Skip to main content

Sitting is not the new smoking

Me Standing vs Me Sitting | Funny Meme on ME.ME

SITTING IS NOT THE NEW SMOKING

For a few years, you've been hearing more in the news about how "sitting is the new smoking" based on some studies showing that the more sedentary you are, the higher your risk of death is.  This then led to more people having standing desks. 

But more research has coming out saying that standing all day probably isn't the right answer either and probably just leads to more aches and pains and leg swelling.

If you missed it, here is a summary article

I think a good portion of this goes back to the fact that it's not just standing that helps, but you need to be standing with good posture and ways of offloading pressure on the feet and legs or using those muscles to help the blood that goes down to the heart be able to get back up.

The takeaways for me were that

- Don't spend a ton of money on a standing desk.  Prop things up on some paper reams or books.
- Focus on good posture while sitting and standing
- Stay physically active when you're able to - that was the main thing that seems to lengthen lifespan.  Nothing crazy - 30 minutes a day should be fine.

Popular posts from this blog

Multivitamins

If you can get the lid off, you probably don't need them When I ask people if they are taking any vitamins, herbs or supplements, many people will say they are taking a multivitamin.  When I ask them why they take it, I get a quizzical look most of the time. I think this is something that resonates from childhood and parental advice of the idea that we need vitamins to help our body develop.  I'm not pediatrician so I can't speak to the effects on the developing child, but I will say that most non-pregnant adults without major medical conditions do not need extra vitamins. You'll be impressed by these labels promising 120%, 300%, 1200% of your daily dose of vitamin whatever it is, but the truth is that for most of these vitamins, if you take more than your daily dose your body needs, the rest just ends up in your urine.  You are literally peeing money away in this case. There's been a new trendy vitamin every decade or so for the last 40-50 years; First it...

Kidney Stones

I've written about this previously , but it's often hard to explain to people what a 10 is on the "1-10" pain scale if they haven't been in that spot before.  For women who have had children, they generally know what a 10 is, but for men it's a little harder.  When I was a medical student on my psychiatry rotation, we had a patient calmly sitting there saying his pain level was at a 10 and our resident, who was an ex-military sniper with a large skull tattoo on his forearm and a crosshair through the eye, calmly leaned forward and asked, "so if I lit you on fire and ran you over with my truck, you could not be in more pain than you are now, correct?"  The patient changed his answer. Getting to the point, a kidney stone is about the close I can come to describing a 10/10 pain to people who haven't gone through childbirth.  The fundamental issue is similar - your body is trying to move a big solid thing through an opening that was not really desig...

NSAIDs

Advil and Motrin are ibuprofen, then you have Aleve (naproxen).  Those are the over-the-counter ones.  Prescriptions are Mobic (meloxicam), nabumetone, indomethacin, Toradol (ketorolac), diclofenac, Lodine, and the list goes on.  All of these medications are in a class called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). I'm giving you this list because there is mounting evidence that these medications a) don't work as well as we'd thought and b) have some very serious long term side effects we're finding out more about. NSAID's act by reducing the amount of prostaglandins you make in order to reduce inflammation.  However, prostaglandins have a ton of other effects and are involved in the maintenance of just about AIDs and also stronger if they are taken every day and/or around-the-clock.  every other organ system that you have.  The effect is stronger with higher doses of NS NSAID's work best and are best indicated for times when something is r...