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posted by takyon on Monday November 26 2018, @05:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the retirement-is-death dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Are You Sitting Down? Standing Desks Are Overrated

Let's start with what we know about research on sitting, then explain why it can be misleading as it relates to work. A number of studies have found a significant association between prolonged sitting time over a 24-hour period and increased risk for cardiovascular disease. A 2015 study, for instance, followed more than 150,000 older adults — all of whom were healthy at the start of the study — for almost seven years on average. Researchers found that those who sat at least 12 hours a day had significantly higher mortality than those who sat for less than five hours per day.

A 2012 study in JAMA Internal Medicine [open, DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.2174] [DX] followed more than 220,000 people for 2.8 years on average and found similar results. Prolonged sitting over the course of a day was associated with increased all-cause mortality across sexes, ages and body mass index. So did a smaller but longer (8.6 years on average) study published in 2015 in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health [DOI: 10.1123/jpah.2013-0364] [DX].

Another study from 2015, which followed more than 50,000 adults for more than three years, also found this relationship. But it found that context mattered. Prolonged sitting in certain situations — including when people were at work — did not have this same effect.

Why might that be? Sitting itself may not be the problem; it may be a marker for other risk factors that would be associated with higher mortality. Unemployed or poorer people, who would also be more likely to have higher mortality, may be more likely to spend large amounts of time sitting at home. For some, sedentary time is a marker, not the cause, of bad outcomes.

Studies looking specifically at work don't find a causal pattern. One 2015 paper focused on workers age 50 to 74 in Japan, for more than 10 years on average per participant. It found that — among salaried workers, professionals and those in home businesses — there was no association between sitting at work and cardiovascular risk. A 2016 study examining Danish workers [open, DOI: 10.5271/sjweh.3540] [DX] also failed to find a link.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 26 2018, @07:46AM (3 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday November 26 2018, @07:46AM (#766388) Homepage Journal

    It happens that I once sat quietly at my desk at work for well over twenty four hours, getting up only to use the can or to make tea.

    I didn't even eat, not at all, because the passage of time was imperceptible to me.

    I've had other such experiences; this particular one took place as I studied to C source to GNU Emacs.

    _Everyone_ should have an experience like this - whatever their vocation - at least once in their lives.

    There have been times I've been in great physical condition. While I've never looked like Ahnold, I once got cheers and applause from four hotties after they watched me tool up a steep Berkeley hill on my Velocipede

    It happens that I'm fifty pounds overweight now, that I now have but one kidney could ruin my whole day, I am at risk for diabetes due to Metabolic Syndrome - overweight, high blood sugar and high cholesterol. This is what causes Insulin Resistance, the adult form of Diabetes. Both kinds of Diabetics commonly die of heart attack, infection due to incurable sores on the feet, ankles and lower legs, I think also stroke and have a high risk of going blind.

    But when I got the ovation from those four hotties, I sat just as much as I do now.

    I've been telling every one that "I'm going to join a gym Real Soon Now" for a solid year now, then after blowing a smoking crater into my cash position, that I would instead do calisthenics at home. It happens that just yesterday was my pre-announced day to commence doing so but then I took a lift aboard an ambulance to an Emergency Room where I grappled with the challenge of telling the clinicians there that I was unable to speak.

    Real Soon Now.

    Where I'm at just now is not amenable to deep knee bends, but where I will be early this coming morning would do just fine.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Monday November 26 2018, @11:30AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 26 2018, @11:30AM (#766409) Journal

    It happens that I once sat quietly at my desk at work for well over twenty four hours, getting up only to use the can or to make tea.

    Huh, 20 hours! Kids these days.
    Have you had larval stages [catb.org]?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 26 2018, @12:08PM

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday November 26 2018, @12:08PM (#766415) Homepage Journal

      I was hired at that particular shop because I knew all about calibrating CCD image sensors, as I had been taught how by a Caltech astronomer I once worked for, then performed for my own CCD images when I worked a three-day observing run at the sixty-inch telescope at Palomar Mountain Observatory.

      While at the time I was hired in November 1987 I was good with Pascal and FORTRAN I knew just enough C as is required to blow my own foot off with a noose that I had tied myself.

      Knowing full well that I'd be fired if my employer ever caught on to my cluelessness, I labored tirelessly for well over a year to teach myself all manner of C, UNIX, Image Processing as well as Printer Software minutiae. By the time I was ready to move on I was even at that very early age quite adept at writing all manner of top-quality code.

      --
      Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by hellcat on Monday November 26 2018, @10:42PM

    by hellcat (2832) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 26 2018, @10:42PM (#766674) Homepage

    Think yoga.
    There's all sorts of poses you can do sitting down at your desk.
    Good luck.