
‘Sitting is the new smoking’ - w1ntermute
http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/08/sitting-is-the-new-smoking-60-of-americans-suffer-from-silicon-valley-syndrome/
======
jrockway
I use a standing desk for 100% of my workday, but I'm getting really tired of
the "humans weren't meant to sit" line. Humans weren't really meant to do
anything, we evolved over time to adapt to situations as they happened. We can
stand, we can sit, we can run. The only problem is that specializing in one
area for 8 hours a day means neglecting the other areas, and that's where the
problems come in. The key is not to say "humans weren't meant to sit", but
"humans lose muscle tone and flexibility if they only sit" or something more
quantifiable.

~~~
mistercow
As far as I know, the evidence is very conflicted on whether using a standing
desks is actually better than sitting. Apparently, standing still is still
sedentary.

~~~
Someone
Standing still exercises the leg muscles. That, in turn, improves blood
circulation.

Having said that, I think the 'sitting kills you' meme is mostly a fad. Yes,
sitting perfectly still for hours isn't healthy, but if the way 'normal'
office people sit were as unhealthy as the current fad implies, we would have
seen that from life expectancies of white collar vs blue collar workers
decades ago.

Also, there are different ways of sitting. For example, a couch potato is
quite different from an Italian talking while sitting.

As to the evolutionary claims: most animals are incredibly lazy, with sprints
in between. Looking at our close relatives, chimps and gorillas, I see days of
sitting and lying with some strolling and an occasional run in between.
Looking at wolfes, an animal similar to humans in the sense that is is
specialized in long distance running, I read on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_wolf#Behaviour](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_wolf#Behaviour)
that gray wolves run about 25 km/day on average. At a modest 5 km/h, that
leaves them 19 hours to, basically, do nothing.

Maybe, we should bring back the Roman way of lying down on a sofa at a table?

------
ajiang
Not to be at all dismissive of the findings and their significance, but this
was a study funded and interpreted by a company that sells posture support
products. Not done in conjunction with an academic research lab, but done on a
company generated survey with no public access to the results. Call me a
skeptic - not of the findings, but of the research methodology.

~~~
chadwickthebold
>LumoBack polled 2,019 adults for this survey. The company is backed by $6.3
million in venture capital..

Love this line, in the same vein as your comment.

------
defen
Anecdotal evidence time: I'd never in my life had "good posture" \- I was able
to sit/stand that way if I focused on it, but as soon as my concentration
slipped I'd be back to my old slouching or hunched over ways. So I never
understood how people with good posture were able to do it.

Then, about 1 year ago (age: early 30s) I started experiencing pretty bad back
pain. I'd get out of bed and it would take 10 minutes before I could stand up
straight, due to lower back pain. Similarly, when I stood up after sitting for
more than 30 minutes or so, it took a while to "straighten out"

I tried stretches and a new mattress to no avail, before trying the advice of
a co-worker: powerlifting. And holy shit! Within 3 months of deadlifts and
squats, my back pain was totally gone. Furthermore, I now understand how some
people have good posture - _It just happens_ when your back and supporting
muscles are strong enough. No focus required.

Anyone else having my kind of problems should look into that. If you've never
done it before, pay a trainer so you can learn the proper form. Remember, it's
a marathon and not a sprint - if you start at a lower weight than you can do,
it's not really a problem, because the goal should be to make gym-going a
lifelong habit.

~~~
criley2
Same anecdote! I hate hearing friends tell me that they don't squat because
their knees hurt. Dude, your knees hurt because you don't squat!

