<i>"scientists found that every hour that overweight adults spent watching television, which is a handy way to measure sitting time at home, increased their risk of becoming diabetic by 3.4 percent"</i><p>I think that should be every hour per day. It sounds quite dire otherwise. It reminds me of this satirical piece in The New Yorker:
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/switched-standing-desk-now" rel="nofollow">http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/switched-standin...</a>
This is very anecdotal, but recently I moved to live a 15 minute walk from my office. Since the car keys went away and the walk to and from the office was introduced, I feel much healthier and happier.<p>Now it could be that I moved, so there are certainly possible external factors that are not the walk, but I really do feel it is the walk that is the major contributor to my days feeling so much better.<p>I've even found myself justifying silly things to myself just to keep the walk up. For example, the other day I was running late but I still wanted to walk. Walking in and not being late was impossible, so I caught a taxi into the office, just so I could walk home without worrying about leaving my car behind.<p>Walking is great.
The sample is 3626 men and women, generally healthy at the start of the study. Could there really have been "enough" deaths after 3 or 5 years to even make a guess at the reduction in death rate due to exercise, moving around or any thing else. I doubt it. I am not saying the study is faulty, just pointing out a possible problem.
<i>"This reduction in death risk is likely related to energy balance, Dr. Beddhu said. Strolling instead of sitting increases the number of calories that someone burns, potentially contributing to weight loss and other metabolic changes, which then affect mortality risk."</i><p>Did the study classify participants by BMI class at all[1]?
I work as a teacher so I'm on my feet and moving round a class most of the time at work and when not teaching I'm going around getting stuff &c. Very little sitting at a PC. I also walk to and from a railway station each day (2* 1.7 miles). I am stubbornly a chunky 29.5 BMI.
When I began a new job about a year ago, I found out my completely modular cube had the capacity for me to change the height of my desk.<p>At that point, I raised it up to standing level, bought a standing mat from Home Depot, and never looked back.<p>I know that standing desks tend to get a bit of a cult following, but I'll say that I just feel better standing all day. There was a break-in period of about 3 weeks, and I bought some lighter-weight shoes, but after that point I found myself more productive and engaged at work.
This isn't surprising news.<p>Isn't this one of Apple's main goals in their Activity app (w/ the Apple Watch)? To get around and move for a couple minutes each hour at least 12 times a day? Lots of other fitness bands have done this as well (Jawbone Up comes to mind).
People always guess that calorie burn is the reason sitting is harmful, but I think it has to do more with blood flow and cell pressure. Getting up once every 30-60 minutes and shaking my legs out and stretching seems to reduce that effect quite a bit.
Sitting for long periods may be bad for our health now, but guarantee in 2 years (or whatever) they tell us it actually has long-lasting benefits. At which point, gamers and office workers will be vindicated!
But I already shelled out good money for my doe desk!<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/1329/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1329/</a>
The study was done 10 years ago with less than 4000 people over a period of 1 year.<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25931456" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25931456</a><p>Is that really enough evidence to conclude anything?
I think there's something odd about our society if suddenly we are all deathly afraid of chairs.<p>It should be lions. We need to reintroduce lions into our suburbs.<p>What? Your suburbs didn't originally have lions? More reason to add them then.