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'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

sciencealert.com

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Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#51

Post by iammjm »

mna_ wrote: post #41
iammjm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider StarCraft: Brood War, a legendary real-time strategy game. To be played well, it requires between 200-400 actions per minute (APM), with some players going even beyond 500 APM. Some games last for more than an hour. Players use both the mouse and the keyboard. There's always more to do than you can realistically do. You are always putting out fires, managing your economy, producing units, securing income, ca…

Let's be honest, most of those actions are useless keybashing and clicking. It's easy to get a high APM.

The game's been played competitively for more than 25 years now, people still earn their living plying StarCraft. You wont find a single one of them with APM below 200. Having their livelihoods and legacies depending on this, do you think they'd be repeatedly doing something useless instead of optimizing?

Anyways, I think you are missing the point that this thread is about active sitting. I imagine there isn't much difference to the meaning behind movement: movement is movement, meaningful or not.

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#52

Post by graypegg »

rippeltippel wrote: post #7

Breaking news! Using the brain is better for brain health than not using it. Next: Playing chess on one leg is better for brain health than sitting.

It's a !! Science Alert !!

I feel like I've seen enough of these "X is good/bad for Y" articles on these popsci explainer sites surrounded by the same ads for an entire lifetime. Not that I don't think this is actual research, it's just the canonical link we end up with here on HN is probably... not the ideal one.

I wanted to grab the journal link, but going back to the article now, I'm trapped in a "keep reading" loop that blocks the article, so I can be told "Mouse Study Suggests Nose-Picking Has a Surprising Link With Alzheimer's". If I could use an adblocker on the work PC I would.

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#53

Post by lanstin »

tartoran wrote: post #35
notahacker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"workers who are required to stand without opportunities to sit" sounds like it's little to do with posture and everything to do with the kind of jobs that don't let people sit typically being lower paid gigs for a different demographic...

I was thinking about posture as well, including building bad habits, possibly affecting breathing too which would turn everything around on its head, raising blood pressure and inflammation, affecting sleep and then causing avalanche cascading side effects throughout the human body.

I have for about 15 years used a stool to sit on at work, rather than a desk chair that I can slump in. I have found I feel much better - the stool forces my upper body to be actively held up and balanced; also, when I do go to meetings, instead of being annoyed at sitting in some dumb conference room, I am a little happy to be able to slump like a normal slouch.

I put a zafu (kapok filled, and not too full so its soft/adjustable) on the stool, and adjust the desk height so I don't have to reach up at all to touch the keyboard.

I also do a lot of zazen on a zafu (with legs crossed) so keeping my torso upright is pretty ingrained into my body.

This is just anecdata, but my dad suffered with back pain his entire life (included multiple herniated spinal disks), knock wood, I haven't. If I skip the check on the keyboard height and find I am reaching up for a while, I will get shoulder soreness, but so far early enough to function as a warning to lower it.

Sitting upright as tho you are a world honored one does I think affect the entire mind/body system in a healthy way :)

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#54

Post by tartoran »

lanstin wrote: post #53
tartoran wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about posture as well, including building bad habits, possibly affecting breathing too which would turn everything around on its head, raising blood pressure and inflammation, affecting sleep and then causing avalanche cascading side effects throughout the human body.

I have for about 15 years used a stool to sit on at work, rather than a desk chair that I can slump in. I have found I feel much better - the stool forces my upper body to be actively held up and balanced; also, when I do go to meetings, instead of being annoyed at sitting in some dumb conference room, I am a little happy to be able to slump like a normal slouch. I put a zafu (kapok filled, and not too full so its so…

Spot on. I used to have back pain and all sorts of discomfort throughout body, neck shoulders, etc. until I figured out how to properly sit. Luckily I haven't had any issues lately, I'm in my mid 40s and have been in a much better shape than I was in my mid 20s. I don't use a stool necessarily but I try not to use the back support too much and for me the sitting area must be rigid, any cushion can mess up with my sitting position.

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#55

Post by dexwiz »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #26
dexwiz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think it's the same across viewers. When my partner and I watch some shows, we make prediction for the plot and evaluations of characters. We even have a bet book where we record and score predictions for some shows. It's makes watching much more engaging, especially if the creators hide details and foreshadowing in the background. But you don't even need high quality content to do this, just tighten the…

My wife and I do this for Survivor and The Amazing Race. We’re very engaged, debating strategy, making predictions. And then we watched with other people and they just … watched.

Below Deck is our guilty pleasure for reality TV. We make predictions on who is going to get with whom, at what stage in the season certain people implode, who will get fired. I think Aesha from Below Deck was on the Australian Amazing Race. Also the show has an upstairs/downstairs dynamic we like. It's similar to shows like Downton Abbey.

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#56

Post by dexwiz »

GoToRO wrote: post #50
dexwiz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think it's the same across viewers. When my partner and I watch some shows, we make prediction for the plot and evaluations of characters. We even have a bet book where we record and score predictions for some shows. It's makes watching much more engaging, especially if the creators hide details and foreshadowing in the background. But you don't even need high quality content to do this, just tighten the…

Gambling for movies?

Haha, it's just for bragging rights.

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#57

Post by mrguyorama »

GoToRO wrote: post #50
dexwiz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think it's the same across viewers. When my partner and I watch some shows, we make prediction for the plot and evaluations of characters. We even have a bet book where we record and score predictions for some shows. It's makes watching much more engaging, especially if the creators hide details and foreshadowing in the background. But you don't even need high quality content to do this, just tighten the…

Gambling for movies?

Writing down predictions with some weighting for confidence is a great way to find out directly just how goddamned bad humans are at predicting things and how good we are at forgetting all the bad predictions we make.

Or just otherwise forcing yourself to be accountable for your predictions is a great way to moderate your ego.

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#58

Post by efilife »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #48

As soon as my kid was able to play video games, we basically banned him from watching tv. His only tv was phonics and numbers, which helped significantly because when he started playing minecraft on creative, he had to sound out the items he wanted to search for. I didn't have any science, it was intuition. I suppose next step is to figure out which video games are best. We basically don't let them play Idle games, b…

just ban breathing next

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#59

Post by collinmcnulty »

huhkerrf wrote: post #49
collinmcnulty wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I do this for Survivor and The Amazing Race. We’re very engaged, debating strategy, making predictions. And then we watched with other people and they just … watched.

I've seen people be smug that they read books and don't watch TV before, but this is the first time I've seen someone be smug that they watch reality TV better than someone else.

You're right, this does come off as smug. It was really more of a culture clash; they were annoyed at us for talking over the show, and we didn't realize that not everyone talked over it. We enjoy engaging with the shows this way, but no disrespect or superiority was intended.

Re: 'Active' sitting is better for brain health: review of studies

#60

Post by anon7000 »

tartoran wrote: post #35
notahacker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"workers who are required to stand without opportunities to sit" sounds like it's little to do with posture and everything to do with the kind of jobs that don't let people sit typically being lower paid gigs for a different demographic...

I was thinking about posture as well, including building bad habits, possibly affecting breathing too which would turn everything around on its head, raising blood pressure and inflammation, affecting sleep and then causing avalanche cascading side effects throughout the human body.

Bingo. As they say, “motion is lotion.” Staying in any position for a long time (even a “good” posture) is going to cause problems. Better being active if you’re passive, resting if you’re active, moving around, taking breaks, and basically just switching it up. All more important than doing one static pose or repetitive motion for an entire day.
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