To Sit or Stand...

They say that sitting down is hard to do
86,400. The number of seconds in a day.

28,800. The number of those seconds spent sleeping (hopefully).

This means there are approximately 57,600 daily seconds subjected to voluntary body positioning. That's 57,600 conscious decisions to walk, run, slouch, jump, slide to the left, slide to the right, criss-cross, now everybody clap your hands.

While the initial decision is intentional, the length of interval spent in said position can vary from jiffys to kes (both bonafide scientific units of time, for real).

Where things get tricky is exactly what impact these settings have on the body.

If sitting is the new smoking, stand up desks are the new vaping sans Essence of Pineapple breath and man bun.

Just a few of the problems with extended bum bearing:

• Back/Neck Pain
  • This one is obvious as we've all "been there"
• Weight Gain
  • Less movement = less calories burned #math
• Decreased organ function
  • Less movement leads to a sluggish circulation allowing fatty acids in the blood to collect on artery walls
  • The pancreas may over produce insulin increasing the risk of diabetes
• Mental apathy
  • Less circulation results in low oxygen to the brain and a zombie face to go with those zombie legs
• An Australian study found prolonged sitting time was responsible for 6.9% of deaths.
  • The association between sitting and all-cause mortality remains consistent across women and men, age groups, weight, health and physical activity levels.

The benefits of standing, in no particular order:

• The opposite of that whole list

It's recommended to keep it under 120 minutes of sitting per day. Which comes out to roughly 10 minutes per hour or approximately 116 seconds of Frank Keys anecdotal lyrics set to John Stafford Smith's "To Anacreon in Heaven" (but who's counting?)

Desk jockeys, google "stand up desk".
Teamsters, take more frequent pit stops.

And remember, If you don't use it, you lose it.

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Have a great week.

Get up stand up,
​Dr Mike