Sitting all day is terrible for us. Moving a little can help

Modern life involves a lot of sitting and staring at screens, and that takes a toll. Can moving for 5 minutes make a difference?

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  Hey, it's Flora Lichtman, and you're listening to Science Friday. For this next one, you might want to stand up because we're talking about the health risks of sitting, of spending hours and hours in a desk chair, dazed in front of a screen, barely moving. Basically, an ordinary Tuesday, for me, anyway. Researchers have found that keeping your butt in a seat for hours a day increases the risk of heart attacks, diabetes, gastrointestinal issues, psychiatric conditions, and more. Is sitting the new smoking? And what is the prescription for combating this blob life? Manoush Samarodi has an answer for you.

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  She's a tech journalist, the host of NPR's TED Radio Hour, and author of Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age, and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being. Manoush, welcome back to Science Friday.

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  It's so good to be here, Flora. It's been a while.

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  It has been a while. It's so good to have you. How bad is sitting really?

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Oh, Flora, it is like really, really bad. And here's the thing, like you mentioned in your introduction, sitting is the new smoking. Like, we've been hearing that for over a decade now, since that sort of phrase debuted. But really, what we've been increasingly doing since, over the last decade, is sitting and looking at screens more, right? I mean, the pandemic happened, everything went online, we emerged from the pandemic, and still, most of it is online. People are constantly switching from Zoom Room to Zoom Room. They are texting on WhatsApp, they're scrolling social media. AI is capturing a lot of our attention now, too.

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  And so for me, the question was, that combination, is it a double whammy? Or is it just about the sitting, not moving our bodies? What effect does that have on us? And where do the screens sort of combine to make issues? Because as you said, we know that this is not good, and we know that the average 19-year-old, it's estimated, sits as much as the average 60-year-old. And that's not because they're lazy, that, you know, teenagers got lazier. It is that we have built this world around being in front of screens, and it requires sitting on our butts.

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  Yeah, I mean, you know, I think of being seated as a modern problem. But when did this lifestyle really start?

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  Well, if you think about it, every time technology appears to make our lives more efficient and easier, it subtracts movement from our lives. That is machinery does that, you know, back in the industrial era, to the middle of the 20th century, when you started having highways and everybody went, you know, got in your car to go everywhere, add in escalators and drive through restaurants. And, you know, today, nobody even gets up to talk to their colleagues. And so slowly, slowly, slowly, we have sort of eliminated movement throughout our day. Now, what we do do is we go to the gym in the morning, some people do. Won't speak for everyone.

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  Speak for yourself.

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  Yeah, and we, you know, maybe work out in the evening. But the problem is, even if you do work out in the morning or the evening, if you sit for long stretches during the day, your health is at risk. Three out of four American adults now have a chronic illness like diabetes, hypertension, or they're prediabetic, and obesity. And many of those are preventable. Many of those are related to lifestyle.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Well, let's get to your prescription. You talk in the book about the goal of five minutes of walking every 30 minutes, which feels both like doable, but also very disruptive at the same time.

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  Yes, it does. So here's what happened. I was wondering why I felt so exhausted and drained at the end of the day. It was so physical, what I was feeling, this sense of like closing my laptop and feeling like I had just enough energy to crawl over to the couch to scroll some more, like pawing at the, at the little tiny screen and not even really looking at what you're looking at. And everyone around me seemed to be saying the same thing. I am so tired. Now, there are lots of reasons we can be tired. The headlines are indeed exhausting. But then I read and heard about a guy doing some research, Keith Diaz, a physiologist

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  at Columbia University Medical School, who had been trying to pinpoint what the minimum amount of movement was that the human body needs not to die an early death. So Keith was setting the bar extremely low. And Keith actually found in his lab that five minutes of movement per half hour of sitting during those long sedentary stretches that most of us had largely offset the harms. It cut people's glucose, it dropped their blood pressure. They also felt more positive and able to focus, and it cut their fatigue levels. So I was intrigued by this.

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  I was like, the guy found the answer. This is what we should be doing. So I called him up. I was like, why aren't we all doing this? And he said, you know, think about it. From the minute you enter school as like a little kid, you are told that sitting and looking in front of you is what an efficient, diligent worker looks like. And, you know, today, we, there's software technology that tracks workers' cursor to make sure that they're still at their screens. This is not part of how we consider, you know, the American way. It is not taking breaks. It is certainly not getting up every half hour, every hour to move our bodies. But I was like, well, maybe it should be, considering what you've discovered.

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  And I said, can we invite my listeners to try it? Let's see if they can integrate movement breaks into their day. So NPR and Columbia partnered for a global clinical trial. We invited people to sign up to take breaks every half hour, every hour, or every two hours.