Mine did too, until I learned 1) the proper way to perform complex human
motions like lifting something from the ground and 2) increased all of the
muscles from my core to my legs that are involved with those complex
movements.

~~~
buss
> I hate hearing friends tell me that they don't squat because their knees
> hurt. Dude, your knees hurt because you don't squat!

This is not strictly true. What works for you does not necessarily work for
others, and hassling them for not doing something that hurts them isn't going
to help.

I've been lifting for almost three years (started Dec 2010). I have very good
form which I learned from a friend who was very experienced in lifting (and
corroborated by several trainers and random dudes at the gym saying "wow, nice
form!"). Before I started lifting I had been running for about 10 years
(started running in middle school, didn't start lifting until after college).
Everything was going great. Lifting three days a week, running another three
days a week, and resting completely one day.

Then one day I took a weird step while running and my right knee started
hurting. It's never stopped hurting. Two X-Rays, an MRI, two physical
therapists later and they don't have any idea why I'm in constant pain
(literally constant pain, I'm constantly aware of my knee hurting). I still
lift, still with good form, still moving lots of weight around, but my knee
still hurts. I can't run anymore, though, as that aggravates the injury.

And before you say it, I hurt my knee after I had been running in vibrams for
three years. I was running 6-7 miles 3x a week in vibrams and all it took was
one weird step to totally ruin that.

After the injury, on a PT's advice, I tried switching back to "normal" running
shoes. They didn't help at all. I played around with my gait, trying to run
with a wider stance since they were guessing my narrow gait was putting stress
on the bad point in my knee; that didn't help. Stretching doesn't help, drugs
don't really help (the most effective drug so far is Aleve). Lifting seems to
have no effect on my knee. I tried not lifting or running for three months and
my knee still hurt. I picked lifting back up and it made no difference to my
pain levels.

Anyway, I'm just trying to say that we all have different physical ailments
that cannot necessarily be solved by general advice. Maybe your friends' knees
hurt because there's something wrong with them and lifting will make it worse.

------
ihsw
> Soda is the new smoking.

FTFY. No, really, sitting on your ass may be uncomfortable but it's not 1)
addictive 2) marketed heavily to teenagers 3) causing life-long debilitating
diseases 4) cheap and abundant.

~~~
nilkn
While one can contort your four points to fit a sedentary lifestyle, I agree
with you that soda fits them all trivially. I also agree that soda poses more
of a direct and immediate threat to personal health, as it's a leading cause
of obesity and also a major source of sugar, which itself is a leading cause
of diabetes.

That said, there's still one thing smoking has over soda as well: second hand
smoke is both annoying and harmful to nonsmokers. There's not an analogue to
this for drinking soda or sitting.

~~~
ihsw
It's a long-shot but the sugary bullshit crusade has affected every other
source of food and water -- sweeteners are added to every possible thing. Real
honey, for example, is difficult to find because most honey sold in grocery
stores is just honey-flavored corn syrup.

Trying to avoid the sweet-foods avalanche is very difficult because it's
_everywhere_.

------
iyulaev
What about lying down? A few years ago, BBC covered a scientific study[1]
showing that sitting at a 135-degree angle dramatically reduced spinal disk
movement. Anecdotally, I found that this sitting position, midway between
sitting and lying down, is most comfortable for prolonged periods of time.
Maybe at my next workplace I'll insist that my office be fitted with a lounge
chair.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6187080.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6187080.stm)

------
zamalek
While I find software development as very personally rewarding job, I spend a
lot of my free time contemplating existential problems. The sad personal
revelation I have had is that technology is ruining the human race race.

My friend said on Facebook a while back that "Relationships are harder now
because conversations become texting, arguments become phone calls & feelings
become statuses and tweets." It occurred to me that isn't the case at all -
relationships have always been hard; we now just have all these ways to avoid
nurturing them.

In the same way technology is giving us an excuse to not work on our
physiological wellbeing, and I can't help but agree with this article (even
though they didn't make that association).

I think it's time for a new "brogrammer" movement where we instead focus being
on healthy (which I am seeing a few examples of - inspiring to say the least).

*written on my cell, excuse any typos.

------
ScottWhigham
Ugh - what a fluff piece.

 _Perkash said that Lumoback’s goal is use technology in a way that helps,
rather than destroys, our body._

This is just awful journalism. First, the typo should not be there (it's the
fifth paragraph!). Second, the choice to let the press release/feature drive
the story is just too much. Third, that statement would've been killed in any
high school English/journalism class for being obvious/redundant/unnecessary.
"You mean they don't want us to destroy our body? How great of them - I'll
take two, please!"

No surprise though - she posted four "articles" today and four yesterday:
[http://venturebeat.com/author/rebeccaggrant/](http://venturebeat.com/author/rebeccaggrant/).
The only way you could really do that is if you (a) read the press release,
(b) fired an email off to the press contact asking a few basic questions or
read the company's media kit, then (c) wrote the article based on that info
alone. You don't have time to actually do any "real" journalism when you are
on a "four article per day" quota.

------
vitd
Why do horrible pieces like this end up on the front page? From the article:

"'Personal posture trainer' startup LumoBack released the results of a study
today that examined 'Silicon Valley Syndrome,'...The results are shocking: 60
percent of participants reported that they have experienced adverse health
effects as a result of technology."

So a company that did its own study found that their service would help 60% of
people? Big surprise.

But there's more wrong with this. "60% of participants reported ... adverse
health effects ... of technology." 60% out of how many? And does that mean
that 40% of users reported no bad effects _at all_? I mean even if you don't
feel back pain and posture problems, you probably get eye strain when looking
too long at a screen from time to time. Of course, eye strain isn't a hugely
debilitating problem, so counting it with more serious things is deceptive.

This is a terrible article.

------
kayoone
A Silicon Valley health startup run by 20-somethings conducting its own
private "study" and inventing the "Silicon Valley syndrome" while barking
"Sitting is the new smoking".

Of course there is some truth to those problems, but this hyperbolism makes
them look like a joke to me..

------
zalew
I bet all those clerks who stand all day long feel very healthy.

A smoke break is a break from sitting. Smoke for your health!

------
egonschiele
Posture has been a big concern for me. I've improved mine a lot over the years
with Esther Gokhale's excellent book
([http://amzn.com/B003M9YTYY](http://amzn.com/B003M9YTYY)). Recently I also
installed an app that forces me to take a five minute break every 30 minutes.
So I'm really excited to see a startup in this space. I'm not sure if just
wearing the device will be enough though...sitting up straight can also be bad
for your back if you don't do it right. Just one example: pulling your
shoulders back causes strain; you need to _roll_ them back. Even so, I'm glad
someone's working on this!

