24 ms·

Too much sitting, too little exercise may accelerate biological aging

457 points by devinp 10y ago

EGreg 10y ago
So they found that the group which sat for 10 hours but did 30 mins of exercise had cells just as robust as the group which ... what, sat around for 2 hours? Where are the details? Don't be fooled. Other studies showed that exercise doesn't negate the damage done by sitting: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2015/01/21/health/sitting-will-kill-you/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2015/01/21/heal... http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/expert-answers/sitting/faq-20058005 http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/exp... Get off your butt, especially if you work on a computer. Take breaks to alternate between mental and physical activity.
- nitemice 10y ago
  There are also studies that show that not to be true: http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/any-exercise-is-good-for-you-even-if-its-all-crammed-into-the-weekend/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/any-exercise-is-good-...
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  What's a good movement cycle? Both time and activity? My watch reminds me to move to try and get 250 steps an hour, so hourly I try to get up and get some steps. However that's not an increased heart rate and etc.
  - nickjj 10y ago
    I break up my day with 3x 30min walks where I run about 5min per 30min in spurts. No real science or thought process to the duration. Also spend about 12 hours at a homemade standing desk[1]. It has really improved everything about my life since I started standing about a year ago. [1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/build-a-home-made-standing-desk-for-50-dollars-in-10-easy-steps https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/build-a-home-made-standing-de...
  - ourmandave 10y ago
    I use a Pomodoro Timer. Every 25 minutes I take a break. On the 4th break I have a grilled cheese with tomato sandwich. http://www.food.com/recipe/grilled-cheese-tomato-sandwich-49981 http://www.food.com/recipe/grilled-cheese-tomato-sandwich-49...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - other_herbert 10y ago
    Moving will increase your heart rate... It might no be at v02 max but it will be higher than resting
    - notheguyouthink 10y ago
      Sure, i just meant it's not what i thought was a "meaningful" increase. Ie, i'd like to at least try and offset the damage i'm doing by sitting all day. So i'm wondering if some basic movement every hour will offset that? Or do i really need to get my heart pumping? etc.
- JasonInSeattle 10y ago
  The study linked was about elderly women specifically. It actually sounds pretty obvious when you state it like "the subjects that were more active were more healthy" -- we already know that should be the case generally.
jMyles 10y ago
I'm reluctant to be this commenter, but this honestly reads like "sky is blue" kind of thinking. Worse: it is likely that nobody knows the "best" formula for physical-activity-unto-staying-young. Think about how difficult a problem this is. And even if there were a plausible, scientifically defensible answer in terms of the effect of specific routines on a sample population, it's still very difficult to generally apply it. There's room for good common sense here: do what makes you feel good, what seems to increase your fitness, and what you can do without causing serious injury. Right?
- CardenB 10y ago
  I think (and maybe it's quite obvious) the trick is that exercise makes you feel temporarily worse. It's difficult to evaluate how you'll feel deep into a routine before starting to build those habits.
  - tertius 10y ago
    Depends on your definition of "feel worse". Is it bad to feel out of breath? I quite enjoy it in certain contexts.
    - thret 10y ago
      It also depends on your definition of exercise, and sex as you are hinting doesn't necessarily count :)
    - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
      It's not just definitions, it's also that a lot of people experience actual adverse reactions to exercise [1]. The typical social script is to condescendingly explain to them how they must be doing it wrong, and doctors often have trouble finding a medical explanation (even when it actually is caused by a medical condition), so people often blame themselves for having problems. This is, to put it mildly, not an optimal experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_intolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_intolerance
rokhayakebe 10y ago
Here is something most people can do that will have great impact on your overall health: take a walking break at work. Besides the health benefits it will help you clear your head and possibly find a solution to that problem, get some sun, chat with a co-worker about life, etc....
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I used to hang out with the smokers at my last job. I don't smoke, but I found leaving and coming back to a problem helped me approach it in new ways. I used to always joke that the smoking employees were "cheating", so I could cheat too. Obviously I'd advocate walking over smoking though.
  - AppleCandy 10y ago
    And you got the second hand smoke for free, double cheating!
- jdavis703 10y ago
  I take five minute walking breaks almost every hour. What really helps is to take a slow, leisurely pace, as though you were on vacation strolling through a park and observing the environment around you. At least for me going for a walk at my normal (i.e. fast) pace does not help to clear my head, and I suspect that is true for others too.
rubicon33 10y ago
"We found that women who sat longer did not have shorter telomere length if they exercised for at least 30 minutes a day" In other words, you can't exercise away an unhealthy life style. That's very similar to diet. In fact, the big 3 (diet, exercise, and sleep) taken together are far greater than the sum of their parts. As a developer with a full time job, and side projects, I can easily find myself sitting in a chair for 12+ hours a day. I recently purchased a standing desk, and will be using a timer to remind myself when to break for 15-20 minutes for outdoor exercise. I have forced myself to limit eating out to once per week. And use a sleep tracker to track my sleep, holding myself to getting the right amount, on average, every month.
- richard___ 10y ago
  Are you sure a standing desk helps at all? Is standing enough to negate the negative effects or is movement required
  - NickBusey 10y ago
    I've been using a standing desk for years now, and while you're not exactly doing jumping jacks the whole time, I certainly move a lot more than I do when I sit down. Just shifting weight from leg to leg, changing standing position, occasionally stretching/touching my toes. You end up making many more small movements than when you're just plopped in a chair.
    - Apocryphon 10y ago
      I wonder if it's micro-movements, or if people who are already standing are more likely to walk around more often.
  - reneherse 10y ago
    I found the adjustable stand up desk to be really only part of the ideal solution. Standing all the time aggravated circulation problems, so I added a treadmill specifically designed to be used at a desk. Now it's easy to walk miles a day, at whatever pace fits with the task at hand. The desk is on wheels, so I roll it away from the treadmill when I want to sit. I vary between sitting, perched sitting, standing, walking, and reclining while on the computer. (Working at home.) I also just ordered a Cubii under-desk elliptical, for use at the office where a treadmill and moving around would be intrusive. Like many here, my job and several hobby projects involve working on computers, and all that sedentary time adds up if you don't combat it.
blueside 10y ago
I switched to a standup desk 5 years ago. I got a dog 3 years ago. I don't sit anymore and she forces me to take her for two walks almost everyday. I don't exactly have more energy and I don't feel like I'm going to live forever, but I have noticed I am aging slightly slower than my colleagues who are forced to sit down in their offices for over 12 hours a day.
- nikkwong 10y ago
  How can you notice something like this?
  - adventured 10y ago
    Start having your telomeres measured annually, before and then after switching from one lifestyle to the other.
    - Godel_unicode 10y ago
      ...and then get your sitting colleagues to get theirs measured and compare? Come on.
- jnordwick 10y ago
  Standing desks not really good for you. Just a fad. (F Google amp too) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/28/is-a-stand-up-desk-really-healthier?client=ms-android-boost-us https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl...
  - captainlego 10y ago
