Uh-oh....:
I have been sitting a lot lately in front of the computer, now I find out it could kill me. Is anything safe?
Here's a new warning from health experts: Sitting is deadly.
Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods - even if you also exercise regularly - could be bad for your health. And it doesn't matter where the sitting takes place - at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV - just the overall number of hours it occurs.
Research is preliminary, but several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die.
I have been sitting a lot lately in front of the computer, now I find out it could kill me. Is anything safe?
posted by Helen at 4:51 PM
20 Comments:
No, nothing is safe. Life itself has a 100% mortality rate. No one gets out of here alive.
I long ago tuned out the professional (and amatueur) fear mongers. Sensational headlines make for increased readership and never ending calls for more research money. I doubt any of the know what the hell they're talking about.
Me, I'm going to go on living and eating as I choose, experts* be damned.
*Expert (ex-spurt). An "ex" is a has been and a spurt is a drip under pressure.
an expert is also someone more than fifty miles from home....
...but i think we can see that the human animal isn`t designed to sit for extended periods, even though our knees bend the wrong way for optimum athletic ability and fold nicely over the edge of the chair.
I'd put this in the same category as the study that says wearing large belt sizes causes obesity.
Maybe we should stand at our desks: I recently saw some old photos of 19th-century office workers at desks made for standing rather than sitting. Anybody out there want to buy a height-adjustable desk at Ikea and tell us how it works out?
Living is bad for your health now sit down and have a beer!
:-)
pst314,
A study showed that standing-up meetings got done quicker! If it speeds up the meetings I'm all for stand-up environments.
We're built to be walking, several miles a day or more. Human beings are endurance animals. There are some scientists who even believe that our minds work better when we have that kind of physical stimulus on a daily basis.
Modern life has its advantages, but meeting our exercise requirements is not one of them.
You breathe too much too. Or haven't you heard from the EPA that CO2 is a pollutant? :)
But i do agree that daily moderate exercise is healthy. The problem is, you don't get a government grant for stating what everybody already knows.
Remember those experts are merely someone's overpayed, barely grown up, probably still defiant, children.
As for us being long range animal missiles... Perhaps, when we only lived until we were 20 before a bear or our own tribe killed us (can't have two kings or a wise man who might show others what the chief is doing wrong, can we?). Now, once we get past 30 or something, our stealth technology becomes more like a wait-and-see system. As chiefs, we send in the clowns first, and see if they come out alive. If they do, we mosey right on in at a leisurely, I say leisurely pace, boy.
Yeah, I'll start standing to compute as soon as they pry my cold dead butt off the nice comfy captains chair, son, I say son.
I've read that Ernest Hemningway die most (or all) of his writing while standing up.
Hehe, and look what it got him, Bruce. No thanks.
TO: Dr. Helen, the BlogFather, et al.
RE: Is Anything Safe?
As someone else mentioned (above)....
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
RE: Sitting
I do a LOT of that. Working with computers sort of requires it. However, I find I get up and get about—this big, old, four-level house; meetings; shopping; etc—on an irregular but frequent basis.
On the other hand, we've had those incidents of people on half-way-round-the-world flights who were confined to their chairs for eight hours, get up, walk off the plane and fall dead in the concourse from a blood clot.
Getting fat is not a good thing. It has ancillary side effects that are unhealthy. And whereas sitting too much obviously contributes to that, I don't recall seeing anything of a risk assessment in the article.
In other words, this could be more 'scare tactics' on the part of someone who wants to make some sort of name for themselves. What form of name remains to be seen.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. -- Samuel Johnson]
P.S. In other words, Fear not! Go out and LIVE!
Mario when we were walking and moving all day we were also grinding our kneecaps to nothing, getting arthritis at young ages and dying prematurely from... everything. IT kills the immune system.
Do you know how archeologists can tell if some one was wealthy or powerful? They look at the bones. IF they are relatively healthy and have no real arthritis, if there is no unnatural curvature of the spine and no signs of malnutrition then they were wealthy.
Everyone else looked like they had been used for workhorses. Because in most cases they had. IF you have things like repeated stress injuries and all the stuff mentioned above you were probably one of those people who worked from sun up to sun down and died at the ripe old age of 35..
Larry J got it exactly right. Life has a 100% mortality rate.
Now do something useful with it. Burn out, don't rust out.
Give, love, and glorify God until such time as He takes you home. Don't waste any of the time allotted to you on bitterness and hatred.
In related news, it has been discovered that living causes cancer in laboratory rats.
True.
TO: Dr.D
RE: Amen!
Give, love, and glorify God until such time as He takes you home. Don't waste any of the time allotted to you on bitterness and hatred.
Be slow to anger and THEN, do not let the Sun go down on your wrath.
I believe doing the opposite is more of a threat to ones health, vis-a-vis heart-attack, stroke, high-blood pressure, loss of friends and family, etc., etc., etc...., than sitting at a computer work station most of the day.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Life is boot camp. We're all expected to go out and be heroes.]
Now I have an excuse for lying down on the job.
Helen, surely you know the best thing for you and your heart is walking vigorously every day. First things first, then second things, like blogging.
I've placed my computer on a countertop. This way I can type while standing. I work while standing, and pace while I speak on the phone. I agree about the sitting, it's not good.
Honestly, this is news?
People, keep your bodies moving if you want to stay fit and live long.
We really are human animals and the design way back when really did presume movement was necessary for survival.
(Next thing they'll tell us that being indoors breathing recycled air in closed, sealed off environments isn't so good as breathing the natural outdoors air. Something to think about when choosing a profession: the work environment and physical requirements of being passive.)
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