Have you heard the latest health freak war-cry?<\/p>\n
\u201cSitting is the new smoking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yep \u2013 you read it correctly. But viewed in isolation, with no context, what does it mean?<\/p>\n
Is sitting a cool new addiction that kids want to get into? Are we to imagine hordes of tweens skulking behind the bike sheds (or whatever the modern equivalent is) having a crafty sit?<\/p>\n
Is it a fashionable activity that makes you look dashing and attractive to potential partners?<\/p>\n
Is it something that can develop into an eighty-a-day habit?<\/p>\n
Before I answer those and other rhetorical questions, let me tell you how I came to be thinking about it.<\/p>\n
Several months ago, I was developing a training workshop for MS Outlook users, and my presentation skills mentor suggested I include something about checking email while standing up. She then said words to the effect of, \u201cHaven\u2019t you heard? Sitting is the new smoking.\u201d She went on to explain the meaning of the mantra. It sounded like a good thing to include in the presentation I was developing, so I did.<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to the past few weeks, in which I\u2019ve had to work in a standing position at my desk due to quite severe back issues. As my condition has improved, I\u2019ve been working longer and longer hours again, but every minute of those long hours\u2026<\/p>\n
Okay \u2013the hours aren\u2019t getting longer and longer. They still have only sixty minutes per. And yes, the minutes are still<\/em> sixty seconds per. It\u2019s an idiom\u2014\u201clonger and longer hours\u201d means \u201cmore and more hours.\u201d<\/p>\n Thank you for your patience and understanding.<\/p>\n \u2026But every minute of those long hours is spent in the vertical position. (Standing, for those who don\u2019t understand that<\/em> idiom.) And now, instead of excruciating back pain, I have aching feet, ankles and calves.<\/p>\n In order to work in a standing position, I had to raise my monitors, keyboard and mouse by about fifteen inches. Lacking the necessary to purchase the Rolls Royce of adjustable-height desks, I\u2019m slumming it with four cardboard boxes, a 30\u201d x 24\u201d sheet of plywood, and a duplicate copy of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary.<\/p>\n The Rolls Royce of adjustable desks will change heights at the flick of a switch. My arrangement requires two people and several minutes to effect any change.<\/p>\n I guess the boxes and plywood could be removed with gasoline and a match, but (a) I\u2019d have to find some new cardboard boxes and plywood each time I want to work in the standing position, (b) I\u2019d probably have to buy a couple of new monitors and a new keyboard, and (c) it\u2019s just possible I\u2019d burn my house down.<\/p>\n Viewed in that light, the Rolls Royce of adjustable-height desks would be a bargain. (This could be how I convince Mrs. H. to let me buy that desk!)<\/p>\n If sitting is the new smoking, my, feet, ankles and calves can make a pretty good case for standing being the new sitting.<\/p>\n But enough of this whining about cardboard boxes and aching ankles. Back to that health freak war-cry, and what the heck it might mean.<\/p>\n Having advanced three theories, permit me to ponder further.<\/p>\n Restaurants, bars and workplaces have, for many years, been smoke-free. Are they to become seat-free at some point in the future? If so, I foresee a rosy future for foot, ankle and calf massage therapists.<\/p>\n Will La-Z-Boy become the Benson & Hedges of the furniture industry? Have they been consulted?<\/p>\n What does the mantra mean in relation to babysitters, house-sitters and dog-sitters?<\/p>\n Is the government planning to tax sitters (both amateur and professional) in the same punitive way that smokers have been treated? If so, will sitting MPs be subject to the tax, exempt, or zero-rated?<\/p>\n The answer to all the above questions is irrelevant\u2014they\u2019re rhetorical, remember.<\/p>\n The intended message of the mantra is that sitting is not conducive to exercise\u2014but of course you\u2019d guessed that, hadn\u2019t you. Exercise promotes health; healthy lungs, healthy circulation, healthy musculature\u2026 I could go on, but my mail-order medical qualifications don\u2019t entitle me to dole out such expert advice. Nevertheless it\u2019s clear that sitting is detrimental to all those fine ideals.<\/p>\n Just like smoking.<\/p>\n But unless there\u2019s research out there that I missed (quite possible\u2014if it doesn\u2019t have lots of pictures, I won\u2019t read it), sitting doesn\u2019t greatly increase the chances of you getting lung cancer, emphysema or chronic bronchitis, not to mention the foul-smelling breath, hair and clothing.<\/p>\n I suspect that this really is a government-initiated\u2026 initiative?… to get us used to the negative impacts of sitting so that when the General Sitting Tax is introduced, health freaks everywhere will rise as one, exclaiming, \u201cAnd about time too!\u201d<\/p>\n I won\u2019t be among them though; I\u2019m no health freak. And being a lifetime non-smoker, I\u2019m darned if, at the ripe old age of over-55, I\u2019m going to become a non-sitter. I\u2019m too set in my ways. And in any case, there\u2019s at least one situation in which sitting is unavoidable for me.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when I\u2019m driving the car to the swimming pool to exercise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you heard the latest health freak war-cry? \u201cSitting is the new smoking.\u201d Yep \u2013 you read it correctly. But viewed in isolation, with no context, what does it mean? Is sitting a cool new addiction that kids want to get into? Are we to imagine hordes of tweens skulking behind the bike sheds (or whatever the modern equivalent is)… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[488],"tags":[476,334,332],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbs","tag-health-freak","tag-sit-stand-desk","tag-sitting-smoking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1559,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/1559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}