    An article that concludes "the benefits of standing desks may be overstated" isn't really the same thing as "standing desks [are] not really good for you." Personally I can say that I've enjoyed the transition. My posture has improved greatly. I have a lot less back/shoulder tension and pain. I find myself naturally more inclined to take breaks and walk around, which has many benefits of itself. It took some getting used to but I often spend ~6 hours a day standing instead of sitting. If you're going to conclude that standing desks are "just a fad" I would hope that you have better evidence than that.
reasonattlm 10y ago
Telomere length as presently measured in white blood cells is a measure of immune health before all other factors: how often are new cells turning up with long telomeres (thus how well is the thymus and bone marrow stem cell population doing), how often are existing cells dividing and shortening their telomeres while doing it (how much stress is the immune system under, how much war is it waging), how many senescent cells are hanging around lowering the average, that sort of thing. Exercise is very well associated with better immune function. So not a surprising result beyond the fact that they actually managed to get a result at all, as telomere length measured this way is actually a pretty terrible metric of aging. The correlations with aging only show up in large populations, and even there you'll find as many failures to identify associations as successes in the literature. For an individual knowing your immune cell telomere length won't tell you a great deal that you don't already know, and nor will changes over time. The numbers will be all over the map, and won't compare usefully at all with other individuals in your circumstances, unless you have a few thousand of them to compare with. If you want a decent biomarker that might actually prove to be actionable, DNA methylation patterns after the model pioneered by Horvath et al look fairly promising. (There's even a Florida company offering an implementation as a service these days). The sitting question is generating a lot of ink in the research community. All sorts of large epidemiological studies have tackled the topic. I think it remains unsettled as to whether it is the sitting or whether it is the inactivity: decent arguments from data could be made either way. If pulling in data from the broader context, however, the inactivity looks more compelling. Accelerometer studies are becoming more common since the miniaturization and cost reduction that came with cell phones, and these are showing that even very low levels of exercise appear to make noticeable differences to outcomes in later life - at the level of housework and puttering around the garden.
pazimzadeh 10y ago
This seems like one of the things that VR/AR might fix. Speaking as someone who tried VR for the first time at the mall yesterday (HTC Vive). Reminds me of Bret Victor's Seeing Spaces http://worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/ http://worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/.
- deminature 10y ago
  Agreed, reading the reviews for popular VR games like Fruit Ninja [1] and Holopoint [2], lots of people are reporting getting a pretty substantial workout from just playing the game. The hypothetical future of gamers being some of the fittest members of society, instead of least active, might not be so implausible. You can also imagine gyms might replace some of their cardio equipment with VR setups, should VR prove to be comparable to existing equipment in workout effectiveness. Even if it wasn't as effective, people might prefer it due to the reduced boredom factor. [1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/486780/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/486780/ [2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/457960/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/457960/
  - matthewbauer 10y ago
    I hate to be too cynical but I recall people saying similar things about the Wii when it first came out. While Wii can give you a work out, I don't think it ever really caught on.
    - Mtinie 10y ago
      Th difference that I see between the two is that the Wii offers an extremely limited number of physical activity variations, whereas VR is effectively open-ended, especially when room-scale setups are considered. Paired with adaptive gameplay and on-body monitors, its orders of magnitudes more useful. Time will tell, but I don't see this as being the same type of misguided hype.
    - nradov 10y ago
      And they said the same thing about Pokemon Go.
david___sh 10y ago
My view might be classified as 'odd', but this is how I look at this problem, and this is what I ended up doing: I do not mind living a decade shorter than those ones who are more active than me. I have tried to be active, but could not fit it into my mentality. Note that I did not say my lifestyle, I said my mentality. I am unable to be active. I was not an active person a a kid, and I am not one as an adult. If I aggregate all those activity hours together with all the stress about being more active (including following the effectiveness of standing desk news), it could maybe worth a couple of years of my life. I subtracted those years from that one decade, and decided that I am ok with not having that part of my life. I continue programming 14 hours a day in the sitting style.
- gautamnarula 10y ago
  This issue that it's not just an exchange of years for being sedentary--the quality of your years will be significantly worse that that of active people--chronic pains, reduced mobility, etc.--and the difference will widen over time as you age.
- zeamaize 10y ago
  Except it's not about a decade. Good friend of mine died at 30 from obesity induced cardiomyopathy. Then we talk about quality of life. I run, lift, and generally workout because I want to maintain quality of life as much as length. My Aunt is 95 and still runs 5k every day. Guess who isn't an invalid in her autumn years?
  - krmboya 10y ago
    This. Quality of life also matters. There's a term I encountered: compression of morbidity, where the onset of chronic illnesses is delayed until one is close to death.
  - careersuicide 10y ago
    "Do squats when you're young so you can stand up from the toilet on your own when you're old."
  - 10y ago
jknoepfler 10y ago
If the headline read "people with advanced cellular age exercise less" no one would read it, but it's a more plausible interpretation of the data.
- graeme 10y ago
  I was inclined to disagree, but seeing the populations involved are elderly, I think you're likely correct. It would be interesting to see what the data shows in younger populations, when almost everyone is able to exercise.
  - mtdewcmu 10y ago
    The data always turn out the same way. Healthier people exercise more. Sicker people exercise less. One person sees sick people sitting and concludes that they are sitting because they're sick. Another person concludes that they're sick because they're sitting. We need better-quality studies to really determine if sitting makes people sick.
    - maskedinvader 10y ago
      "We need better-quality studies to really determine if sitting makes people sick" This. A thousand times this. I ask because as a programmer I spend roughly 10-12 hours sitting at work and roughly 3 hours at home, with maybe an hour of walking each day, and I would like to know if I am prone to aging and being sick more due to my sitting habit or its just wrong interpretation of data and there is no significant correlation.
      - bogomipz 10y ago
        I think if you are walking a solid hour a day every day you are getting your exercise just fine. Even half an hour a day of walking is good.
        antirez 10y ago
Question1101 10y ago
What's the best exercise just to stay healthy? And what frequency? I would hate to exercise for years just to find out it actually harmed my health.
- R_haterade 10y ago
  >Squatz and Oatz. Most of the evidence I'ev seen points toward cardio for longevity. My goal isn't longevity, though. Doing anything s better than doing nothing, so you should pursue the fitness routine that suits your goals, so that's cardio if you want to live forever, but I don't, so I squat.
  - rednerrus 10y ago
    Big boys move big weight.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- mtw 10y ago
  Moderate exercise 150mn weekly. Can be distributed into 3 to 5 weekly sessions. If you are male, you can also do intense instead of moderate exercise. For types of exercise, endurance exercise like running or cross country skiing have been found to extend most lifespan, followed by team sports and last strength training If all that sounds complicated, my advice is to find a job or a hobby that involves moderate exercise. Gardening as a hobby is a good example. Or commit to commute by bike every day
  - NumberCruncher 10y ago
    People who know that I commute at good weather by bike and at bad weather walking (2*70 minutes a day) say I am crazy. People who see my code (I am writing PL/SQL for my living) say that my solutions are crazy simple and efficient. They don't know that all my good ideas came after 45-60 minutes of walking and because of this I always have a pen and paper in my pocket.
lightedman 10y ago
I plan to live to be as old as the mountains, this is why I rip apart mountains, manually.
- lightedman 10y ago
