Am I the only one in hacker news that does not sit down at all at work? We are bipeds designed for standing on our two foot and moving from a while.<p>I have lifeguards friends that talked to me about the change in the body shape they have seen over the years, especially women as the spend more and more time sit down in front of the computer.<p>So I decided to change, it took months to get used to it as all musculature had been trained by years to sit down as since school time and on kids-adults are forced to sit down.<p>I had worked as a teacher for kids and is really really interesting HOW THEY OPPOSE AND RESIST sitting in the same place without moving. One day we had strong hail storm out there and the principal-director forced us to keep kids inside on playtime. Other teachers forced kids to sit on their chairs so they could count and control them easily. The next class I had the kids almost exploding under their desk with painful anxiety. So I let them stand up and move as they wish while I was giving my class!!. It worked wonderfully.<p>If I sit I use a Bar Stool, but I'm standing up 90% of the time. My computer is in front of my eyes. I love it.<p>If you try it, CAUTION, it will take time for your musculature to adapt, at least a month.
I don't mean to sound facetious, but aren't we designed to also sit as well as stand/walk/run? That's what the buttocks have evolved for, after all:-<p>"Physiologically, the buttocks enable weight to be taken off the feet while sitting" [1]<p>Of course, having said that, we probably weren't designed for the amount of sitting a typical officer worker does, and certainly weren't designed for being sedentary.<p>[1]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttocks" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttocks</a>
I am not going to disagree with the article or dispute that sitting all day is not as healthy as occasionally moving around, but does anyone else feel like this is the latest "health scare" meme? It reminds me of how leg embolisms on long flights were the focus of attention a few years ago. (i.e. completely absent from the news at first, then an overabundance of stories once a single scientific study is published.)
This sort of 'science writing' is infuriating:<p>"Specifically, he found that men who reported more than 23 hours a week of sedentary activity had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than those who reported less than 11 hours a week of sedentary activity. And many of these men routinely exercised."<p>Well, is he controlling for those who exercise or not? If not, then what is the point?
<i>[...] he found that men who reported more than 23 hours a week of sedentary activity had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than those who reported less than 11 hours a week of sedentary activity</i><p>Wow, there are people who sit only 1.5 hours per day on average? I spend more time sitting on my way to work and back alone.
I think varicose veins are evidence that standing up all day isn't what we were evolved for.<p>Looking at chimps, gorillas, orang utan seems to conform that. In my limited knowledge, those species spend hours sitting or lying down.<p>=> I would guess it is not the sitting, but the sitting for long stretches in the same posture that is the problem.
Maybe this has no basis in reality, but one reason I stopped cycling as a primary form of cardio ( I run now ) is I just felt wrong moving from sitting at a computer to sitting on a bike.
The New York Times magazine published a longer article on the same subject a few weeks ago: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.h...</a>
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450170" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450170</a><p>Between this sitting-is-death and the sugar-is-death, there should be tens of millions of dead office workers who died before 60 in the past few decades.
I'm only one data point, but I felt significantly better in two or three days after hacking together a sit/stand desk. I can point to specific aches, pains and other minor medical issues that I simply no longer have now that I divide my time between sitting and standing.
I'm totally all for having recess, and we need more playgrounds for us older kids. :-D (Imagine the recess scene in the spoof movie Fatal Instinct)<p>To that - with my hours cutback at work I now have a home office with a standing/sitting desk now, it's great.
I love my stand-up desk, which I hacked together from an Ikea Galant: <a href="http://flic.kr/p/9kYneT" rel="nofollow">http://flic.kr/p/9kYneT</a><p>Total cost: around $200.
I'm lucky, I have a shelf in my office that happens to be perfect standing height for me. I decided to put my laptop on the shelf when I came in this morning, and give it a try.<p>My office: <a href="http://yfrog.com/h7m5ajhyj" rel="nofollow">http://yfrog.com/h7m5ajhyj</a><p>So far today, I've gotten far more done than a normal Monday morning, and my energy level is way up.<p>This could be good.
Shameless Plug for a piece that I wrote that talks about some of these issues and more importantly, their practical resolution.<p>'Should I get a Standing Desk?' - <a href="http://www.yewhealth.com/2011/04/03/should-i-get-a-standing-desk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.yewhealth.com/2011/04/03/should-i-get-a-standing-...</a>
Explanationless science always gets into difficulties.<p>That said, I suspect that watching TV all day everyday <i>would</i> kill a person, eventually, <i>because</i> thinking without a break depletes the CNS of resources which would otherwise be used to regulate the body.<p>(Note: TV watching is a kind of externally driven thinking. More draining than thinking about the show would be the guilt thoughts caused by watching TV all day given that our culture believes (a) that watching too much TV is bad, and (b) that productive work is good.)<p>However, it's misleading to claim that sitting around all day is unhealthy. For instance, you won't get a heart attack if you are a Buddhist Monk sitting in meditation.<p>Also, <i>moving around all day</i> would kill people, eventually, by similar means and for similar reasons to TV watching. For example:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518</a>
I've started using the Pomadoro technique, 30 mins focused work and 5 mins of "break" (there's more to it, but that's the gist).<p>I'm going to make a real effort to use those 5 minutes to walk around and do something instead of look at lolcats from now on...
>Those who were sitting more were substantially more likely to die<p>That has to be the stupidest quote I've ever read. Are you telling me that if I sit less often, I'll be less likely to die?
I don't see any evidence that this is causation and not just correlation. I'd believe that people who sit more are at higher risk for heart attack. But I'd also argue that those people are more likely to get less exercise.