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Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving

#31

Post by killerpopiller »

CosmicHorrorSam wrote: post #29
zzalpha wrote: post #5

Story is far more nuanced than the title suggests: "Our study overturns current thinking on the health risks of sitting and indicates that the problem lies in the absence of movement rather than the time spent sitting itself," Translation: sitting is still bad for you, but standing isn't any better, which puts a pin in the standing desk fad. Guess it's time to get one of these! http://www.amazon.com/DeskCycle-Exercis…

Cutting through likely sarcasm, those are INCREDIBLY AWKWARD. I tried to use a very similar device for quite some time, and it's just- impossibly awkward to use. 0/10 would not recommend.

it doesn't even produce power

Re: Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving

#32

Post by joeyo »

zzalpha wrote: post #5

Story is far more nuanced than the title suggests: "Our study overturns current thinking on the health risks of sitting and indicates that the problem lies in the absence of movement rather than the time spent sitting itself," Translation: sitting is still bad for you, but standing isn't any better, which puts a pin in the standing desk fad. Guess it's time to get one of these! http://www.amazon.com/DeskCycle-Exercis…

  > Translation: sitting is still bad for you, but standing
  > isn't any better, which puts a pin in the standing desk fad.
Unfortunately the study [1] did not quantify standing at all! They only measured (self-reported) time spent sitting, so they really shouldn't make any claims about standing desks or even standing generally. I suppose there is an implicit assumption that time not spent sitting is time spent standing, but that is pretty weak in my opinion.

Furthermore, I don't think that aggregate time spent sitting is the right measure. We know that uninterrupted sitting is a known risk factor for deep vein thrombosis because since calf muscle contractions are important for preventing blood clots in the leg vasculature [2]. So a better measure would be the length of continuous sitting without breaks. It's very plausible that 300 minutes of sitting with 10 minute breaks every 50 minutes might be healthier than sitting for 5 hours straight without any breaks at all (and then taking an hour break at the end).

1. http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ije.d...

2. I note that the calf muscles are continuously contracting while standing. So standing desks could be a good idea for persons with increased risk of DVT. Of course, standing desks might not confer any benefit over simply standing periodically. This should be studied directly.

Re: Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving

#34

Post by nilkn »

zzalpha wrote: post #7
djtriptych wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue that standing is better because the bias towards movement is higher. You can (and will) shift your weight around and take more frequent breaks, simply because you don't have to stand up to do so. That might be enough.

You could argue that, but given there's no evidence to support it, it's at best colloquial advice. And to be perfectly blunt, that sounds more like an attempt to go back and justify the choice of a standing desk after the fact, now that the base assumption ("standing is better than sitting") has been invalidated.

Based on my own experience with a standing desk, I do move significantly more when standing versus sitting. This might be less true in an office environment, where I might feel the need to constrain my movement some to avoid distracting others. But at home, where my standing desk is, it's actually pretty liberating to be able to move around so easily.

This is just an anecdote, but it's hard for me to imagine someone just standing like a statue for hours on end.

Re: Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving

#36

Post by bcoates »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #33

Most Westerners can't kneel or squat properly, mostly due to sitting. That definitely has health implications, even if it's not lethal. And it's a lot harder to get that mobility back than it is to lose it.

It's not just that -- at least in the corner of the West where I grew up, kneeling and squatting were actually discouraged in young children as somehow unhealthy (to your knees, iirc).

Re: Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving

#37

Post by [deleted] »

eikenberry wrote: post #15
zzalpha wrote: post #5

Story is far more nuanced than the title suggests: "Our study overturns current thinking on the health risks of sitting and indicates that the problem lies in the absence of movement rather than the time spent sitting itself," Translation: sitting is still bad for you, but standing isn't any better, which puts a pin in the standing desk fad. Guess it's time to get one of these! http://www.amazon.com/DeskCycle-Exercis…

One of the common reasons I always here for standing desks is that you burn more calories standing and thus helps to reduce weight vs. sitting. This still seems to be true and would seem to provide a secondary health benefit over sitting, in terms of weight loss.

[deleted]

Re: Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving

#38

Post by [deleted] »

zzalpha wrote: post #7
djtriptych wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue that standing is better because the bias towards movement is higher. You can (and will) shift your weight around and take more frequent breaks, simply because you don't have to stand up to do so. That might be enough.

You could argue that, but given there's no evidence to support it, it's at best colloquial advice. And to be perfectly blunt, that sounds more like an attempt to go back and justify the choice of a standing desk after the fact, now that the base assumption ("standing is better than sitting") has been invalidated.

[deleted]

Re: Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving

#40

Post by stfu »

ajarmst wrote: post #16

The work looks useful and valuable to this area of study. But WaPo and other media outlets persist in a ubiquitous and terrible trend in science reporting, especially those associated with lifestyle and healt : "Here is a study which has different findings than the other studies we've been reporting on, all that research is now overturned! Burn your standing desk!" Of course, in a few months, someone will publish ano…

But isn't that the whole point? That unless you are doing certain things to the extreme, they might be good or bad. That things as complex as health are rarely shaped by just one isolated variable.
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