  Apparently people don't realize that this is an on-topic statement? I do mining as one profession, so I get this exercise amount and then some. Maybe I'm just making the sedentary people mad?
intrasight 10y ago
Stand or sit? Which is worse for my butt? If I sit all day, I'll have one of those squashed flat butts. But if I stand all day, will I have droopy butt?
pizza 10y ago
So, telomere length as a measure of aging is something that keeps popping up from my lay-person perspective. It seems important to know about, and I have little awareness of my lack of awareness, so, those of you who live and breathe telomere research.. could shed some light on my ignorance? - what "big-picture" information governs the "big-picture" processes? - critical details swept under the rug with my un-nuanced understanding of the hypothesis, (e.g. "telomeres do not shorten uniformly/monotonically/predictably")? - how does empirical research concerning telomeres compare to the state (or even future) of our understanding/control of aging?
umberway 10y ago
These reports have an empiricist slant to them and there's usually no attempt to explain the result. No doubt there's truth to be found here, but note that mere act of sitting cannot be bad for health, otherwise seated meditation would be bad for health too (which it isn't). I conjecture it is the combination of sitting and hard focus on work or video games which is relevant. The brain withdraws attention from the body (which, being supported, isn't required much beyond breathing and digestion). The result seems to be bad things like inflammation, poor lymph circulation, etc, though I think this isn't understood. I remember it was said that, a few decades back in the UK, bus drivers (seated) had more heart attacks than bus conductors (standing).
winter_blue 10y ago
I work on personal projects, read HN, or do other things on my computer while I'm at home. I'm sitting at a desk and using my computer for 12+ hours a day. I rarely ever exercise, or even move my body much besides my fingers. This is really terrible news for people like me.
- ironmagma 10y ago
  It's never too late to start exercising. :-)
- fapjacks 10y ago
  Do you even lift? It's really easy to start, and it's really easy to get caught up in the habit. It sounds implausible, but I became a much better programmer after I started lifting weights every day.
  - winter_blue 10y ago
    That's pretty cool, I guess exercise helps improve mood a lot. I should definitely give lifting every day a shot. I'm searching for a good set of weights on Amazon, but I'm a bit lost. Can you recommend anything (that's a good for a beginner)?
    - fapjacks 10y ago
      I just bought the cheapest set of metal plates I could find from Amazon when I started. They were pairs of 2.5, 5, 10 and 25 pound plates, and included a bar and two curl bars, and collars for keeping the plates on the bars. For a while in the Army, I literally just lifted cans of .50-cal ammo. When you start, just Google a few simple compound exercises that don't require equipment, and make sure you're getting at least twenty minutes of cardio a day, until you start to get into shape. Once you aren't dying from the run, and are able to lift every day -- because the first few weeks, you will be too sore between sessions to lift every day, and rest is super important to prevent injury -- then look for some kind of bench. Again, here, I just bought the cheapest thing I could find on Amazon that I could reconfigure for different exercises. Altogether, the weights were a couple hundred bucks, and the bench set was a couple hundred bucks. Definitely also search for weight sets on Craigslist. You'd be surprised at the number of people that buy the best gear and then realize they don't like to exercise.
bbarn 10y ago
Except for a few exceptional cases, eating right and exercising helps almost everyone feel and look better.
MrQuincle 10y ago
The ROI: Spending time with mindless exercise: 1/48 part of a year times 70 years is 1.46 years. If true that's around 8 more years in return for every 1.5 you put in. Nice ROI. :-)
- misja111 10y ago
  It's not just the years you gain in your life expectancy, your quality of life is also much higher in the years you spend healthily instead of being sick. Apart from that, even if you don't consider health issues, a good physical condition will give you more energy and having more energy makes life more fun.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    plus more attractivity to other sex, which means more sex/better choice of quality partners... the list of positives is endless
- antisthenes 10y ago
  And the ROI on collecting social security as well. If you were going to die at 80 instead of 70, that's a minimum of 4x increase in SS benefits you can collect.
Yaggo 10y ago
I sit ~10 hours daily, including 2+ hours driving. I'm naturally skinny but haven't done much physical exercises in recent years ("busy"). Now, at age of 34, I'm starting to realize that my body won't last forever and finally started to exercise few times per week, after I found motivating enough guide¹. It amazing how much more energized it makes you feel. [1] https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro
- antocv 10y ago
  Fantastic, thank you so much!
- amelius 10y ago
  Nice, but if you have body fat then you still need another guide to lose it. I'd rather have a guide that deals with muscles and fat simultaneously. From the linked website: > Recognize that all these guys have low body fat, which helps reveal their muscles. You will not actually lose fat by lifting weights, so weight loss is a separate goal altogether.
  - mlpinit 10y ago
    This [1] book has great reviews and it addresses the body fat issue. It mentions that fat is actually good for building strength/muscle. So if health and strength are your primary reasons, this book may help with that. 1. https://goo.gl/OrXMdJ https://goo.gl/OrXMdJ
  - hoers 10y ago
    Having more muscle mass leads to your body burning more calories over the course of the day so it does have an effect on reducing fat to some extent.
  - driverdan 10y ago
    > You will not actually lose fat by lifting weights Of course you can lose fat by lifting weights. Calories in < calories out = weight loss (hopefully fat). Any type of physical activity increases calories out.
finid 10y ago
For almost a year I spent practically all day sitting in front of a PC monitor (used to work at home), with no exercise. Then I developed pain in both knees, worse on the left knee. I figured that it was because of too much sitting, so I got a standing desk. In about a month, knee pains gone, completely. Never even bothered to go see a doctor. After standing for too long, I started having pains in my lower back. Solution? I got a bar stool, so I now alternate between standing and sitting. What I learnt is that our body's joints (knee, elbow, waist, ankle, etc) were not designed to remain in one position for too long. Movement lubricates them.
- ahstro 10y ago
  >Solution? You said it yourself: "[...] our body's joints [...] were not designed to remain in one position for too long." Try a pomodoro-esque schedule (25 min work, 5 min rest) where you get up and move around, maybe do some stretches and warm up exercises?
- RyanMcGreal 10y ago
  I'm in my mid-40s. For about 15 years, I sat at a desk writing code and slowly dying. Three and a half years ago, I started running three times a week. Then, a little over two years ago, I switched to a standing desk. I've never looked back. To avoid stiffening up, I play music (usually progressive house or something similarly rhythmic-but-not-too-distracting) into noise-cancelling headphones and let the music move me. Because I'm not standing still, I don't experience lower back pain, stiffness, soreness or anything else. If I had to go back to sitting now, it would kill me. [] NB I wrenched my back last autumn by twisting in a funny way while painting a ceiling with a roller on an extension pole. After a couple of weeks of Advil and an aggressive regimen of back exercises and stretches, my back pain was completely gone and I feel better than ever.
  - ansible 10y ago
    Yep. I'm usually listening to Frisky Radio for something that can help blot out the noise from the rest of the office, and give me a little energy. I've been doing the standing desk for about 4 years now. I just bodged something together for my setup, but I'm thinking about investing in a VariDesk system instead. When I sit, I'll probably use an exercise ball instead of a chair.
Philipp__ 10y ago
I am fairly young, 22, mostly sitting in front of the computer, even sitting while studying. So it could be said I sit around 10 hours per day. When I was younger, up until the end of high school, I used to do sports, but since I got to college, I simply stopped caring. My body is skinny, really skinny, I weight 61kg, and I had that weight for last 7 years. But one day I thought maybe I should do something, not for the looks, but for the feel of my body, and physical body exhaustion just feels healthy sometimes. So I thought running might be what I am looking for. Any advice on that? I am sure someone is doing it so (with lower body weight), any advice or thought on that? Btw when it's not winter, I skate, especially in summer, I use to skate all night, for 5-6 hours.
