More Sobering Crap About Sitting

We all keep seeing reports about the dangers of sitting (and clearly, I can't stop blogging about it), but everyone keeps their butt cheeks glued to the couch anyway. According to this new article in the New York Times, most of us spend "50 to 70 percent" of our lives sitting -- mostly at work or in front of our television sets.

Is TV really that good? Perhaps. I, for one, have spent many an hour planted in front of the boob tube, gazing slack-jawed at the glowing images on the screen. But check this out:

Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes. By comparison, smoking a single cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes, the authors [of an Australian research study] said. 

Looking more broadly, they concluded that an adult who spends an average of six hours a day watching TV over the course of a lifetime can expect to live 4.8 years fewer than a person who does not watch TV.

Those results hold true, the authors point out, even for people who exercise regularly. It appears, Dr. Veerman says, that “a person who does a lot of exercise but watches six hours of TV” every night “might have a similar mortality risk as someone who does not exercise and watches no TV.”

Guess I'll have to catch up on episodes of The Walking Dead while standing up.

Link Dump

I've been laying low this week.

It's not by choice. The house is still wrecked, which means we're well into the second month of living in a hotel. Which means the grandparents don't have room to crash overnight when Michelle's working. Which means I have no babysitters at 5 a.m. Which means no gym. Which means I'm cranky and restless.

Maybe it's a good thing that I'm forced into taking a few days off. My right shoulder has been bothering me for over a week now, and I might as well give it some extra time to recover.

Plus, I've been slammed with work, kid stuff, and the Nom Nom Paleo iPad App. (Yes, still. We're feverishly working on a new update to fix the update that was supposed to fix the previous update, but didn't. Got that?) So getting a few extra hours of sleep is a good thing. 

I'm hitting the sack, but if you're looking for something to read, check out these links:

• The New York Times wrote up a nice piece about CrossFit and Memorial Day Murph.

• "The Paleo Diet Moves From The Gym To The Doctor's Office" (NPR)

• Our friend Stacy Toth from Paleo Parents is the "Face of Paleo" in Women's World!

• Holy crap. Tickets for this year's CrossFit Games are sold out. The Home Depot Center is at capacity. I fully expect that it'll be a bazillion times crazier than last year. (And it was already pretty insane last year.) To whet your appetite for the competition, check out the Regional summary videos here.

• The Wirecutter recently researched and wrote a lengthy piece on the best standing desks. Check it out, because your office chair is killing you.

• Last but not least: Glazed-donut-flavored vodka exists. Be afraid.

Stand in the Place Where You Work (Part Deux)

Earlier this month, I posted (again) about the importance of throwing out your office chair, and put up some snapshots of how a few of my buddies from CrossFit Palo Alto have configured their workstations in order to stay off their butts during the day.

In that post, I also invited readers to submit photos of their own. I half-expected to only get a picture or two of specially-manufactured standing desks, but was happy to see that many of the folks who sent in photos had jerry-rigged their own set-ups. We stand-up types are thrifty AND creative.

Want examples? I got plenty -- after the jump...

Stand in the Place Where You Work

You really need to get rid of your office chair.

I don't know how many times I've written about this subject, but I'm sure it's gotta be at least three times, including here, here, and here. Recently, the New York Times Magazine published a long piece on the perils of staying planted on your butt all day. And if that weren't enough to get you on your feet, this infographic made the rounds last month, too:

This stuff's important, yo.

I've been using a standing desk at work for a little over a year. Rather than waiting for my employer to provide an adjustable-height desk (which would've required an ergonomic assessment first), I bought thirty bucks worth of stuff at IKEA and Home Depot and cobbled together a little platform to elevate my keyboard and monitor.

Here's my set-up:

Plenty of other CrossFit Palo Alto members have standing desks, too.

This one belongs to the Terminator:

Don't let the family photo fool you; he's still a relentless cyborg killer from the future.