~~~
nazgulnarsil
Lift some heavy ass weights. The solution to poor posture isn't to find ever
greater accommodation for atrophied muscles.

------
joveian
I've read a bunch of these type of articles over the past 3-4 years; the
better articles make it clear(er) that there is nothing resembling evidence
for these claims (which isn't to say it is impossible that there could be some
truth). OTOH, I've found the workrave and redshift applications to be very
useful to me. I encourage software and OS designers to consider what is
possible and useful to a person sitting in front of a computer and how to
integrate this. It seem like a minimally explored realm of applications that a
good number of people may just like independent of any psudo-medical hand
waving.

------
NDizzle
As someone with a really fucked up back (1), I work full time from home. I
have three stations. I have a normal 30" tall desk, a 45" tall standing desk,
and a recliner that I use in conjunction with one of those lap board-desk
things.

Mixing it up is the key. One thing isn't necessarily better than the other
100% of the time.

I still haven't found a chair I like, so my actual desk is what I use least.
Maybe 2 hours a day.

(1) I have two bulging discs, one extruded disc, and one fractured disc. This
is all L5 through L2, at the very bottom of my back.

------
smoyer
I have a very nice adjustable GeekDesk provided by my employer, but I haven't
lowered it to a sitting position for months. I generally have no problems
standing for long periods of time (assuming I have enough padding in my
shoes), but my back will complain if I spend too much time prone (due to an
injury 35 years ago).

What I really need is more exercise, but when is that study going to come
out? I'd love to add a treadmill to my work rig ;)

------
001sky
A definitive work on this subject that started the trend:

[http://www.amazon.com/Chair-Rethinking-Culture-Body-
Design/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Chair-Rethinking-Culture-Body-
Design/dp/0393319555/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381257325&sr=1-2&keywords=the+chair)

It is also worth noting that Humans were not meant to _stand_ for 8-12 hours a
day non-stop either.

------
enscr
I have pain in my lower back constantly due to poor posture while sitting. I
was hoping to find some good feedback on those who have used lumoback ? Please
chime in.

For those like me, I'll recommend this book. It made my life slightly less
painful "8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back". Look it up online. I'm not affiliated
with them in any way.

------
AliEzer
"Silicon Valley Syndrome". Yeah because only people in Silicon Valley suffer
from sitting too much...

------
mimiflynn
I've recently been experiencing numbness and sharp pains when sitting too
long. Right now, my doctor feels I might have Pudendal Neuralgia.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pudendal_neuralgia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pudendal_neuralgia)

------
riggins
I though sugar was the new smoking?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2443316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2443316)

------
walshemj
This is just a company pr puff piece plugging what they are selling.

------
noddingham
This just in: being alive is bad for your health.

