Sitting: As Bad As Smoking?!

Lots of us spend HOURS a day sitting on our bums. And we’re often told that this is terrible for us — even that it could be as bad for our health as smoking. But how bad is it really? And can exercise or standing desks help make up for all those hours on the couch?? We dig into what happens inside our bodies when we sit all day — with sedentary behavior researchers Prof. David Dunstan and Prof. Bethany Barone Gibbs. Find our transcript here: https://tinyurl.com/ScienceVsSitting In this episode, we cover: (01:25) How sitting became so scary (06:33) What is sitting doing to us? (16:38) Can standing help? (22:47) What we can do This episode was produced by Michelle Dang, with help from Meryl Horn, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, and Rose Rimler. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Wendy Zukerman is our executive producer. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Video editing & sound by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, So Wylie, Emma Munger and Peter Leonard. Thanks to the researchers we spoke to for this episode including Dr. Kaitlin Gallagher, as well as Humdinger Studios in Melbourne, and Wolff Island Studios in New York City. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Wendy Zukerman?

  Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman and this is Science Versus. And I'm here, sitting on my butt.

• 0:14Wendy Zukerman?

  Today on the show, we are taking a look at how bad it is to just sit. Because for years now, we've been hearing that sitting is so incredibly bad for our health. That it's as bad as public health enemy number one: smoking.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Sitting is the new smoking.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  You're actually taking years off of your life, even if you work out.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Too much sitting could increase your risk of dying from cancer.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Associated with a greater risk for cardiovascular disease.

• 0:44Speaker 04

  If you sit too much, like we're doing right now, you apparently raise your risk of dying.

• 0:50Wendy Zukerman?

  So how bad is sitting all day, really? What is the groundbreaking science telling us about this? And if it is that bad, what are we supposed to do about it? When it comes to sitting, there's a lot of...

• 1:04Speaker 02

  You're actually taking years off of your life.

• 1:07Wendy Zukerman?

  And then, there's science.

• 1:13Wendy Zukerman?

  Science vs. Sitting is coming up, just after the break.

• 1:23Speaker 05

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• 1:54Speaker 06

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• 2:30Wendy Zukerman?

  Welcome back. Today, we are finding out how bad it is to be sitting all day. As I sit in the studio, Michelle Dang, producer at Science Versus, tell me how bad this is, because it's comfy.

• 2:43Speaker 07

  Hey Wendy. Wendy, how much do you sit a day? Are you worried about it?

• 2:46Wendy Zukerman?

  I sit so much! I sit so much a day! I am extremely worried about what you're about to tell me. There could be days where I am locked in and writing, and I sit for basically nine hours at a time. And for years now, I've been seeing headlines about how bad this is. And I've always been too terrified to do the research and find out why. So I am very nervous about what you're about to tell me. Why did you want to do this episode?

• 3:18Speaker 07

  Well, I'm worse than you. I think I sit those nine hours, and then I also sit a lot outside of work. I'm often watching Taskmaster on YouTube, we're playing video games, so, um, yeah. I was worried about that. And we're not alone, you know? The average person in the US and Australia sit six to nine hours a day.

• 3:40Wendy Zukerman?

  We are not alone, but we're in the top...

• 3:44Speaker 07

  Top percentile.

• 3:46Wendy Zukerman?

  Sixty, you said six to nine hours.

• 3:51Wendy Zukerman?

  That's what we are going to find out. So let's begin with this claim around sitting being as bad as smoking. Where did it come from? Is it true?

• 4:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I'm going to bring you back to one of the studies that helped kick off all these headlines. That started like 20 years ago. I want you to meet one of the authors behind those studies, Professor David Dunstan. He's the head of the Physical Laboratory at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne. Back in the mid-2000s, David did this study where to measure what was going on with sitting. He looked at TV time as a proxy.

• 4:31Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 4:33Speaker 07

  So around this time, like, people weren't really worried about sitting as a problem, because the focus was really on getting out there to move. There's this recommendation that just come out to exercise two and a half hours a week.

• 4:46Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 4:47Speaker 07

  But David was wondering, even if people are hitting that exercise targets, there's still a lot of, a lot of other hours of the day that we could be sitting on our bums. So him and his team analyzed a bunch of data where we had people's TV time and looked to see what happened. They tracked people's health across six years, and this is what they found.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  We make the comparison of people who are watching higher amounts of TV versus those that are watching lower amounts of TV. There is an increased risk of premature mortality or early death.

