Over the past few years, Americans Health/Lifestyle has been receiving a lot of attention in the media. Topics ranging from the debate of health reform to the obesity epidemic. One of the big headlines is the evil of sitting and its negative health benefits. For example, Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative said “Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting” and even said, “We are sitting ourselves to death.” Research has even shown that sitting for as little as two continuous hours increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cancer, back and neck pain and many other orthopedic problems.
With this recent narrative and the ever-growing media coverage of it, many of my patients have ditched their typical desk and are converting to a standing desk to try and combat this issue. As I 100% agree with the statement that the average American is sitting too much and is leading a far too sedentary lifestyle, I think the focus is a little off. Far too quickly the debate has steered away from preventing sedentary lifestyle to only focusing on sitting itself. This has changed my suggestions I give patients. The strict recommendations for daily sitting are only 2 hours a day. There is an excellent British Study* that demonstrates this, it involved 4,000 civil servants, which found that spending less than 12 hours a week sitting decreased diabetes risk by 75%. Those who sat more than 25 hours a week had an increased chance of developing metabolic risk factors like diabetes, insulin resistance, and “bad” cholesterol. This can be very difficult for some people especially if you have a 1.5-hour one-way commute! So I think it is important to shift focus from the idea we can never sit and instead promote more movement. This can be done in a couple of easy steps. Getting a variable desk can help to allow people to sit for periods of the day then stand for others. Also, you don’t even need to buy anything new. It can be cured by simply setting a timer and walking around the office once every hour.
So we shouldn’t be comparing sitting to smoking. It is not the devil and is not the sole cause of health conditions like cancer. I like to compare it more to a cold beer. Should only be used in moderation, preferably on the weekends and after 5 o’clock.
*J. A. Bell et al. “Combined Effect of Physical Activity and Leisure-Time Sitting on Long-Term Risk of Incident Obesity and Metabolic Risk Factor Clustering,” Diabetologia 57, no. 10 (2014):2048-2056.