- Xiol 10y ago
  Couch to 5K should help. http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/c25k/Pages/couch-to-5k.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/c25k/Pages/couch-to-5k.aspx
  - Philipp__ 10y ago
    I will take a look at this, thanks!
  - snowcrshd 10y ago
    +1 for C25k Pretty solid program to get started running. After that, I'd suggest doing Bridge to 10K [1] Surprisingly to me at the time, Bridge to 10K was way easier than C25k [1]: https://blog.bluefinapps.com/about-bridge-to-10k/ https://blog.bluefinapps.com/about-bridge-to-10k/
    - suprfnk 10y ago
      Yep, starting running and creating and maintaining consistency in your workouts is way harder than slowly upping your mileage from 5k to 10k.
    - bryanlarsen 10y ago
      AFAICT, all of the health benefits of running come in the first 5K or 10K. Running longer distances becomes detrimental. Save your joints, preserve your muscles and keep your body fat at a healthy level (especially important for women). Rather than increasing your distance, concentrate on increasing your speed.
johndoe4589 10y ago
It could also very well be that those participants in the study who didn't "exercise" were lonely, were more or less alone or single, had no one to go take a walk with, have lost their closest relatives, have lost their significant other, etc. All those could factor in as much if not more than the "exercise". (and hence spend much more time indoors, probably watching the telly, and then things go from bad to worse in old age as health problems cascade) And I quote "exercise" because it's not clear from the article if it's something like gymnastics, or the participant reported 30 min of daily walking and other activities like cycling. Point being, you could be unhappy and exercise a little bit every day and still be worse off than someone who's happy and loves to sit and watch the bird sings. Who knows. I'd wager these days the quality of our food, and the bonds we have with people around us is far more incidental on our lifespan. Here I am thinking of the less explored perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of... Quoting > "One of the tragic outcomes of loneliness is that people turn to their televisions for consolation: two-fifths of older people report that the one-eyed god is their principal company."
roryisok 10y ago
I have a standing desk for work, and I feel it has improved my health noticeably, but I still am sceptical of studies like this.
- pawadu 10y ago
  Does a standing desk make any difference? Are there any studies done on this?
  - roryisok 10y ago
    There are a lot of studies that "sitting down is bad for you", so it stands to reason that standing up instead would be better that sitting down for 8 hours a day at a desk. I definitely feel healthier from it, but I don't have any solid evidence to back it up myself.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      There are lots of studies that standing all day is bad for you, which is why special flooring and shoes are a thing. http://www.newark.com/anti-fatigue-mats http://www.newark.com/anti-fatigue-mats
      - roryisok 10y ago
        absolutely. and I have both!
kingkawn 10y ago
This article (only a summary in the link below because we still live in the dark ages of research paywalls) from the Annals of Internal Medicine claims via meta-analysis that exposure to sitting will harm your health regardless of exercise. http://annals.org/aim/article/2091327/sedentary-time-its-association-risk-disease-incidence-mortality-hospitalization-adults http://annals.org/aim/article/2091327/sedentary-time-its-ass...
AhtiK 10y ago
Jumping rope. 10min jumping can be as effective as 30min running. Super cheap. Can travel with you anywhere. Does not depend on weather.
- aedron 10y ago
  By far my favorite exercise. Unfortunately I live in an apartment building with sensitive downstairs neighbors...
  - Tharkun 10y ago
    So what? It's only ten minutes. Are you also going to give up on sex because your neighbours might hear?
db1 10y ago
Anecdote: I used to work from home and pretty much sat down the whole day. I would still go for a run once or twice a week, but I would quickly experience a sharp pain in my lower back that made it really hard to run. Some Googling led me to believe that my tight hip flexors might be causing my back pain, and that sitting down all day could lead to tight hip flexors. I've since started working for a couple of hours per day at a ghetto standing desk and my back pains are pretty much gone. Another thing that I really highly recommend is Joe DeFranco's stetching programme, Limber 11 (https://youtu.be/FSSDLDhbacc https://youtu.be/FSSDLDhbacc). You can do the whole thing in about 10 minutes, and it leaves your whole body feeling nice and relaxed.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  I'll throw in my own anecdote and say I can confirm the whole back issue. I've recently stopped my weight lifting program which I put focus on my legs and lower back. My back pain reduced while doing the program but just two weeks off and I'm feeling pain from just adjusting in my seat now. I can't wait to get back to it soon.
- ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
  Similar situation here (also years of powerlifting pretty much === lower back issues of some sort). Standing desk + inversion table made a huge difference for me.
iask 10y ago
I bought a teeter hangup about a week ago. So far it helps. After a long day, spend 5 minutes inverted. What I also do is running, in the office. Yes! Our building is pretty big, whenever I go to one of the office on the far side, I do some running. I even sprint up the stairs when I can.
Michael_m 10y ago
Just some balanced diet and some physical workout like jogging/rope jumping every otherday is enough to keep you fit unless you are in really very very bad shape.
EternalData 10y ago
My solution to this is to set myself weekly goals in terms of steps. It changes your routine when you do that. At 12.7k steps a day, I basically have to elongate my walking commute, and find create ways to stand up and move all day.
tomerific 10y ago
All, this isn't a legitimate news source -- heck they're not even a legitimate scientific group. It is a dude that is republishing some data.
ergot 10y ago
I do yoga for my back and ensure there's good lumbar support on any chair I sit on. They say sitting is the 'new cancer' and prevention is often the way to go. Here's an interesting article on some yoga exercises you can try for back pain: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/yoga-exercises-for-back-pain.html http://www.buzzle.com/articles/yoga-exercises-for-back-pain....
conjectures 10y ago
For the time constrained: go running. You can do it almost anywhere, with minimal equipment. It's a means of transport. It's very efficient in terms of calories per minute. Downside is you end up looking like a runner not a buff dude. You can level up the intensity if you have less time etc.
- foobarrio 10y ago
  Running isn't easy for everyone. Runners seem to be a self-selecting group of people who have good biomechanics or a naturally good running form. I had to teach myself how to run. Even though I was careful with my mileage ramp up, stretched, and worked on technique I still had to deal with all kinds of nagging injuries and still have runner's knee (patella femoral syndrome). I got my 5k down into the 23 minute range and could run 8-9 miles at a pop without getting winded. Still the nagging injuries persist. For people can "just" run it's to understand that running is really hard for some people(and not just overweight people). That being said, running is the best. I actually enjoy doing it even with all the nagging injuries.
emptysongglass 10y ago
This doesn’t hold up to all sedentary modes of living. Monks sit all day but appear in some cases to have cells absurdly younger than chronological baseline.
- maxander 10y ago
  Could you provide a reference? What I've heard of monastic life sounds relatively actve- a complicated schedule of chores and prayer and other obligations, all in different places. It's hard to inagine that goes with the sort of eight-hour sit an office worker is prone to.
Gbemitj2017 10y ago
Especially now that prolong sitting are stressful on obile or laptop devices often times with uncontrolled radiation coupled with the fact that backache is very likely sequel because of the big weight on it & imagine how many joints are strained in this very common yet vulnerable posture & unwisely used without exercise even within the attic or office! It's precociously an aging grind we must all review our sitting routines & punctuate it with indoor workouts or simply move briskly within a small space I'm in this category too though I can be bold to move out JUST TO STROLL half 1km away from my attic that doubles as my lodging after a bungalow opportunity with big lawn & manho tree eloped to someone else! Gbemisoye TIJANI Healthnewsworker ,life & health coach @gbemi_gbemi @bymst2bymst ALLIanceglobal dis,