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  How many people signed up, Manoush?

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  23,000 people. We crashed Columbia University's servers, so that was fun.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  It was, well, people clearly are looking for something. Whatever we're doing is not working. I mean, to be, let's be real, though, Flora, too. Public radio listeners, you know, they appreciate science.

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  Never underestimate our listeners, is what I do know.

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  Totally. So we wanted to test feasibility, like maybe every half hour wasn't doable. And then we wanted to see, like, what did people measure that they felt? And what sort of effects did they have? So to be clear, we could not measure people's glucose levels or their blood pressure. They sort of measured how much they moved regularly throughout their lives, how they felt regularly. And then for two weeks, they integrated these movement breaks into their lives, and we had them report back to us. Some people got text messages, others, people had to fill out surveys. And in the end, what we found was that 80% of those who committed taking breaks were able to stick with it.

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  Over 80% actually liked taking breaks, which was great. We saw up to 28% drop in fatigue levels. We saw people rating their mood and their ability to focus as much better. And surprisingly, Flora, we saw an actual increase in productivity. So despite taking all these breaks, people actually rated their work as better quality and said that they felt like they got more done. And I just found that so interesting to me, because what we're talking is improving our cognitive ability to do the work that needs to get done on our laptops and computers.

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  So what does that say to you? If 80% or over 80% of your participants not only could do it, but liked doing it and felt better after, why aren't we all doing this?

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  I do think it is the culture thing. So it was interesting to hear how people managed. So in the book, that's what I wanted to find out. While Keith was sort of digging into the data of what happened, I started to go through, you know, over 20,000 people's responses as to what, how did they make this happen? So the number one thing they did was they, this won't come as a big surprise, they set a timer, right? Like, okay, remind yourself. But the key thing was, it wasn't like the Apple Watch pinging you and you ignore it, right? It was making almost like a mini-contract with yourself. I am setting my timer and an intention that in an hour, I'm going to get up and walk around. We did find that people who committed to taking breaks every two hours had the highest rate of compliance, right?

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  They did not see the greatest benefits, but they did see a lot of benefits. And in fact, Keith found in the data that just taking four or five breaks per day saw a lot of the same benefits, the mood improving, fatigue dropping, all of those things.

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  So start somewhere.

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  So start somewhere, exactly. Perfection is not the goal. One break is better than no breaks. I mean, stand up and march in place, walk down the driveway, get the mail, and walk back. It all counts, right? You can vacuum. If you want to jog in place, go for it, but that is not necessary. What we're talking about is a two-mile-per-hour stroll. That is what we've measured here. So it's not even like, you don't have to do burpees or sprints or anything crazy like that. We're just saying, move your body, get your system going.

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  We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to share with you some calls from our listeners. We asked them for their creative solutions for how to get up and moving. And I, you know, as usual, they didn't disappoint. And I want to give your thoughts.

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  Oh, my God, I can't wait.

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  Don't go away.

• 10:34Speaker 01

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  OK, so, Manoush, we asked our listeners for their creative hacks, you know, how they force themselves to get up and get on the move.

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  Uh huh.

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  And here's a hot tip from Michael in Oakland, California.

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  In response to the question, what is a way to get ourselves up and out of the scrolling cycle? I recommend pounding eight ounces of water or a comparably non-alcoholic drink just before you sit down at the screen. The pee will keep you up and going.

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  Thoughts?

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, I love that. He's like, I'm setting a task for myself by, with a hydration break, essentially, is what he's saying.

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  A contract with himself to pee later.

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  Yeah, to pee later. Michael, good reminder, hydrating and then decanting is a great way to get yourself moving.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  What about standing desks?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Ah, unfortunately, there have been numerous meta-analysis that have found that standing desks actually, if you stand for longer than two hours, they can increase your risk of varicose veins and blood clots. So that's attractive. What?

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  I can't, I can't believe they're bad, actively bad.

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  Right, yeah.

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  That seems really at odds with what I have.