• 5:24Speaker 07

  So overall, in the study, they found that each hour of TV time correlated with an 11% increased risk of dying. And this even held up, even if people had been exercising. So here's David again.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  That relationship appeared to remain true, even when you started to adjust for, you know, things like age and sex and even physical activity.

• 5:51Wendy Zukerman?

  And when you said an 11% increase of death, I mean, we all have a 100% risk of death. It's coming for all of us. But you mean, within the course of the six-year study?

• 6:01Speaker 07

  Right. The people who were sitting more were more likely to have died within that time.

• 6:08Speaker 07

  And so after this, scientists realized that there's this whole new category of people.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  The active couch potato. This is that whole notion that you can be physically active, meet the guidelines, but also spend a large chunk of your time essentially sitting.

• 6:24Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes, that's us, Michelle.

• 6:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, so in David's study, for example, they found that for every hour that you sit, there's an 18% increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and a 9% increased risk of dying from cancer. Other studies have also found associations to things like stroke and diabetes. And this meta-analysis from the Lancet actually gathered all these studies up and found that even if you exercise about 30 minutes a day and you sit more than four hours a day on average, you still see an increased risk of all-cause mortality.

• 7:05Wendy Zukerman?

  And this is where we get these headlines, that sitting is the new smoking.

• 7:11Speaker 07

  It's like, every time one of these studies comes out, bolsters these results, you get a new headline.

• 7:16Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 7:17Speaker 07

  And so it's really stuck with us year after year.

• 7:20Wendy Zukerman?

  Does it increase your risk of death as much as smoking?

• 7:23Speaker 07

  It doesn't. So if you look at the actual numbers, heavy smoking is roughly four times worse than sitting a bunch.

• 7:32Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay. And so what exactly is sitting doing in the body that's so bad? Because it feels nice, you know? It doesn't feel that bad.

• 7:45Speaker 07

  Right. So let's start with the heart stuff. For this, I spoke to Professor Bethany Barone-Gibbs. She's from West Virginia University and studies all about the cardiovascular system. And she told me that a big reason that sitting makes a difference here starts with the heart's main job.

• 8:05Wendy Zukerman?

  Love.

• 8:07Speaker 07

  Aww. But that's not where we're going.

• 8:11Wendy Zukerman?

  What our heart is doing is pumping our blood all the way through our body, down to our toes and back, and up to our heads and back down, you know, out to our fingers and back up.

• 8:21Speaker 07

  Okay, but in order to successfully pump blood throughout your body, your heart actually has a very important supporting cast. And a big part of that cast is your muscles. So after the heart sends blood across your body, through your arms, your legs, for example, the muscles in those appendages have to help the blood come back to the heart.

• 8:48Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, so your heart is the pump, the engine that's pushing blood around, but then the muscles are...

• 8:57Speaker 07

  Are helping the blood pump back to the heart.

• 9:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 9:00Speaker 07

  And the important power players are in your legs. It's your calves and your thighs doing a lot of this work. In order to do this, they have to contract.

• 9:13Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes, that's interesting. They contract around the blood vessels? Kind of like smoosh, smoosh, smoosh, smoosh, pushing the blood out?

• 9:21Speaker 07

  So you have these veins, they call deep veins, that run through your leg muscles. So these veins are sitting inside throughout our calves, and it has a lot of pressure to push back up. But again, they need to contract to do this. And Wendy, what are our legs doing when we're sitting?

• 9:42Wendy Zukerman?

  They're not contracting?

• 9:43Speaker 07

  Not contracting.

• 9:45Wendy Zukerman?

  They're relaxing, just like me.

• 9:47Speaker 07

  Yeah. So here's how Bethany put it.

• 9:51Wendy Zukerman?

  Right, your feet are low, your head is high.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  So your heart still has to pump blood, you know, against gravity. But you are not using that muscle pump at all. That like helper is not helping.

• 10:05Speaker 07

  Besides gravity, it's the fact that your legs are in these right angles at your knees and your hips. So that's making it harder for blood to come up as well. Um, and then because of all this, blood starts pooling in your legs. Bethany told me it just kind of sits inside the veins of your legs and feet. And while this pooling isn't great, it can lead to a cascade of other effects in your body. So what happens is that the blood vessels around your body start to constrict.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  There's a compensation which you're, you know, your, your body's like, wait a minute, not enough blood's coming back. And so your blood pressure has to go up and your heart has to work harder.