457 points by devinp 10y ago

EGreg 10y ago

So they found that the group which sat for 10 hours but did 30 mins of exercise had cells just as robust as the group which ... what, sat around for 2 hours? Where are the details? Don't be fooled. Other studies showed that exercise doesn't negate the damage done by sitting: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2015/01/21/health/sitting-will-kill-you/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2015/01/21/heal... http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/expert-answers/sitting/faq-20058005 http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/exp... Get off your butt, especially if you work on a computer. Take breaks to alternate between mental and physical activity.

nitemice 10y ago
There are also studies that show that not to be true: http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/any-exercise-is-good-for-you-even-if-its-all-crammed-into-the-weekend/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/any-exercise-is-good-...
notheguyouthink 10y ago
What's a good movement cycle? Both time and activity? My watch reminds me to move to try and get 250 steps an hour, so hourly I try to get up and get some steps. However that's not an increased heart rate and etc.
- nickjj 10y ago
  I break up my day with 3x 30min walks where I run about 5min per 30min in spurts. No real science or thought process to the duration. Also spend about 12 hours at a homemade standing desk[1]. It has really improved everything about my life since I started standing about a year ago. [1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/build-a-home-made-standing-desk-for-50-dollars-in-10-easy-steps https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/build-a-home-made-standing-de...
- ourmandave 10y ago
  I use a Pomodoro Timer. Every 25 minutes I take a break. On the 4th break I have a grilled cheese with tomato sandwich. http://www.food.com/recipe/grilled-cheese-tomato-sandwich-49981 http://www.food.com/recipe/grilled-cheese-tomato-sandwich-49...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- other_herbert 10y ago
  Moving will increase your heart rate... It might no be at v02 max but it will be higher than resting
  - notheguyouthink 10y ago
    Sure, i just meant it's not what i thought was a "meaningful" increase. Ie, i'd like to at least try and offset the damage i'm doing by sitting all day. So i'm wondering if some basic movement every hour will offset that? Or do i really need to get my heart pumping? etc.
JasonInSeattle 10y ago
The study linked was about elderly women specifically. It actually sounds pretty obvious when you state it like "the subjects that were more active were more healthy" -- we already know that should be the case generally.

jMyles 10y ago

I'm reluctant to be this commenter, but this honestly reads like "sky is blue" kind of thinking. Worse: it is likely that nobody knows the "best" formula for physical-activity-unto-staying-young. Think about how difficult a problem this is. And even if there were a plausible, scientifically defensible answer in terms of the effect of specific routines on a sample population, it's still very difficult to generally apply it. There's room for good common sense here: do what makes you feel good, what seems to increase your fitness, and what you can do without causing serious injury. Right?

CardenB 10y ago
I think (and maybe it's quite obvious) the trick is that exercise makes you feel temporarily worse. It's difficult to evaluate how you'll feel deep into a routine before starting to build those habits.
- tertius 10y ago
  Depends on your definition of "feel worse". Is it bad to feel out of breath? I quite enjoy it in certain contexts.
  - thret 10y ago
    It also depends on your definition of exercise, and sex as you are hinting doesn't necessarily count :)
  - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
    It's not just definitions, it's also that a lot of people experience actual adverse reactions to exercise [1]. The typical social script is to condescendingly explain to them how they must be doing it wrong, and doctors often have trouble finding a medical explanation (even when it actually is caused by a medical condition), so people often blame themselves for having problems. This is, to put it mildly, not an optimal experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_intolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_intolerance

rokhayakebe 10y ago

Here is something most people can do that will have great impact on your overall health: take a walking break at work. Besides the health benefits it will help you clear your head and possibly find a solution to that problem, get some sun, chat with a co-worker about life, etc....

CaptSpify 10y ago
I used to hang out with the smokers at my last job. I don't smoke, but I found leaving and coming back to a problem helped me approach it in new ways. I used to always joke that the smoking employees were "cheating", so I could cheat too. Obviously I'd advocate walking over smoking though.
- AppleCandy 10y ago
  And you got the second hand smoke for free, double cheating!
jdavis703 10y ago
I take five minute walking breaks almost every hour. What really helps is to take a slow, leisurely pace, as though you were on vacation strolling through a park and observing the environment around you. At least for me going for a walk at my normal (i.e. fast) pace does not help to clear my head, and I suspect that is true for others too.

rubicon33 10y ago

"We found that women who sat longer did not have shorter telomere length if they exercised for at least 30 minutes a day" In other words, you can't exercise away an unhealthy life style. That's very similar to diet. In fact, the big 3 (diet, exercise, and sleep) taken together are far greater than the sum of their parts. As a developer with a full time job, and side projects, I can easily find myself sitting in a chair for 12+ hours a day. I recently purchased a standing desk, and will be using a timer to remind myself when to break for 15-20 minutes for outdoor exercise. I have forced myself to limit eating out to once per week. And use a sleep tracker to track my sleep, holding myself to getting the right amount, on average, every month.

richard___ 10y ago
Are you sure a standing desk helps at all? Is standing enough to negate the negative effects or is movement required
- NickBusey 10y ago
  I've been using a standing desk for years now, and while you're not exactly doing jumping jacks the whole time, I certainly move a lot more than I do when I sit down. Just shifting weight from leg to leg, changing standing position, occasionally stretching/touching my toes. You end up making many more small movements than when you're just plopped in a chair.
  - Apocryphon 10y ago
    I wonder if it's micro-movements, or if people who are already standing are more likely to walk around more often.
- reneherse 10y ago
  I found the adjustable stand up desk to be really only part of the ideal solution. Standing all the time aggravated circulation problems, so I added a treadmill specifically designed to be used at a desk. Now it's easy to walk miles a day, at whatever pace fits with the task at hand. The desk is on wheels, so I roll it away from the treadmill when I want to sit. I vary between sitting, perched sitting, standing, walking, and reclining while on the computer. (Working at home.) I also just ordered a Cubii under-desk elliptical, for use at the office where a treadmill and moving around would be intrusive. Like many here, my job and several hobby projects involve working on computers, and all that sedentary time adds up if you don't combat it.

blueside 10y ago

I switched to a standup desk 5 years ago. I got a dog 3 years ago. I don't sit anymore and she forces me to take her for two walks almost everyday. I don't exactly have more energy and I don't feel like I'm going to live forever, but I have noticed I am aging slightly slower than my colleagues who are forced to sit down in their offices for over 12 hours a day.

nikkwong 10y ago
How can you notice something like this?
- adventured 10y ago
  Start having your telomeres measured annually, before and then after switching from one lifestyle to the other.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    ...and then get your sitting colleagues to get theirs measured and compare? Come on.
jnordwick 10y ago
Standing desks not really good for you. Just a fad. (F Google amp too) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/28/is-a-stand-up-desk-really-healthier?client=ms-android-boost-us https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl...
- captainlego 10y ago
  An article that concludes "the benefits of standing desks may be overstated" isn't really the same thing as "standing desks [are] not really good for you." Personally I can say that I've enjoyed the transition. My posture has improved greatly. I have a lot less back/shoulder tension and pain. I find myself naturally more inclined to take breaks and walk around, which has many benefits of itself. It took some getting used to but I often spend ~6 hours a day standing instead of sitting. If you're going to conclude that standing desks are "just a fad" I would hope that you have better evidence than that.

