You may be seated, although you might not want to…

I reshared Bryce’s post over on Google+ recently and thought you may enjoy it. He appears to have put some thought into the medical billing and coding infographic entitled “Sitting is Killing You”. I’ll add my $0.02 below as well. Just two cents today… $2 post coming soon 🙂

Bryce Etheridge originally shared this post:

This infographic was supposed to convince me that sitting is bad… but it’s actually done to opposite. I went in with an attitude of ‘standing desks are 1 million percent healthier for you than sitting’ and left with ‘standing is better than sitting’

http://mashable.com/2011/05/09/sitting-down-infographic/

Let’s break it down.

“Sitting 6+ hours per day makes you up to 40% likelier to die within 15 years than someone who sits less than 3”
Who in the whole goddamn country sits for less than 3 hours per day. Give me a profession. Is that work hours? Because if we’re not excluding lesiure your down to about 15 people total.

“1 in 3 Americans is obese”
See bottom.
“Sitting makes us fat. Between 1980 and 2000 Exercise rates stayed the same, Sitting time increased by 8%, Obesity doubled”
A) You want us to believe that an 8% increase in sitting doubled obisity. Bullshit.
B) The definition of Obesity also changed in that time line.
C) Take a look at the graph, % energy increase above sitting. Standing ~ 30% increase above sitting, Chewing gum ~34% increase above sitting. So by your own damn chart, chewing gum burns more energy than standing.

“As soon as you sit:”
This slide is why I’m writing this post.
“Electrical activity in the leg muscles shuts off” pretty sure I can still feel my toes.
“Calorie burning drops to 1 per minute” From what? Also 1/minute is ~1000 calories per day, minus sleep time. Assuming you only sit around all day, that’s still OK.
“After 2 hours Good cholesterol drops 20%”
“After 24 hours: insulin effectiveness drops 24%” That’s afte 24 straight hours of sitting. Not sure what this is applicable to.

Next couple slides are good

“Sitting at 135<degree angle> puts less strain on you back” This is only marginally relevant to the topic.

“A hundred years ago, when we were all out toiling in the fields and factories, obesity was basically nonexistent.” Not true. The modern medical definition of obesity based on Body Mass Index ends up as what you would colloquially think of as ‘a bit pudgy’, NOT ‘the biggest loser’ levels of extra weight. This is where that ‘1 in 3 americans are obese’ stat comes in. Working the fields 100 years ago put you in much better shape, but not the chiseled atlases that we are lead to believe. These people still had extra fat, and maintained it because they ate enough calories to offset the work they’ve done.

Conclusion:
Standing is still good for you.
I’m still getting a standing desk.
This infographic is propaganda.
If there’s propaganda then there are propagandists.
Which means there is a cabal of anti-sitting extremists out there.
Radicals going to extreme lengths to make their point.
Possibly even assassination.
And I’ve made myself a target!
<pulls mini-blinds and looks for snipers>

I have seen a few people circulating this infographic and enjoyed Bryce’s thoughts on a standing desk. Personally I have played with that idea myself and enjoy the idea of a standing desk. I am less likely to get lost in cyberspace for hours on end, I feel more engaged in whatever desk process I am doing, and in some small way I feel like a rebel with a cause. It would also be easier to pull myself away from a standing position to declare time for a Wednesday Walk. 😉

I wonder how popular the idea of standing desks are. I envision my ideal desk to be adjustable in height so I could have that seated option available, just in case I want to do some desk activities with a bout of the flu.