• 10:50Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, I just feel it all through my body now. It's like I can feel it.

• 10:54Wendy Zukerman?

  I can feel like my, my shoes are getting tight, Michelle.

• 10:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, like are we sitting for too long already?

• 11:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Exactly. I feel like my heart's gonna come out of my chest. It's working so hard. So what, um, okay, so this is why sitting is so bad for us. Cause so the blood is pooling down by our feet. We're not able to use the muscles in our legs to help squish the blood back up. Our heart is working too hard and we're forcing our bodies to be in this position for hours at a time.

• 11:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 11:29Wendy Zukerman?

  So even though, you know, I was kind of joking to say, I feel it now as you're describing these symptoms. The truth is, after a full day of sitting, I don't feel any of that stuff.

• 11:40Speaker 07

  Right. It's just comfy, right?

• 11:42Wendy Zukerman?

  It's exactly, I mean, if I felt like my heart was racing and my shoes were tight, I would do something about it, but I don't. I just live my life.

• 11:51Speaker 07

  Why, so it's actually not that dramatic of a jump. When you look at something like systolic blood pressure, it goes up maybe two to three points after sitting for a few hours. It's not something that you can feel, like really feel.

• 12:05Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh. But over time, the idea is it's a, it's a signal that your body doesn't like this state that it's in.

• 12:13Speaker 07

  Over time, we think that's enough to cause long-term damage. If this is something that happened over and over and over again. So, um, one thing that can happen is that higher blood pressure can actually start to change the structure of your blood vessels over time.

• 12:31Wendy Zukerman?

  Even just a tiny increase, that can still, your blood vessels then start to adapt to this state that it's in.

• 12:38Speaker 07

  So like even the, the cells inside your arteries, inside the walls of your arteries can start to detect this change. Uh, and there's like extra pressure that they're getting stretched out a little bit more. And they don't like that, so they start remodeling their walls to also adapt to this change.

• 12:57Wendy Zukerman?

  Cool.

• 12:58Speaker 07

  And two, two of the major building blocks in our blood vessels are actually collagen and elastin.

• 13:05Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 13:06Speaker 07

  Here's Bethany.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  If you have more, if you have more elastin, um, things are more elastic and that's easier for your heart. And if you have more collagen, it's stiffer. So the remodeling happens slowly over time as cells get replaced. You know, the vessels might be like, hey, we're getting a lot of pressure around here. We need some more, when we replace, let's replace with collagen. So we're ready to, so we can adapt and handle this higher pressure.

• 13:28Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm. They want to get stiffer.

• 13:30Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:31Wendy Zukerman?

  Cause if you, if you've got extra pressure, you don't want to keep stretching, stretching, stretching. So you get stiffer blood vessels. I see where this is going. You don't want stiffer blood vessels.

• 13:41Speaker 07

  And again, this is not something that happens after you, you sit for one day. But it's something that could start to change over months or years of sitting.

• 13:49Wendy Zukerman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:50Speaker 07

  And there is this one other big reason that sitting is bad for us that we'll go through quickly.

• 13:56Wendy Zukerman?

  Let's go stick the knife in even further, Michelle.

• 14:00Speaker 07

  Uh, and that's that when you sit for a long time, it leads to more glucose hanging out in your blood.

• 14:08Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm.

• 14:09Speaker 07

  And that's also because your muscles are so inactive. Um, muscles love to gobble up glucose as their main source of energy and fuel, right?

• 14:18Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 14:19Speaker 07

  But when they're not doing anything, like when we're sitting for a long time, um, that glucose just ends up hanging out in the blood, especially after a big meal.

• 14:27Wendy Zukerman?

  Ooh, and that then leads to the production of insulin, right? To then pull out.

• 14:33Speaker 07

  Yeah. So you get bigger glucose spikes, then you get your body pumping out insulin. And then, you know, this kind of stuff happening again and again can lead to things like insulin resistance and even type two diabetes down the line.

• 14:47Wendy Zukerman?

  Ooh.

• 14:48Speaker 07

  And surprisingly, that all can kind of weaves into why we might be seeing an increased risk of cancer as well.

• 14:54Wendy Zukerman?

  How come?

