So, even if we exercise, sitting around all the time can lead to early death.
This from the folks behind a study published Sept. 11 in Annals of Internal Medicine and reported in a cnn.com story.
"There's a direct relationship between time spent sitting and your risk of early mortality of any cause, researchers said, based on a study of nearly 8,000 adults."
I'd heard before the messages warning against excessive sitting, but this one seems to be more dire than previous ones.
I've been trying to ease back into exercising after suffering some traveling leg and foot aches and pains, the source unidentified by a doctor's visit and an ultrasound (I suspect sciatica), and which gradually subsided. After finding that I could, with flat shoes, go up and down stairs without looking like that shuffling old guy Tim Conway played on The Carol Burnett Show -- and after the office elevator went on the blink one too many times -- I decided to keep taking the stairs, which I do most days. I've also been trying to talk myself into resuming dancing for exercise.
Geesh, but it seems dancing with the American Ballet Theater, outrunning Usain Bolt every day and doing enough planks to build the White House wouldn't be enough to make up for being on my keister.
Keith Diaz, lead author of the new study and an associate research scientist at the Columbia University department of medicine, says guidelines are needed for sitting -- well, not sitting -- just as guidelines are given for exercise.
"We think a more specific guideline could read something like, 'For every 30 consecutive minutes of sitting, stand up and move/walk for five minutes at brisk pace to reduce the health risks from sitting,'" he's quoted.
Without going into all the particulars, Diaz and his fellow researchers found that "sedentary behavior, on average, accounted for about 12.3 hours of an average 16-hour waking day," up from the nine to 10 hours of sitting determined to be the norm in earlier studies.
And, Diaz observed, as we get older we tend to move less. So much for that common complaint we in the mature crowd always hear our cronies make, and probably have made ourselves: "I can't stand to be on my feet for very long."
Not sitting wasn't a problem during those oh-so-long-ago, pre-modern convenience days when we had to work fields, manually scrub floors and (horrors) get up and change the television channel. Now we live in a technology-fueled society where even mops have batteries, vacuums clean the floors on their own and jobs often require us to be at computers the whole time.
I admit to being one of the sitters, a problem no doubt common for writers who get caught up in the work they're crafting or in trying to meet a looming deadline for a stern-faced editor. For a brief time I tried to wrap my mind around working at one of those standing desks that is advertised as promoting a healthier lifestyle. But Diaz says there's not enough evidence to prove that simply standing is any help.
What does help, he stresses, is getting up every 30 minutes and taking that "movement break."
Which, if you think about it, seems to be a subtle message to loaf and live longer. Let's face it. If we get up every 30 minutes to move around, there's a good chance we're going to go get coffee or go to the water cooler, where we're likely to get into a conversation with a co-worker. Walk around to a co-worker's desk and we're likely to get into a conversation with that co-worker. Step outside the office for a bit, and we're likely to exchange pleasantries, or more, with a co-worker.
Now we'll have something to say to those scowling bosses and editors who are waiting for us to finish those projects: "I wasn't goofing off. I was prolonging my life." Or better yet, "I was making sure you'd keep your job by continuing to have me around to manage." When they start to really light into you? Offer to run an errand for them or get them some coffee ... which, if they take you up on it, will enable you to sneak in yet another movement break.
Seriously, though ... it wouldn't kill any of us to, as James Brown so eloquently put it, "get up offa that thing."
Sit, but not for long, and email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 09/24/2017