{"id":32610,"date":"2019-05-17T03:38:53","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T10:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32610"},"modified":"2019-05-16T12:40:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T19:40:59","slug":"dont-sit-in-your-chair-all-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/05\/17\/dont-sit-in-your-chair-all-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t sit in your chair all day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. James A. Levine studies the health benefits of adding more movement to our lives. (photo from James Levine)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

We are sitting too much \u2013 both at work and in our off hours. And all this sitting is doing us damage. But it\u2019s not only about our health. It\u2019s about how much we could be getting done, both professionally and personally.<\/p>\n

When people read health-related articles or listen to health news, they \u201cmentally categorize this information as health information. I think that is a mistake,\u201d said Dr. James A. Levine, president of Fondation Ipsen, which, under the auspices of the philanthropy network Fondation de France, tries to promote scientific knowledge. \u201cThis isn\u2019t about health. In the workplace, it\u2019s about productivity: data suggests productivity \u2013 widgets produced per hour \u2013 improves by about 10 to 15%. In school, academic performance improves by about 10%, compared to kids who don\u2019t engage in these activities and trials. Thinking about this as a health issue underserves the reader. Really, it\u2019s about having a vital, exuberant, productive, happy life.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Levine \u2013 author of the 2014 book Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It<\/em> (St. Martin\u2019s Press) \u2013 is a proponent of movement, he said sitting occasionally is not a bad thing. What is contributing to ill health, he said, is our culture of rolling out of bed, getting into our cars, sitting at an office desk and then driving back home to sit some more. Many of us shop online, order in meals, watch TV, play video games, check texts, email, use social media and go to sleep. Many of us are spending well over half the day, every day, seated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think approximately 28 different chronic diseases and conditions are associated with excess sitting,\u201d Levine told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cThey range from excess body weight and obesity to metabolic conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, to certain types of cancer, such as breast cancer … to mental health issues, such as low mood and depression, to mechanical problems in the body, such as back and joint pain, and all the way through to quite interesting and quite subtle conditions, such as impaired productivity, lower innovativeness, and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no simple solution. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to conjecture that a few simple tricks can solve problems like this,\u201d said Levine. \u201cBut, if you think about it logically, if it\u2019s taken society 50 years to get us down onto our bottoms, there can\u2019t just be a few simple tricks to get us up. The modern workplace is actually designed to keep people seated, because it was felt, incorrectly at the time, in the \u201950s and \u201960s, that, if you kept a person at their desk, they\u2019d be more productive. But, in fact, that\u2019s been proven to not be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>For some, like Levine, getting movement back into our lives means getting a walking desk. For others, it may involve having meetings with colleagues while we walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur brain neuros are continuously changing through neuroplasticity,\u201d said Levine. \u201cSo, in other words, you can take a person with the brain structure of sedentary and convert them, through intervention, into a person who moves more. The reason this occurs is through neuroplastic factors that change the brain\u2019s structure and biochemistry in response to, in this case, intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

The younger a person is, the more neuroplastic their brain is and, hence, more adaptable, he said. The opportunity for an intervention to have the greatest impact is in childhood. As we age, it is harder for us to change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did studies in primary schoolchildren which were fascinating,\u201d said Levine. \u201cWe gave them five-minute motion stimuli or games during their lesson and we found that there was a disproportionate response in the children. In other words, if you give children a little nudge, they\u2019ll move a great deal. You just have to give them permission to move. We found that, in slightly older children, ages 11-14, if you give them the same lesson, the children will double their daily activity. If, at the highest level, you alter the structure of the classroom, whereby movement is permitted \u2026 children will double their daily physical activity merely by changing their environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

For children, he said, the freedom to move will result in a 50% increase in activity; for adults, it will result in a 25 to 30% increase.<\/p>\n

A first step to getting on a healthier track includes reading up on the topic, alerting your mind to the need to activate your body. When it comes to action steps, Levine advised people to start small and build on that.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook for two activities a day that you did seated, but that you can also do walking \u2013 things like weekly meetings with your manager, walk and talk,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery lunch time, I won\u2019t sit for half an hour. I\u2019ll eat and sit for a quarter of an hour and walk for the other 15 minutes. I do it every single day. Every week, I\u2019ve watched my kid go play hockey in the arena. Yeah, I\u2019ll be there in the beginning, but I\u2019m going to do a half an hour walk. We\u2019re not talking about adding exercise. We\u2019re talking about transferring sedentary time into moving time.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy meetings are walk and talk. When I go out with my kids, we always walk and talk. When I go for an evening out with my wife, we walk to the opera or movie, or before dinner. If your evening out is too far to walk from home to, find a place to park your car that is walking distance to the venue. Park there and walk. While standing desks are good, moving while standing is even better. If not possible, consider placing your phone away from you, so you\u2019ll need to get up to answer it and walk around your desk while you talk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, commit to your plan,\u201d he said. \u201cYes, you\u2019ve found five opportunities during the week to get up and move. You\u2019ve built environmental cues to remind you to do it \u2013 on the fridge, the desk \u2013 and check it off on a weekly basis when you\u2019ve met your goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last and final step might surprise you, because it may seem counter-intuitive, but it\u2019s equally important to the other steps \u2013 get a good night\u2019s sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. James A. Levine studies the health benefits of adding more movement to our lives. (photo from James Levine) We are sitting too much \u2013 both at work and in our off hours. And all this sitting is doing us damage. But it\u2019s not only about our health. It\u2019s about how much we could be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[3554,2864,9003,5947],"class_list":["post-32610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-exercise","tag-health","tag-james-a-levine","tag-office-life"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}