulge yourself. Build some muscles, increase your metabolism, you can start eating some hearty meals. Good stuuf.

Also, you mentioned you have kids, try getting involved in a sport or something with them. Take 'em hiking. Some of my best home memories involved my dad and I wandering around in the forest finding old deer skeletons and such on the weekend =)

Insurance?

[onlysolution]

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...

Re:Insurance?

[Anonymous Coward]

The intense nightmares are what makes quitting smoking worthwhile. I don't crave cigarettes anymore, but damn do I miss my own personal holodeck.

I'll stay in my sofa

[Permutation Citizen]

They can run any study they want, people get badly injured doing sports, not sitting on a sofa.

Re:I'll stay in my sofa

[Tom]

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.

Re:I'll stay in my sofa

[ethork]

As an anthropologist, I have to say that this is basically a false picture of human development. As far as archaeologists can tell, even the earliest homo sapiens lived in complicated symbolic worlds oriented towards all kinds of social issues and conflicts. At least some anthropologists have suggested that hunter-gatherers were basically better off than contemporary workers -- obviously they consumed less, but also, so goes the argument, wanted less and wanted different things than we would want. And at the very least, the image of early homo sapiens living in a world that consisted of nothing but sex and hunger is false: these people lived in radically different symbolic worlds than us, and, if you want to judge by the huge monuments in Stonehenge or Easter Island, obviously put a ton of effort into keeping these worlds in motion. The human brain has always been more than mere instinct and reflex.

I agree, of course, that we deal with many current problems quite badly, but that seems more like a failure in our collective organization than a failure of our biological circuitry. Suppose we take the people in Haiti who have to dig their loved ones out of collapsed buildings with their bare hands, for lack of heavy equipment to work with. Is that a failure of evolution? No, just a failure of logistics (and politics and economics...) What, exactly, is insightful about complaining about our insufficient evolution in the face of problems that need much more local and immediate solutions?

Re:I'll stay in my sofa

[radtea]

Some native American tribes (in Mexico, I think) still are a testament to that. They walk hundrets of miles in one trip. In crappy shoes or barefoot. (After all, we’re built for it.) No problem.
And they never get sick. They have some of the best healths on the planet.

Non-European population... check.

Very far away and hard to get to vaguely specified location... check.

Remarkable physical feets (as it were)... check.

Amazing health claims... check.

Ok! You win a "Jean-Jacques Rousseau Noble Savage Bullshit Prize"!

The people you're talking about are Taramuhara Mayans in Mexico. They've been moderately studied by one enthusiast. They run barefoot or very nearly and are very good at it, strongly suggesting a case can be made for minimalist running, much to the chagrin of the Running Shoe-Industrial Complex.

The claims that they "never get injuries" and keep running into their 80's and 90's are not exactly based on a formal review of treatment records at the local hospital. The claims that they "never get sick" are just the usual hyperbolic amplification that people pursuing the "Noble Savage Bullshit Prize" engage in, heedless of the terrible damage it does to their own brains and the brains of everyone around them.

You need to be more careful: we know that if a sufficient amount of Noble Savage Bullshit builds up in the world it can actually bring about the end of civilization.

What about smokers ?

[f0rk]

I go and take a smoke every 1-2h, and walk up and down 3 stories of stairs every time. Am i in risk ?
I KNEW there were good sides of smoking !!

Re:Medical Advice from the Economic Times?

[Xest]

That's quite impressive, it means that theoretically I should die before I finish typing out this respon

Re:More to the point...

[Clarious]

No, you are wrong, if the normal chance of dying due to heart attack is 0.0001%, then watching TV 8 hours per day will make it 0.000001*(1+0.18*8)= 0.000244%

One reason why not moving is making you sick:

[Hurricane78]

One thing really got stuck in my mind:

The circulatory system got a heart to pump around the blood.
But the lymphatic system, hasn’t got a heart. Instead, it relies on the movements of your muscles, to get the immune cells around the body.

Which makes it pretty clear, that not moving is not very healthy for you.

I also found, that there are two types of tiredness. The brain one, and the body one.
Brain-wise I can be completely drained, while still having too much energy in my body, to be able to sleep well.
Strangely, the opposite is not analogue. Instead, I found that my brain is much fitter in the morning, after being tired, body-wise, the evening before.

I all in all, making sport, made me come up with better ideas, being able to wrap my head around bigger things, etc. Because I slept better. What really hits it for me, is swimming. You get reeally chilly after it. And sleep like a baby. And in the summer, if nothing else, at least you see some hot girls in bikinis. ;)

We geeks have a hard time with sports. But I got a little mind-twist for you: How about you see your body as this extremely advanced machine that it is. And you want to tune it, hack it, and keep it running nicely, just like do with your (really much much more primitive computer). Use the same motivation and ways to overcome your previous associations. Remember: You can change your views, whenever you like. Do it for the fun. You don’t have to. But there is this cool thing that you wanna try... ;)

I should sell stickers, saying “My other computer... is my body!”. ;)

Re:I for one am not convinced

[sonnejw0]

What obvious bias? It would be a bias if the authors were board members of the YMCA. They're not. That's a perfectly reasonable amount of authors, funded by well known national grant institution. And these claims are far from extraordinary: not using glucose stores (i.e. muscular inactivity) increases your blood glucose? No shit.

You don't read scientific papers very often, do you?

Re:I for one am not convinced

[DuckDodgers]

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.