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

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

[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: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: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.