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  Well, it's just sad, really, isn't it? Yeah, it's just sad. But here's the good news. If you have a standing desk and you love it, by all means, you know, do, you know, you know your body best. But as Keith has said to me, a standing desk is a great prompt. If you like to stand, use it as a prompt to move, right? If you can stand up, I like to do the zoom and shuffle, for example. I stand up and I just shuffle back and forth. Or I'm raising my, doing heel raises is a good one, or knee raises, or like, squats is good, too. If, if standing is not an option, pumping your arms is also something that you can do. And, and the mechanism behind this, Flora, is so fascinating.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  So the reason why standing desks don't do the job is muscles need stimulation. They need to be contracted in order to draw the oxygen and the glucose out of our bloodstream and then push it up to our brain. So when we think, you know, we're switching between tasks, we're burning through oxygen and glucose, and we need to replenish all of that. If we don't, the CO2 in our brain builds up, and that's when we get that foggy, can't focus, want to crawl under my desk and take a nap kind of feeling.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Do you ever get sick of the multitasking, though? Like, the zoom and shuffle is like, let me make best use of every minute of my time, which I feel like is also fatiguing in its own way.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  And, and that, that's a really great point. Because we, for the study, we did not ask people to choose whether they stayed on their devices or got off of their devices. We were like, you make it work for you. And I heard from hundreds, thousands of people who said, I've used these breaks to get off my devices. For me, this is a moment to step away, to reconnect with my body, to just take some breaths, to not do the work at the same time, to single task, as I like to call it. Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, OK. I mean, you were talking about the compounding issue of being sedentary and the role of screens in our life. So let's talk a little bit about that. You know, it's so easy to get sucked into the endless scroll. Here's a tip we got from one of our listeners on that.

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  Hi, my name is Margot. Taking the color off of the screen. You go into your settings, I think it's in adaptive settings, and make your screen black and white. And then it's very boring to look at, and it will reduce your time on the screen. And anybody can do that, and it, it works pretty well.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, grayscale. I, that's been around for a while. My 19-year-old does that, actually. That it just is not as attractive to look at your phone. So you, you don't do it. But I want to make clear, like, this is not about, like, shaming you or telling you, like, you know, you're, you're rotting your mind by being online. Like, we, we are living digital lives. This is the reality, as much as some people would like to go back to the 90s, right, and MP3 players and all those things. And, you know, knock yourself out. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was there the first time. So that, that's fine. But I think many people are thinking, you know, I, I can't do that. I have a job or I go to school. And, you know, in my case, I have teenagers, I have elderly parents,

• 15:47Speaker 02

  and I work remotely. I need to be on my screen. So how do we figure out how to live in better harmony with these devices that do give us so much access to the world, to other people, and to information?

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  While we're on screen color, I feel like I've been hearing about blue glow disrupting my sleep for a long time. What does the science say on that?

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  The science has, it really, that is actually not the reason why you can't sleep. Like, I had also been thinking, like, I actually really thought, had learned a decade ago that looking at your screen before you go to bed because of the blue light was like, basically doing an espresso shot. That is simply not the case. Scientists have found that really, it's more, the theory goes, it's called the displacement theory, right? So it's not necessarily the thing itself, the light, that is causing you to sleep less. It is because you're maybe going to sleep a half hour later because you were so sucked into the thing that you were doing.

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  Where does the term "body electric" come from? The title of your book.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Well, it's a Walt Whitman poem, actually. And this poem is, you know, back in the industrial era. And he is, there's this moment where they start to see the difference between the people who are like the clerks and the, the bean counters, sitting at their desks. And they notice that their physiques are sort of changing, right? The muscles are going away. And this poem is about this idea that the, the strong body, the sinews and the, the muscles, it is an, an ode, an homage to the, the strong, physical, human form. It's also a song in fame.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  I sing "The Body Electric." Maybe the people are probably more familiar with that version of it. And I think for me, it's like, it's how I want to feel. I want to feel like electrified, you know? Like, we're using all these digital devices, but our bodies, our synapses are also driven by electric. We, we are all electric. But we need to, to think of it as something that powers us to feel positive and strong and joyous and appreciate being alive.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  I love that. That's so aspirational. And I think on that note, one last suggestion from a listener.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  Hello, this is Rusty from South Carolina. I used to work in the government and the intelligence community. And it included a great amount of time in front of a computer screen. Well, in the trades, if you're doing something with your hands and stuff, you're not on your phone, you're not in front of a computer. It's pretty awesome. Anyway, you want to get off your phones? Maybe try a different job.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Walt would agree with Rusty. I think the two of them would hit it off.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Seize the day.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  You know?

• 18:51Speaker 01

  So great.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Make something with your hands. You won't be on your screen. Move your legs, move your body. Scan into the horizon for the good of your eyeballs. Connect with the real world. But also, like, give yourself some grace. We do, technology's not all bad.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Manoush Samaradi, host of NPR's TED Radio Hour and author of "Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being." Thanks for being here.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  It was so fun, Flora.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  That's it for today's show. If you're looking for something to listen to during your next midday walk, why not dip into our back catalog? You know, if you're all caught up? We've got a ton, and you can find them wherever you listen. We'll catch you next time. I'm Flora Lichtman.