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Sitting is dangerous for your health

I like the rocking chair suggestion. They are fun, comfortable, and, apparently, healthy. Sign me up, on the porch, preferably. :)
 
My excuse for resurrecting this thread is that I was about to start a new one on standing desks. After some experimentation with a laptop on a bookshelf, I decided that I liked the experience enough to convert my regular desk by adding a coffee table of an appropriate size and height. It's great. I also have a sitting alternative -- a laptop on a wooden tray I use comfortably in an easy chair. I think it's important to mix it up rather than stand long enough to hurt your feet or spine.

I was hoping to garner some opinions that examined the standing desk claims more closely; for example, yes, a sedentary lifestyle is considered a leading preventable cause of death, and apparently sitting for long periods is destructive even if you also exercise at other times of the day. But I'm curious how effective a standing desk is exactly, and whether standing in itself (well, combined with some movement and even pacing) is as effective in promoting health as is commonly suggested.

Also can one really lose a significant amount of weight by replacing a few hours of sitting a day with standing at a desk? I gained a bunch of weight when I quit smoking three years ago, and I'm hoping to get rid of it.
 
eerok said:
<snip>
Also can one really lose a significant amount of weight by replacing a few hours of sitting a day with standing at a desk? I gained a bunch of weight when I quit smoking three years ago, and I'm hoping to get rid of it.
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If you are 205 pound male then sitting down burns 140 calories per hour. Standing burns 214 calories per hour. This is an increase of 74 calories per hour.

To lose one pound you need to burn 3,500 Calories. So you stand for 16 hours and you lose a pound. That sounds a lot but you stand at your desk for 4 hours a day, every day, instead of sitting and you lose one to two pounds a week and yet you have not changed your diet, joined a gym or anything else drastic.

Ref: http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist4.htm
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calories_burned.htm
 
rjh01 said:
If you are 205 pound male then sitting down burns 140 calories per hour. Standing burns 214 calories per hour. This is an increase of 74 calories per hour.
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Hmm. This probably doesn't account for pacing, which I do a lot.

Also, apart from the health considerations, I seem to function better while standing at a desk: I'm less restless and distractable, more willing to pace away for a minute and think rather than actually switch to something else, and generally more focused.
 
I doubt pacing is going to burn a lot of calories.

And don't forget the most important concept: calories in/calories out. If you consume more calories than you need/use/burn, you will gain weight.

As someone who used to have a bit of a weight problem, I found all sorts of ways to cut a few calories here and there and everywhere. I lost weight without exercising and kept it off, as I changed my eating habits. Now that I'm getting a bit of exercise (a 90 minute walk), I can add a few extra calories to my diet.
 
Emet said:
As someone who used to have a bit of a weight problem, I found all sorts of ways to cut a few calories here and there and everywhere. I lost weight without exercising and kept it off, as I changed my eating habits. Now that I'm getting a bit of exercise (a 90 minute walk), I can add a few extra calories to my diet.
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Yeah, a lot of small things can combine into a significant result. It's a lifestyle thing overall. I walk 10-12 miles a day on my job, though, so my focus is more on how to transform my sitting time into something more beneficial.

There are details about this that interest me. My understanding is that sitting for too long will cause your metabolism to dial down. This may not register in studies that only measure calories burned during an hour of sitting. I'd like a better idea of what "sitting too long" amounts to, for a start. I've been looking for a more sophisticated chart or calculator to give me better numbers than I've found, but no success so far.
 
eerok said:
There are details about this that interest me. My understanding is that sitting for too long will cause your metabolism to dial down. This may not register in studies that only measure calories burned during an hour of sitting. I'd like a better idea of what "sitting too long" amounts to, for a start. I've been looking for a more sophisticated chart or calculator to give me better numbers than I've found, but no success so far.
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I doubt sitting for a period of time will affect your basal metabolic rate by anything significant. If you start here, then go via the hyperlink to the Harris Benedict equation, there are 5 broad categories of activity.
 
Health problems from sitting are probably due to Posture problems, as theorized by M. A. Banfield.
http://wikibin.org/articles/the-posture-theory.html

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My standing desk experiments have led to some early conclusions.

I feel dramatically more energetic after reducing my sitting time -- this means I can breeze through an active shift of 12+ miles of fast walking on my job as a hospital porter. (In the past a hard workday would sometimes take its toll -- I'd even hurt myself and need some time off.) It surprises me how destructive it was to sit on my butt every weekend even if I performed like an athlete all week long. By standing more at home on my off time, I seem to have created a whole new level of strength and endurance.

Even though I continue to eat like someone who loves his own cooking, I still lost five pounds over the past week or so.

The standing desk idea seems to have served me well so far, and I continue to recommend it.
 
Sitting as dangerous as Smoking?

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/06/08/healthwatch-sitting-vs-smoking/



http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/tag/smoking/

"(CBS 5) – Smoking cigarettes is the cause of so much preventable, deadly disease. But now new research shows sitting for long stretches of time may be just as dangerous.
“Smoking certainly is a major cardiovascular risk factor and sitting can be equivalent in many cases,” explained Dr. David Coven, cardiologist with St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.
Dr. Coven said several new studies show prolonged sitting is now being linked to increased risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and even early death."


You're all doomed!! (I'm standing while typing this).
 
I work in the IT field, and I make it a point to go visit the computers in the building personally, as part of my "Get out of the chair" routine. Central management is trying to get all of us IT people to deal with computer issues from our office (remotely accessing the computers), and I will not do it, because I WANT to move MORE in this job!! :mad:
 
rjh01 said:
If you are 205 pound male then sitting down burns 140 calories per hour. Standing burns 214 calories per hour. This is an increase of 74 calories per hour.

To lose one pound you need to burn 3,500 Calories. So you stand for 16 hours and you lose a pound. That sounds a lot but you stand at your desk for 4 hours a day, every day, instead of sitting and you lose one to two pounds a week and yet you have not changed your diet, joined a gym or anything else drastic.

Ref: http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist4.htm
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calories_burned.htm
Click to expand...

According to your numbers it is actually 47.3 hours to lose a pound
 
Kariboo said:
According to your numbers it is actually 47.3 hours to lose a pound
Click to expand...
Let's be clear, though. Those numbers have no clear relationship with any real situation. For example, when you use a standing computer, you don't just "scientifically stand" -- you move around because you're free to move around. You pace and such while you're thinking. It's natural to do so -- at least it is for me.

I'd expect a citeable study to account for things like that. Also of course you can't count calorie burn for any activity without a base weight. So since this isn't accounted for in these numbers, we're talking merely abstract baloney.

For the record, I've lost ~12 pounds since I've implemented my standing desk. Nothing earth-shattering, but decent nonetheless, I think.
 
Is this from the same scientists who told me bread was bad (good), non-sugar sugar was bad (good), butter was always worse than margarine (except it's not always), etc. etc.?

I don't see any reason to believe health scientists. They're almost always 180-degrees rebutted in five years by future health scientists. To this topic, yes, this means that in five years sitting will suddenly be declared great for your health.

Health/scientist declarations now are about as reliable as chiropractic declarations. I tend to ignore all of them.
 
Slightly related (since we're on a tangent anyway)... isn't sleeping supposed to burn more calories that watching TV?
 
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