The Terminator and me aren't the only 5 a.m. nutjobs with a standing desk. J-Ho's looks like this:

He works with the Terminator -- hence the similar style of standing desks. But J-Ho rocks TWO computer monitors simultaneously AND a CrossFit-style whiteboard. Take that, robot!

Blake's spending the summer in SoCal, but even though his office is temporary, he's already put together his own makeshift standing desk:

Clearly, it ain't hard to ditch your chair in favor of a standing desk. You can MacGyver one together pretty easily. Looks like Blake used letter trays, but you could just as easily use a stack of phone books, a cardboard box or a milk crate.

Anyone else got photos of standing desks to share? Send 'em to me by the end of the month and I'll post them up. (Yes, I'm blatantly ripping off John Durant's Upright Citizen feature, only I'm putting a whole lot less effort into it.)

Plus, if I manage to get my shit together, I'll even randomly select one of you for a prize of some kind. Maybe a shirt? Still working on a design for a "FITBOMB" tee so that I can wear it around the house and bask in my own glory, but it'll probably look something like this:

What do you say? Get a standing desk already!

Don't Sit Down

Once more, with feeling: Sitting is bad for you -- even if you exercise.

Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting.

Get yourself a standing desk, pronto.

(Source: Kottke)

[Previously: Your Office Chair is Killing You]

Stand Up

I don't typically take health cues from ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but as noted previously (here and here), we all need to get rid of our office chairs:

Frequent TV and Web surfers (sitters) have higher rates of hypertension, obesity, high blood triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, and high blood sugar, regardless of weight. Lean people, on average, stand for two hours longer than their counterparts.

The chair you're sitting in now is likely contributing to the problem. "Short of sitting on a spike, you can't do much worse than a standard office chair," says Galen Cranz, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. She explains that the spine wasn't meant to stay for long periods in a seated position. Generally speaking, the slight S shape of the spine serves us well. "If you think about a heavy weight on a C or S, which is going to collapse more easily? The C," she says. But when you sit, the lower lumbar curve collapses, turning the spine's natural S-shape into a C, hampering the abdominal and back musculature that support the body. The body is left to slouch, and the lateral and oblique muscles grow weak and unable to support it.

This, in turn, causes problems with other parts of the body. "When you're standing, you're bearing weight through the hips, knees, and ankles," says Dr. Andrew C, Hecht, co-chief of spinal surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center. "When you're sitting, you're bearing all that weight through the pelvis and spine, and it puts the highest pressure on your back discs. Looking at MRIs, even sitting with perfect posture causes serious pressure on your back."

Hypocritically, I'm writing this while seated.

(Source: BusinessWeek)

[Related: Don't Sit Down]

Link Dump

Back at work and backlogged like crazy, so here are some links to keep you occupied until I dig my way out of email hell:

• It’s an election year, but who cares about the issues when you can dissect the diet plans of New York politicians?
• I’ve said it before: Lose your office chair and buy yourself a standing desk. (Or make one yourself.)
• Jorge Garcia (Hurley from “Lost”) is a fellow fan of Vibram FiveFingers (and also looks like he enjoyed Maui’s Surfing Goat Dairy farm as much as my pre-schooler did).
• Wondering whether your supplements are legit or just hokum? Check out this handy infographic.
• Slim Chips have zero calories. (But they’re made of paper.)
• Six words for Manhattanites (who are taking a mini-break from their diets, of course): Shake Shack Peanut Butter Bacon Burger.
• An interesting diversion: Guess which celebrity ran a faster marathon.
• Interested in a pill that fills you up so you don’t eat as much? Sounds a bit like the concept behind FullBar or edible versions of those dinosaur-shaped sponges that grow in water.
• Now that the FDA has announced that we’re eating too much salt (and that plans are afoot to place limits on the amount of salt in processed food products), MainStreet has provided a list of a dozen foods with excess sodium content.

That’s all I got. Back to the grind...