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Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

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Re: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

#31
post #6

This story keeps popping up on HN and elsewhere. And the common solution I've read is "Please, just get a standup desk!" as if standing up and not moving is healthier than sitting and not moving. I've seen no study that supports that conclusion. I think the message should be: moving is healthier than not moving, which is hardly news.

i personnaly think it's a "standup desk" seller conspiracy

Re: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

#32

> Its most striking finding was that people who sat more than 11 hours a day had a 40% higher risk of dying in the next three years than people who sat less than four hours a day. I don't normally call bullshit on stories, but this statistic is f'ing stupid, I've spent 14 years in school and 3 years in college after that some 3 years as web designer. Its fair to say all that time, I've spent more than 11 hours a day,…

That's a "40% higher risk", not a 40% risk.

Re: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

#34
Honestly, I'd like to see more studies like this to the point where it is irrefutable that sitting all day causes harm because the way it is now, I feel like a lot of companies basically force their workers to sit all day. They don't allow work from home, or allow it only one day a week, etc, yet they also don't provide any sort of office environment that enables sitting. At the office I work at now, for example, there is no one who stands and it would take a re-working of the entire office to allow it, as there are dividers that can be seen over when standing, so it would be rather awkward, I think, to be standing as you would then be staring down at the person across from you. It would be interesting to hear a case where a company is held liable for forcing someone to sit all day, year after year, I think that could at least nudge a lot of organizations in the right direction towards allowing more remote work options where a person can better control / configure their work environment.

Re: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

#35

> Its most striking finding was that people who sat more than 11 hours a day had a 40% higher risk of dying in the next three years than people who sat less than four hours a day. I don't normally call bullshit on stories, but this statistic is f'ing stupid, I've spent 14 years in school and 3 years in college after that some 3 years as web designer. Its fair to say all that time, I've spent more than 11 hours a day,…

That's a "40% higher risk", not a 40% risk.

So, how high is the risk if out of 1000 people, nobody died due to sitting?

Re: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

#37
post #6

This story keeps popping up on HN and elsewhere. And the common solution I've read is "Please, just get a standup desk!" as if standing up and not moving is healthier than sitting and not moving. I've seen no study that supports that conclusion. I think the message should be: moving is healthier than not moving, which is hardly news.

Sitting is qualitatively different than standing without moving: http://www.anh-usa.org/too-much-sitting-killing-us/

Re: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

#38
post #6

This story keeps popping up on HN and elsewhere. And the common solution I've read is "Please, just get a standup desk!" as if standing up and not moving is healthier than sitting and not moving. I've seen no study that supports that conclusion. I think the message should be: moving is healthier than not moving, which is hardly news.

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/menshealth/most-dangerous-th... "British researchers found that (sitting) bus drivers were twice as likely to die of heart attacks as (standing) trolley operators." The idea is that bus drivers and trolley operators are similar in all the other important respects (e.g. socio-economic backgrounds).

sry but this is a wrong correlation. this relates to trainers who have a higher chance of a heart attack than players. why? because both get the same amount of adrenaline but the players can work it out with their body. same goes for the bus driver. it's not just the sitting, it's the sitting under stress with no muscles to make use of stress hormones ..

Re: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

#39
post #13

This reminds me of another correlational study I was tickled pink to read, and I just had to quote it in one of my essays http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#fn7 : > "…Based on these figures, and expected deaths from all causes, the authors calculated that an individual who spends a lifetime average of six hours a day watching TV can expect to live just under five fewer years than someone who does not watch TV. These figur…

Well we all die eventually. And based on most of the 85 year old folks I see tottering around here, you're not missing much if you check out at 80.

Re: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

#40
These studies keep appearing, but they're never detailed enough for me. Correlation is not equal to causation. It's meaningless to say "people who sit more die more" unless we know why this is the case. At the very least, I want to see a laundry list of controls: physical exercise, weight, diet, stress, etc. More than a few of these articles contain useless warnings like, "sitting leads to obesity." Great, then don't say sitting kills you, say obesity kills you.
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