Is sitting going to kill you?

Is sitting going to kill you?

If you Google sitting at the moment you will be swamped by articles proclaiming that ‘sitting is the new smoking’, ‘sitting will wreck your life’ and ‘sitting will kill you’.

Is it the latest fad, daily mail ‘polishing your shoes will give you cancer’ scare story, or is there something in the claims?

There is some compelling looking evidence out there, in a 2012 study publish in the British Journal of Sports Medicine it claimed that every hour spent sitting (well watching TV, which we assume is done sitting) cuts 22 minutes from your life span, whilst every cigarette cuts 11, shocking stuff!

However if you really look into the studies it’s clear that it is nearly impossible to distinguish the sitting from lots of other factors. So is it ok to sit all day?

My short answer would no. But it’s not a yes or no answer, as always it’s more complex than it appears.

Modern western people do sit for too long, office workers in America sit on average for 28hrs each week during the working week. That does not include travel to and from work and time on the sofa.

Desk bound people (most working people now) spend way too much time sitting and yes it does have lots of issues. Workers need choices; they need to be able to stand at their desks when they wish to.  And the improvements to physical and mental health are many, elevating mood, increasing productivity (whatever) lowering blood pressure and lots more. So what’s not simple about this.

There is a Buddhist idea of the ‘suffering of change’. One example of this is sitting and standing. We have to stand for hours and we so wish to sit down, we sit down for hours and we should really wish to stand up. My point is that humans are supposed to move, to move!

If we really get in touch with our bodies we can feel when it’s a good time to stand and when to sit. At the moment I seem to be cycling around 10-15 mins for each, with it being shorter when I’m tired. We get into trouble with sitting when we learn to ignore our bodies and ignore the messages that we send ourselves. I have written plenty about how this happens elsewhere. But just standing and then ignoring the bodies’ messages about this is also not the answer.

For me the answer is to get in touch with our bodies, listen to what they/we tell us and act on it.

It’s important to realise that both sitting and standing are skills. And they are skills that we are not taught in school, so many of us have to learn them as adults. 

There are lots of models to use and lots of very intelligent folks working on this. I would refer you to Kelly Starrett and Kit Laughlin as good starting places. You can attend a good Yoga class, learn to sit well in meditation or if you are in the Rowhedge area come and see me.

The BBC have broadcast a quite interesting programme on sitting; you can find it here 

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0415hbv