"...a handful of epidemiological research groups around the world, and big names such as Ulf Ekelund of the epidemiology unit of the UK's Medical Research Council and James A. Levine of the US's Mayo Clinic, are trying to shift the debate about obesity. As well as talking about exercise, they want to discuss sitting." (1)
These large studies tell us something intuitively obvious: a job which requires you to constantly be moving (or at least standing) is better for your health presupposing your baseline is permitting, i.e. no arthritis, no orthostatic hypotension, no joint disorders, etc.
How many hours do you stand during the day?
According to the same article where the quotation was found, Donald Rumsfeld is quoted to say he stands for 8-10 hours a day but enemy combatants are only required to stand for 4 hours at a time as a measure of their incarceration in our prisons.
Perhaps the fitness of a nation should be assessed by the "flabbiness" of its citizens asses?
1) Stand up to the insidious dangers of sitting down
By Simon Kuper, in the Financial Times. Accessed at ft.com
Published: January 23 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 23 2010 02:00
Posts
This is something I've actually become a bit concerned about with my current job. Unlike in the lab at Minnesota where there was regular moving around in the lab and working with my hands, in addition to daily walks to other buildings, my current one is essentially a desk job where I sit for the entire day, with the exception of bathroom breaks and lunch. I was even worried about DVT's after I had my hospital visit in August.
ReplyDeleteHowever, is this likely to change anything? Employers are unlikely to see this and add manual labor to everybody's jobs. About the only difference being made is that maybe a few people add some calisthenics exercises for their employees. But I don't see that much beyond a description of extremely limited.
It is surprising to me that you work for the CDC, yet they don’t understand the influence of an individual’s environment on her/his physical well-being. What do they offer for lunch?
ReplyDeleteI don’t want to attack Steve’s employer alone. Our society has largely forgotten, or remained ignorant to, the forces that helped us arrive to where we are today as a species. Besides sexual behavior, physical activity is probably the most important evolutionary factor.
Technically I work for the university, but it's based on a CDC grant. Most days we are at an outside site (a lot of time at either hospitals or at records warehouses, as we are now), so lunch is on our own. I try to bring my own, and I'd say I'm successful ~60-70% of the time.
ReplyDeleteTo say the CDC should know better I think forgets the history of the institution. When it was founded, infectious diseases were still the primary killer, and thus were likely the focus. Once chronic disease rose to the top (both by decreasing ID deaths and increasing the causes of chronic diseases such as a sedentary lifestyle), then their focus would have had to shift, and I'm guessing treatment was a focus before prevention.
I'm guessing as society went through the industrial revolution and beyond, the desk jobs were the safer jobs, so people likely aspired to those. The negative aspects of sitting around probably weren't considered at that time, but even if they were, they'd have been marginal compared to the dangers of manual labor.
While the post above mentions jobs specifically, the same role in the home is equally important, since you're likely to be there as much or more (depending on commuting time & sleep time). I would guess the ill-effects of lack of movement at work probably were delayed or tempered as people converted to that type of work because house work still required significant manual labor. As home tasks have all been replaced with machines, and television became the primary entertainment at home, then people have lost the vast majority of the activity that they even had 50-100 years ago.