Sit Longer, Die Sooner

mcgrew writes "Bad news for most of us here — The Chicago Tribune is reporting that even if you get plenty of exercize, sitting down all day reduces your lifespan. From the article: 'Even after adjusting for body mass index (BMI) and smoking, the researchers found that women who sit more than 6 hours a day were 37 percent more likely to die than those who sit less than 3 hours; for men, long-sitters were 17 percent more likely to die. People who exercise regularly had a lower risk, but still significant, risk of dying. Those who sat a lot and moved less than three and a half hours per day are the most likely to die early: researchers found a 94 percent increased risk for women and 48 percent increase for men, they announced recently in the American Journal of Epidemiology.'"

Comments

Don't sit down = Immortality

[Anonymous Coward]

the researchers found that women who sit more than 6 hours a day were 37 percent more likely to die than those who sit less than 3 hours; for men, long-sitters were 17 percent more likely to die

You know... I'm pretty sure everyone is 100% likely to die...

Re:Don't sit down = Immortality

[HTH NE1]

It's pretty obvious that:

1. the more time you spend sitting, the more likely you are to die sitting,
2. the more time you spend standing, the more likely you are to die standing,
3. the more time you spend lying down, the more likely you are to die lying down, and
4. the more time you spend switching between these, the more likely you are to die on the set of Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Re:Don't sit down = Immortality

[bareman]

Immortality, Hmmph!

I won't stand for it!

Re:Don't sit down = Immortality

[derGoldstein]

Why use denial when logic will do:
I have no life -- therefor, I cannot die.

Re:Don't sit down = Immortality

[dangitman]

Well, as James Brown said, "It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." Also, something about some kind of Sex Machine. I think this creed could be adapted to this era of Aeron chairs and teledildonics somehow.

Another brick in the wall...

[SOdhner]

If I start to add up all the things I do that make me more likely to die it gets depressing fast. In fact, I'm now so depressed all I have the energy to do is sit here and eat ice cream. God damn it.

Re:Another brick in the wall...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you need is an excuse to go outside and stroll around at regular intervals. Like smoking.

More likely to die?

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

the researchers found that women who sit more than 6 hours a day were 37 percent more likely to die than those who sit less than 3 hours

ORLY?
I thought the two groups were equally certain to die...

Tell that to Buddhist Monks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally anecdotal; I haven't done a scientific study, but I have noticed that Buddhist monks, you know, that guys that sit perfectly still 8 hours a day 7 days a week, tend to live much, much longer than the average person. I think that is a bit of a hole in their study.

Re:"Exersize"?

[Anachragnome]

"I think "exersize" is what you call someone who doesn't exercise. :)"

SuperSize...a minor savings that induces you to eat more.

GiantSize...Fuck the cost, I'm hungry.

ExerSize...So big, lifting it burns calories.

Re:I really need to get my walkstation set up

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done it, works well. I spent ages looking for a solution and they're all crap, or crazy prices. In the end I used a few lengths of 2x4 to make an H with the tops shorter than the bottom. The cross member sits tall with the side bars flat. It slots in behind the main tread panel and allows a laptop to sit on the prongs pointing forward with the cross bar pushing against the rear of the panel. Not all treads have the support bar below the panel, so you may need to create a stand of some kind.

Tips: Running and walking at pace is not going to work. You're bouncing around and typing is a real PITA. If you want to burn calories, put it on a steep incline. Have a hand towel to hand, you'll sweat a lot and you don't want that dribbling onto your laptop. Have a water bottle or two to hand too, you'll need it.

You'll be able to do 3 hour sessions without really knowing it once you get the hang of movement and keyboard work. I had to forget doing paperwork, or using pen, making notes etc, it simply didn't work for me. But pure coding, if you know what you're doing, is a breeze.

The hardest part is forcing yourself to do it. It's far easier to slough in a chair behind a couple of huge monitors.

Hmm.. stats don't lie

[way2trivial]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_humans_who_have_ever_lived

Estimates of "the total number of people who have ever lived" published in the 2000s range approximately from 100 to 115 billion (1 E11).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
The world population is the population of humans on the planet Earth. In 2009, the United Nations estimated the population to reach 7,000,000,000 in 2011;[1] current estimates by the United States Census Bureau put the population at 6,864,700,000.[2]

Math
7/100 or 7/115

it's really only an 93-94% mortality rate so far.. who knows what tomorrow will bring
I'm currently beating the odds......

Re:I really need to get my walkstation set up

[Aalst]

It's annoying that they hide the research behind paywalls, but my institution have forked over money for access.

The participants were drawn from a mortality study by the ACS begun in 1992. The objective of the 1992 study (184,190 participants) was to investigate the relation between diet and mortality across the population (details in The American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort) From the section on "Materials and Methods" in the present paper we see that they didn't leave out non-obese people:

We excluded sequentially from this analysis men and women who reported a personal history of cancer (n = 21,785), heart attack (n = 11,560), stroke (n = 2,513), or emphysema/other lung disease (n = 9,321) at the time of enrollment. We also excluded individuals with missing data on physical activity (n = 4,240), missing sitting time (n = 2,954), missing or extreme (top and bottom 0.1%) values of body mass index (n = 2,121), or missing smoking status (n = 1,347) at baseline. Finally, to reduce the possibility of undiagnosed serious illness at baseline that would preclude or interfere with physical activity, we excluded individuals who reported both no daily life activities and no light housekeeping (n = 4,730), as well as those who died from any cause within the first year of follow-up (n = 403). After exclusions, the analytical cohort consisted of 123,216 individuals (53,440 men and 69,776 women) with a mean age of 63.6 (standard deviation, 6.0) years in men and 61.9 (standard deviation, 6.5) years in women when enrolled in the study in 1992.

They did record BMIs and what they found was the following:

We examined the association between time spent sitting and total mortality in men and women combined, stratified by body mass index (Table 3). Although time spent sitting and physical activity were more strongly associated with mortality among lean persons (for time spent sitting, P_interaction = 0.06; for physical activity, P_interaction = 0.002), both measures were significantly associated with risk of total mortality regardless of body mass index.