reasonattlm 10y ago

Telomere length as presently measured in white blood cells is a measure of immune health before all other factors: how often are new cells turning up with long telomeres (thus how well is the thymus and bone marrow stem cell population doing), how often are existing cells dividing and shortening their telomeres while doing it (how much stress is the immune system under, how much war is it waging), how many senescent cells are hanging around lowering the average, that sort of thing. Exercise is very well associated with better immune function. So not a surprising result beyond the fact that they actually managed to get a result at all, as telomere length measured this way is actually a pretty terrible metric of aging. The correlations with aging only show up in large populations, and even there you'll find as many failures to identify associations as successes in the literature. For an individual knowing your immune cell telomere length won't tell you a great deal that you don't already know, and nor will changes over time. The numbers will be all over the map, and won't compare usefully at all with other individuals in your circumstances, unless you have a few thousand of them to compare with. If you want a decent biomarker that might actually prove to be actionable, DNA methylation patterns after the model pioneered by Horvath et al look fairly promising. (There's even a Florida company offering an implementation as a service these days). The sitting question is generating a lot of ink in the research community. All sorts of large epidemiological studies have tackled the topic. I think it remains unsettled as to whether it is the sitting or whether it is the inactivity: decent arguments from data could be made either way. If pulling in data from the broader context, however, the inactivity looks more compelling. Accelerometer studies are becoming more common since the miniaturization and cost reduction that came with cell phones, and these are showing that even very low levels of exercise appear to make noticeable differences to outcomes in later life - at the level of housework and puttering around the garden.

pazimzadeh 10y ago

This seems like one of the things that VR/AR might fix. Speaking as someone who tried VR for the first time at the mall yesterday (HTC Vive). Reminds me of Bret Victor's Seeing Spaces http://worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/ http://worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/.

deminature 10y ago
Agreed, reading the reviews for popular VR games like Fruit Ninja [1] and Holopoint [2], lots of people are reporting getting a pretty substantial workout from just playing the game. The hypothetical future of gamers being some of the fittest members of society, instead of least active, might not be so implausible. You can also imagine gyms might replace some of their cardio equipment with VR setups, should VR prove to be comparable to existing equipment in workout effectiveness. Even if it wasn't as effective, people might prefer it due to the reduced boredom factor. [1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/486780/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/486780/ [2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/457960/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/457960/
- matthewbauer 10y ago
  I hate to be too cynical but I recall people saying similar things about the Wii when it first came out. While Wii can give you a work out, I don't think it ever really caught on.
  - Mtinie 10y ago
    Th difference that I see between the two is that the Wii offers an extremely limited number of physical activity variations, whereas VR is effectively open-ended, especially when room-scale setups are considered. Paired with adaptive gameplay and on-body monitors, its orders of magnitudes more useful. Time will tell, but I don't see this as being the same type of misguided hype.
  - nradov 10y ago
    And they said the same thing about Pokemon Go.

david___sh 10y ago

My view might be classified as 'odd', but this is how I look at this problem, and this is what I ended up doing: I do not mind living a decade shorter than those ones who are more active than me. I have tried to be active, but could not fit it into my mentality. Note that I did not say my lifestyle, I said my mentality. I am unable to be active. I was not an active person a a kid, and I am not one as an adult. If I aggregate all those activity hours together with all the stress about being more active (including following the effectiveness of standing desk news), it could maybe worth a couple of years of my life. I subtracted those years from that one decade, and decided that I am ok with not having that part of my life. I continue programming 14 hours a day in the sitting style.

gautamnarula 10y ago
This issue that it's not just an exchange of years for being sedentary--the quality of your years will be significantly worse that that of active people--chronic pains, reduced mobility, etc.--and the difference will widen over time as you age.
zeamaize 10y ago
Except it's not about a decade. Good friend of mine died at 30 from obesity induced cardiomyopathy. Then we talk about quality of life. I run, lift, and generally workout because I want to maintain quality of life as much as length. My Aunt is 95 and still runs 5k every day. Guess who isn't an invalid in her autumn years?
- krmboya 10y ago
  This. Quality of life also matters. There's a term I encountered: compression of morbidity, where the onset of chronic illnesses is delayed until one is close to death.
- careersuicide 10y ago
  "Do squats when you're young so you can stand up from the toilet on your own when you're old."
- 10y ago

jknoepfler 10y ago

If the headline read "people with advanced cellular age exercise less" no one would read it, but it's a more plausible interpretation of the data.

graeme 10y ago
I was inclined to disagree, but seeing the populations involved are elderly, I think you're likely correct. It would be interesting to see what the data shows in younger populations, when almost everyone is able to exercise.
- mtdewcmu 10y ago
  The data always turn out the same way. Healthier people exercise more. Sicker people exercise less. One person sees sick people sitting and concludes that they are sitting because they're sick. Another person concludes that they're sick because they're sitting. We need better-quality studies to really determine if sitting makes people sick.
  - maskedinvader 10y ago
    "We need better-quality studies to really determine if sitting makes people sick" This. A thousand times this. I ask because as a programmer I spend roughly 10-12 hours sitting at work and roughly 3 hours at home, with maybe an hour of walking each day, and I would like to know if I am prone to aging and being sick more due to my sitting habit or its just wrong interpretation of data and there is no significant correlation.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      I think if you are walking a solid hour a day every day you are getting your exercise just fine. Even half an hour a day of walking is good.
      - antirez 10y ago

Question1101 10y ago

What's the best exercise just to stay healthy? And what frequency? I would hate to exercise for years just to find out it actually harmed my health.

R_haterade 10y ago
>Squatz and Oatz. Most of the evidence I'ev seen points toward cardio for longevity. My goal isn't longevity, though. Doing anything s better than doing nothing, so you should pursue the fitness routine that suits your goals, so that's cardio if you want to live forever, but I don't, so I squat.
- rednerrus 10y ago
  Big boys move big weight.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
mtw 10y ago
Moderate exercise 150mn weekly. Can be distributed into 3 to 5 weekly sessions. If you are male, you can also do intense instead of moderate exercise. For types of exercise, endurance exercise like running or cross country skiing have been found to extend most lifespan, followed by team sports and last strength training If all that sounds complicated, my advice is to find a job or a hobby that involves moderate exercise. Gardening as a hobby is a good example. Or commit to commute by bike every day
- NumberCruncher 10y ago
  People who know that I commute at good weather by bike and at bad weather walking (2*70 minutes a day) say I am crazy. People who see my code (I am writing PL/SQL for my living) say that my solutions are crazy simple and efficient. They don't know that all my good ideas came after 45-60 minutes of walking and because of this I always have a pen and paper in my pocket.

lightedman 10y ago

I plan to live to be as old as the mountains, this is why I rip apart mountains, manually.

lightedman 10y ago
Apparently people don't realize that this is an on-topic statement? I do mining as one profession, so I get this exercise amount and then some. Maybe I'm just making the sedentary people mad?

intrasight 10y ago

Stand or sit? Which is worse for my butt? If I sit all day, I'll have one of those squashed flat butts. But if I stand all day, will I have droopy butt?

