
A 2-Minute Walk May Counter the Harms of Sitting - peterkrieg
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/a-2-minute-walk-may-counter-the-harms-of-sitting/
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theatraine
_" scientists found that every hour that overweight adults spent watching
television, which is a handy way to measure sitting time at home, increased
their risk of becoming diabetic by 3.4 percent"_

I think that should be every hour per day. It sounds quite dire otherwise. It
reminds me of this satirical piece in The New Yorker:
[http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/switched-
standin...](http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/switched-standing-
desk-now)

~~~
smellf
Whoa, that link is gold :)

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verelo
This is very anecdotal, but recently I moved to live a 15 minute walk from my
office. Since the car keys went away and the walk to and from the office was
introduced, I feel much healthier and happier.

Now it could be that I moved, so there are certainly possible external factors
that are not the walk, but I really do feel it is the walk that is the major
contributor to my days feeling so much better.

I've even found myself justifying silly things to myself just to keep the walk
up. For example, the other day I was running late but I still wanted to walk.
Walking in and not being late was impossible, so I caught a taxi into the
office, just so I could walk home without worrying about leaving my car
behind.

Walking is great.

~~~
Kluny
The money you'll save by walking instead of driving to work will more than
make up for the occasional cab ride!

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anu7df
The sample is 3626 men and women, generally healthy at the start of the study.
Could there really have been "enough" deaths after 3 or 5 years to even make a
guess at the reduction in death rate due to exercise, moving around or any
thing else. I doubt it. I am not saying the study is faulty, just pointing out
a possible problem.

~~~
melling
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_is_not_causation](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_is_not_causation)

~~~
fineline
[https://xkcd.com/552/](https://xkcd.com/552/)

~~~
hoopd
I can't figure out why I keep seeing this comic in conversations like this.

~~~
endymi0n
[http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/552:_Correlation](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/552:_Correlation)

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keithpeter
_" This reduction in death risk is likely related to energy balance, Dr.
Beddhu said. Strolling instead of sitting increases the number of calories
that someone burns, potentially contributing to weight loss and other
metabolic changes, which then affect mortality risk."_

Did the study classify participants by BMI class at all[1]? I work as a
teacher so I'm on my feet and moving round a class most of the time at work
and when not teaching I'm going around getting stuff &c. Very little sitting
at a PC. I also walk to and from a railway station each day (2* 1.7 miles). I
am stubbornly a chunky 29.5 BMI.

~~~
chrisdbaldwin
You can't outrun the fork.

~~~
keithpeter
Yup, true enough. And the glass (couple of Guinesses tonight after a hard
day). Just wondering if the data set has been controlled against that
variable.

~~~
Kluny
Switch to a lighter beer or hard liquor, lol, solved!

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tomrod
When I began a new job about a year ago, I found out my completely modular
cube had the capacity for me to change the height of my desk.

At that point, I raised it up to standing level, bought a standing mat from
Home Depot, and never looked back.

I know that standing desks tend to get a bit of a cult following, but I'll say
that I just feel better standing all day. There was a break-in period of about
3 weeks, and I bought some lighter-weight shoes, but after that point I found
myself more productive and engaged at work.

~~~
tjradcliffe
I use both a standing desk and a sitting one, and agree with you on the three-
week burn-in.

But while the benefits of standing desks are plausible, it is very important
to remember that they have an unequivocal, well-documented, peer-reviewed,
scientifically solid set of risks associated with them:
[http://www.hazards.org/standing/](http://www.hazards.org/standing/)

That is, there are well-documented health issues with _standing_ all day, and
of course, putting _desk_ after _standing_ doesn't change the physics or the
physiology of the process. This does not mean your standing desk or mine will
kill us, just that it's worth paying attention to any potential downsides
developing.

~~~
Dewie3
This is why I've prematurely moved to the next trend, the stop-start-jog-walk-
stand-sprint-walk-jog office desk treadmill cycle. The cycle is meant to
simulate our caveman activity cycle, with a lot of walking, jogging, some
waiting, and the occasional sprint from predators and towards pray. Sometimes
I spill my coffee on myself when the treadmill suddenly ramps up from a walk
or a stand-still to a sprint, but research shows[1] that things like spilling
coffee on yourself induces a slight stress response. Which is great, since I
need some authentic stress variables in order to simulate some of the
stressors of my hunter-gatherer heritage.

[1] TBA; this trend is too underground right now. The research will follow
soon.

~~~
antiuniverse
Even treadmill desks are coming under fire now... it seems you just can't win.

[http://www.katysays.com/junk-food-walking/](http://www.katysays.com/junk-
food-walking/)

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dschwartz88
This isn't surprising news.

Isn't this one of Apple's main goals in their Activity app (w/ the Apple
Watch)? To get around and move for a couple minutes each hour at least 12
times a day? Lots of other fitness bands have done this as well (Jawbone Up
comes to mind).

~~~
bobbles
Relevant article from a few years ago:

[http://lifehacker.com/5879536/how-sitting-all-day-is-
damagin...](http://lifehacker.com/5879536/how-sitting-all-day-is-damaging-
your-body-and-how-you-can-counteract-it)

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ZeroFries
People always guess that calorie burn is the reason sitting is harmful, but I
think it has to do more with blood flow and cell pressure. Getting up once
every 30-60 minutes and shaking my legs out and stretching seems to reduce
that effect quite a bit.

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collectodotio
Sitting for long periods may be bad for our health now, but guarantee in 2
years (or whatever) they tell us it actually has long-lasting benefits. At
which point, gamers and office workers will be vindicated!

~~~
atmosx
Your body was made to move not to sit too many hours :-). I doubt games and
office workers will ever be vindicated :-P

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giaour
But I already shelled out good money for my doe desk!

[https://xkcd.com/1329/](https://xkcd.com/1329/)

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ChuckMcM
Fortunately my Diet Dr. Pepper habit has me getting up and walking regularly
:-) Now to move the fridge 1 minute away from where I normally sit ...

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melling
The study was done 10 years ago with less than 4000 people over a period of 1
year.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25931456](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25931456)

Is that really enough evidence to conclude anything?

~~~
carbocation
3600 people is a pretty good sample size. The limitation here is that it's
observational rather than a controlled intervention. So, you could say,
perhaps those who were sicker moved around less. Rather than movement leading
to improved health, improved health could lead to movement.

That said, if it's the best evidence we have, it might be reasonable to
suggest that people spend a bit more time moving around until we get more
evidence. The intervention is very unlikely to be harmful, costs virtually
nothing, is easy to do, and could be helpful.

~~~
melling
...or it might do absolutely nothing for you. We might find out 10 years from
now that standin up every 10 minutes and doing 20 squats works, for example.

People get a little tired of meaningless study after study articles. "Well, it
couldn't hurt" gets old too.

~~~
ludamad
Instead, I take these studies with a pinch of salt and also judge how I feel
sitting all day (fairly bad) vs taking breaks to jog on spot every so often
(fairly good).

EDIT: But I do think the title is overly optimistic, personally

~~~
melling
Yes, sitting all day is bad. That study was done decades ago.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health/research/08morris.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health/research/08morris.html)

Maybe once a few more people become tired of these "results", we can devise
better studies or use better science to measure our "health".

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mpdehaan2
I think there's something odd about our society if suddenly we are all deathly
afraid of chairs.

It should be lions. We need to reintroduce lions into our suburbs.

What? Your suburbs didn't originally have lions? More reason to add them then.