pizza 10y ago

So, telomere length as a measure of aging is something that keeps popping up from my lay-person perspective. It seems important to know about, and I have little awareness of my lack of awareness, so, those of you who live and breathe telomere research.. could shed some light on my ignorance? - what "big-picture" information governs the "big-picture" processes? - critical details swept under the rug with my un-nuanced understanding of the hypothesis, (e.g. "telomeres do not shorten uniformly/monotonically/predictably")? - how does empirical research concerning telomeres compare to the state (or even future) of our understanding/control of aging?

umberway 10y ago

These reports have an empiricist slant to them and there's usually no attempt to explain the result. No doubt there's truth to be found here, but note that mere act of sitting cannot be bad for health, otherwise seated meditation would be bad for health too (which it isn't). I conjecture it is the combination of sitting and hard focus on work or video games which is relevant. The brain withdraws attention from the body (which, being supported, isn't required much beyond breathing and digestion). The result seems to be bad things like inflammation, poor lymph circulation, etc, though I think this isn't understood. I remember it was said that, a few decades back in the UK, bus drivers (seated) had more heart attacks than bus conductors (standing).

winter_blue 10y ago

I work on personal projects, read HN, or do other things on my computer while I'm at home. I'm sitting at a desk and using my computer for 12+ hours a day. I rarely ever exercise, or even move my body much besides my fingers. This is really terrible news for people like me.

ironmagma 10y ago
It's never too late to start exercising. :-)
fapjacks 10y ago
Do you even lift? It's really easy to start, and it's really easy to get caught up in the habit. It sounds implausible, but I became a much better programmer after I started lifting weights every day.
- winter_blue 10y ago
  That's pretty cool, I guess exercise helps improve mood a lot. I should definitely give lifting every day a shot. I'm searching for a good set of weights on Amazon, but I'm a bit lost. Can you recommend anything (that's a good for a beginner)?
  - fapjacks 10y ago
    I just bought the cheapest set of metal plates I could find from Amazon when I started. They were pairs of 2.5, 5, 10 and 25 pound plates, and included a bar and two curl bars, and collars for keeping the plates on the bars. For a while in the Army, I literally just lifted cans of .50-cal ammo. When you start, just Google a few simple compound exercises that don't require equipment, and make sure you're getting at least twenty minutes of cardio a day, until you start to get into shape. Once you aren't dying from the run, and are able to lift every day -- because the first few weeks, you will be too sore between sessions to lift every day, and rest is super important to prevent injury -- then look for some kind of bench. Again, here, I just bought the cheapest thing I could find on Amazon that I could reconfigure for different exercises. Altogether, the weights were a couple hundred bucks, and the bench set was a couple hundred bucks. Definitely also search for weight sets on Craigslist. You'd be surprised at the number of people that buy the best gear and then realize they don't like to exercise.

bbarn 10y ago

Except for a few exceptional cases, eating right and exercising helps almost everyone feel and look better.

MrQuincle 10y ago

The ROI: Spending time with mindless exercise: 1/48 part of a year times 70 years is 1.46 years. If true that's around 8 more years in return for every 1.5 you put in. Nice ROI. :-)

misja111 10y ago
It's not just the years you gain in your life expectancy, your quality of life is also much higher in the years you spend healthily instead of being sick. Apart from that, even if you don't consider health issues, a good physical condition will give you more energy and having more energy makes life more fun.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  plus more attractivity to other sex, which means more sex/better choice of quality partners... the list of positives is endless
antisthenes 10y ago
And the ROI on collecting social security as well. If you were going to die at 80 instead of 70, that's a minimum of 4x increase in SS benefits you can collect.

Yaggo 10y ago

I sit ~10 hours daily, including 2+ hours driving. I'm naturally skinny but haven't done much physical exercises in recent years ("busy"). Now, at age of 34, I'm starting to realize that my body won't last forever and finally started to exercise few times per week, after I found motivating enough guide¹. It amazing how much more energized it makes you feel. [1] https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro

antocv 10y ago
Fantastic, thank you so much!
amelius 10y ago
Nice, but if you have body fat then you still need another guide to lose it. I'd rather have a guide that deals with muscles and fat simultaneously. From the linked website: > Recognize that all these guys have low body fat, which helps reveal their muscles. You will not actually lose fat by lifting weights, so weight loss is a separate goal altogether.
- mlpinit 10y ago
  This [1] book has great reviews and it addresses the body fat issue. It mentions that fat is actually good for building strength/muscle. So if health and strength are your primary reasons, this book may help with that. 1. https://goo.gl/OrXMdJ https://goo.gl/OrXMdJ
- hoers 10y ago
  Having more muscle mass leads to your body burning more calories over the course of the day so it does have an effect on reducing fat to some extent.
- driverdan 10y ago
  > You will not actually lose fat by lifting weights Of course you can lose fat by lifting weights. Calories in < calories out = weight loss (hopefully fat). Any type of physical activity increases calories out.

finid 10y ago

For almost a year I spent practically all day sitting in front of a PC monitor (used to work at home), with no exercise. Then I developed pain in both knees, worse on the left knee. I figured that it was because of too much sitting, so I got a standing desk. In about a month, knee pains gone, completely. Never even bothered to go see a doctor. After standing for too long, I started having pains in my lower back. Solution? I got a bar stool, so I now alternate between standing and sitting. What I learnt is that our body's joints (knee, elbow, waist, ankle, etc) were not designed to remain in one position for too long. Movement lubricates them.

ahstro 10y ago
>Solution? You said it yourself: "[...] our body's joints [...] were not designed to remain in one position for too long." Try a pomodoro-esque schedule (25 min work, 5 min rest) where you get up and move around, maybe do some stretches and warm up exercises?
RyanMcGreal 10y ago
I'm in my mid-40s. For about 15 years, I sat at a desk writing code and slowly dying. Three and a half years ago, I started running three times a week. Then, a little over two years ago, I switched to a standing desk. I've never looked back. To avoid stiffening up, I play music (usually progressive house or something similarly rhythmic-but-not-too-distracting) into noise-cancelling headphones and let the music move me. Because I'm not standing still, I don't experience lower back pain, stiffness, soreness or anything else. If I had to go back to sitting now, it would kill me. [] NB I wrenched my back last autumn by twisting in a funny way while painting a ceiling with a roller on an extension pole. After a couple of weeks of Advil and an aggressive regimen of back exercises and stretches, my back pain was completely gone and I feel better than ever.
- ansible 10y ago
  Yep. I'm usually listening to Frisky Radio for something that can help blot out the noise from the rest of the office, and give me a little energy. I've been doing the standing desk for about 4 years now. I just bodged something together for my setup, but I'm thinking about investing in a VariDesk system instead. When I sit, I'll probably use an exercise ball instead of a chair.

Philipp__ 10y ago

I am fairly young, 22, mostly sitting in front of the computer, even sitting while studying. So it could be said I sit around 10 hours per day. When I was younger, up until the end of high school, I used to do sports, but since I got to college, I simply stopped caring. My body is skinny, really skinny, I weight 61kg, and I had that weight for last 7 years. But one day I thought maybe I should do something, not for the looks, but for the feel of my body, and physical body exhaustion just feels healthy sometimes. So I thought running might be what I am looking for. Any advice on that? I am sure someone is doing it so (with lower body weight), any advice or thought on that? Btw when it's not winter, I skate, especially in summer, I use to skate all night, for 5-6 hours.

Xiol 10y ago
Couch to 5K should help. http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/c25k/Pages/couch-to-5k.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/c25k/Pages/couch-to-5k.aspx
- Philipp__ 10y ago
  I will take a look at this, thanks!
- snowcrshd 10y ago
  +1 for C25k Pretty solid program to get started running. After that, I'd suggest doing Bridge to 10K [1] Surprisingly to me at the time, Bridge to 10K was way easier than C25k [1]: https://blog.bluefinapps.com/about-bridge-to-10k/ https://blog.bluefinapps.com/about-bridge-to-10k/
  - suprfnk 10y ago
    Yep, starting running and creating and maintaining consistency in your workouts is way harder than slowly upping your mileage from 5k to 10k.
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    AFAICT, all of the health benefits of running come in the first 5K or 10K. Running longer distances becomes detrimental. Save your joints, preserve your muscles and keep your body fat at a healthy level (especially important for women). Rather than increasing your distance, concentrate on increasing your speed.

johndoe4589 10y ago

It could also very well be that those participants in the study who didn't "exercise" were lonely, were more or less alone or single, had no one to go take a walk with, have lost their closest relatives, have lost their significant other, etc. All those could factor in as much if not more than the "exercise". (and hence spend much more time indoors, probably watching the telly, and then things go from bad to worse in old age as health problems cascade) And I quote "exercise" because it's not clear from the article if it's something like gymnastics, or the participant reported 30 min of daily walking and other activities like cycling. Point being, you could be unhappy and exercise a little bit every day and still be worse off than someone who's happy and loves to sit and watch the bird sings. Who knows. I'd wager these days the quality of our food, and the bonds we have with people around us is far more incidental on our lifespan. Here I am thinking of the less explored perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of... Quoting > "One of the tragic outcomes of loneliness is that people turn to their televisions for consolation: two-fifths of older people report that the one-eyed god is their principal company."

roryisok 10y ago

I have a standing desk for work, and I feel it has improved my health noticeably, but I still am sceptical of studies like this.

pawadu 10y ago
Does a standing desk make any difference? Are there any studies done on this?
- roryisok 10y ago
  There are a lot of studies that "sitting down is bad for you", so it stands to reason that standing up instead would be better that sitting down for 8 hours a day at a desk. I definitely feel healthier from it, but I don't have any solid evidence to back it up myself.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    There are lots of studies that standing all day is bad for you, which is why special flooring and shoes are a thing. http://www.newark.com/anti-fatigue-mats http://www.newark.com/anti-fatigue-mats
    - roryisok 10y ago
      absolutely. and I have both!

kingkawn 10y ago

This article (only a summary in the link below because we still live in the dark ages of research paywalls) from the Annals of Internal Medicine claims via meta-analysis that exposure to sitting will harm your health regardless of exercise. http://annals.org/aim/article/2091327/sedentary-time-its-association-risk-disease-incidence-mortality-hospitalization-adults http://annals.org/aim/article/2091327/sedentary-time-its-ass...

AhtiK 10y ago

Jumping rope. 10min jumping can be as effective as 30min running. Super cheap. Can travel with you anywhere. Does not depend on weather.

aedron 10y ago
By far my favorite exercise. Unfortunately I live in an apartment building with sensitive downstairs neighbors...
- Tharkun 10y ago
  So what? It's only ten minutes. Are you also going to give up on sex because your neighbours might hear?

db1 10y ago

Anecdote: I used to work from home and pretty much sat down the whole day. I would still go for a run once or twice a week, but I would quickly experience a sharp pain in my lower back that made it really hard to run. Some Googling led me to believe that my tight hip flexors might be causing my back pain, and that sitting down all day could lead to tight hip flexors. I've since started working for a couple of hours per day at a ghetto standing desk and my back pains are pretty much gone. Another thing that I really highly recommend is Joe DeFranco's stetching programme, Limber 11 (https://youtu.be/FSSDLDhbacc https://youtu.be/FSSDLDhbacc). You can do the whole thing in about 10 minutes, and it leaves your whole body feeling nice and relaxed.

norea-armozel 10y ago
I'll throw in my own anecdote and say I can confirm the whole back issue. I've recently stopped my weight lifting program which I put focus on my legs and lower back. My back pain reduced while doing the program but just two weeks off and I'm feeling pain from just adjusting in my seat now. I can't wait to get back to it soon.
ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
Similar situation here (also years of powerlifting pretty much === lower back issues of some sort). Standing desk + inversion table made a huge difference for me.

iask 10y ago

I bought a teeter hangup about a week ago. So far it helps. After a long day, spend 5 minutes inverted. What I also do is running, in the office. Yes! Our building is pretty big, whenever I go to one of the office on the far side, I do some running. I even sprint up the stairs when I can.

Michael_m 10y ago

Just some balanced diet and some physical workout like jogging/rope jumping every otherday is enough to keep you fit unless you are in really very very bad shape.

EternalData 10y ago

My solution to this is to set myself weekly goals in terms of steps. It changes your routine when you do that. At 12.7k steps a day, I basically have to elongate my walking commute, and find create ways to stand up and move all day.

tomerific 10y ago

All, this isn't a legitimate news source -- heck they're not even a legitimate scientific group. It is a dude that is republishing some data.

ergot 10y ago

I do yoga for my back and ensure there's good lumbar support on any chair I sit on. They say sitting is the 'new cancer' and prevention is often the way to go. Here's an interesting article on some yoga exercises you can try for back pain: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/yoga-exercises-for-back-pain.html http://www.buzzle.com/articles/yoga-exercises-for-back-pain....

conjectures 10y ago

For the time constrained: go running. You can do it almost anywhere, with minimal equipment. It's a means of transport. It's very efficient in terms of calories per minute. Downside is you end up looking like a runner not a buff dude. You can level up the intensity if you have less time etc.

foobarrio 10y ago
Running isn't easy for everyone. Runners seem to be a self-selecting group of people who have good biomechanics or a naturally good running form. I had to teach myself how to run. Even though I was careful with my mileage ramp up, stretched, and worked on technique I still had to deal with all kinds of nagging injuries and still have runner's knee (patella femoral syndrome). I got my 5k down into the 23 minute range and could run 8-9 miles at a pop without getting winded. Still the nagging injuries persist. For people can "just" run it's to understand that running is really hard for some people(and not just overweight people). That being said, running is the best. I actually enjoy doing it even with all the nagging injuries.

emptysongglass 10y ago

This doesn’t hold up to all sedentary modes of living. Monks sit all day but appear in some cases to have cells absurdly younger than chronological baseline.

maxander 10y ago
Could you provide a reference? What I've heard of monastic life sounds relatively actve- a complicated schedule of chores and prayer and other obligations, all in different places. It's hard to inagine that goes with the sort of eight-hour sit an office worker is prone to.

Gbemitj2017 10y ago

Especially now that prolong sitting are stressful on obile or laptop devices often times with uncontrolled radiation coupled with the fact that backache is very likely sequel because of the big weight on it & imagine how many joints are strained in this very common yet vulnerable posture & unwisely used without exercise even within the attic or office! It's precociously an aging grind we must all review our sitting routines & punctuate it with indoor workouts or simply move briskly within a small space I'm in this category too though I can be bold to move out JUST TO STROLL half 1km away from my attic that doubles as my lodging after a bungalow opportunity with big lawn & manho tree eloped to someone else! Gbemisoye TIJANI Healthnewsworker ,life & health coach @gbemi_gbemi @bymst2bymst ALLIanceglobal dis,