• 14:55Speaker 07

  Cause insulin actually plays a big role in how cells grow and divide. And so if we have a bunch of it, it might be helping out cancer cells.

• 15:06Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, that you have these more and more insulin spikes, potentially triggering cells to grow in ways that they shouldn't, which is basically what cancer is, right? The cells dividing and growing too quickly.

• 15:21Speaker 07

  Right. So that's one small thing that could be going on with cancer.

• 15:24Wendy Zukerman?

  Coming into this chat, I mean, I, yeah, I suspected you were gonna tell me that sitting for nine hours a day is bad. But I was desperately hoping that, cause some days I'll go for a run, maybe an hour or something. And I was, and, and in my mind, I'm, I'm thinking, well, this is an excellent day. Good on me for going for a run. But from everything you told me about the science here, that it's the sitting, I've still got four hours on either side of that run of just blood pooling, glucose hanging out in my blood. That run did not save me from the perils of sitting, did it?

• 16:07Speaker 07

  Well, actually it depends.

• 16:08Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 07

  And that, that big meta-analysis we talked about before from the Lancet, they found that 30 minutes of exercise a day didn't cancel out the effects of sitting.

• 16:19Wendy Zukerman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:19Speaker 07

  But it turns out if you exercise a lot, like, uh, they were talking like 60 to 75 minutes a day of, of moderate to vigorous exercise, like exercise that gets your heart pumping.

• 16:32Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Speaker 07

  Um, that this can actually, um, cancel out the effects of, of sitting.

• 16:39Wendy Zukerman?

  All right. So, so this is, as, as a big, as big sitting over here, big sitter over here, um, uh, this is all very bad news, but what I'm also hearing is that the body can adapt, right? I mean, that it is adapting to the state of sitting. But that means it should be able to adapt to a new, healthier state, right? Is there a way we can reverse this, reverse these, this damage that we're causing our body?

• 17:11Speaker 07

  Yeah. Is there anything we can do to stop it? So after the break, we're gonna look at whether we can just stand up to fix all our sitting problems.

• 17:21Wendy Zukerman?

  Excellent. Coming up.

• 17:30Speaker 05

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• 19:06Wendy Zukerman?

  Welcome back. We've just heard that sitting is really bad for our heart. Over time increases our risk of death. It's all looking bad for the big sitters out there like me. But Michelle Dang, producer at Science Versus, has promised us a solution, a way to get out of our sitting woes. Michelle, take it away.

• 19:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, so can breaking up your sitting with standing help? Well, Bethany, who we heard from earlier, actually did a whole randomized control trial on this.

• 19:42Wendy Zukerman?

  Great.

• 19:43Speaker 07

  In it, she actually recruited a bunch of workers, desk workers, who sit a lot. And she broke them into two different groups.

• 19:53Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 19:53Speaker 07

  And one of them, they were coached to change positions throughout the day and stand up more. And they were given standing desks. And then they coached them for three months. They also looked to see if there were any changes in their blood pressure over this time.

• 20:11Wendy Zukerman?

  They coached them, they were like, you can keep standing? Or it was all about the sitting and standing, the sitting and standing? They weren't encouraged to just stand for as long as possible?

• 20:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was about breaking up their sitting with like 15 to 30 minutes of standing per hour.

• 20:25Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh. That's a real hassle. That gets in the way of work.

• 20:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's like a constant reminder, right?

• 20:34Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's every half an hour, which standard was supposed to be, sitting and standing? Okay, but it's for our health, it's for our heart. So what did so one group was, and then what was the control group?

• 20:45Speaker 07

  So the control group were just, they didn't get the coaching and they carried on as usual.

• 20:51Wendy Zukerman?

  They're you and me. We're the control group.

• 20:54Speaker 07

  So on average, at the end of the study, the people who got coached, they did stand more. And they dropped their sitting by about an hour a day.

• 21:03Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, wow. Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 07

  But it turns out that this did not help their blood pressure.

• 21:08Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, no. I thought it was already such a hassle and it didn't work.

• 21:12Speaker 07

  I know.

• 21:13Wendy Zukerman?

  Damn, they were still sitting too long.

• 21:16Speaker 07

  Well, here's the other thing that Bethany discovered from this study. She found that for the people who stood the most, their arteries were actually stiffer than the people who were sitting a lot.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  And it wasn't, it wasn't such a big change that it would have been clinically meaningful. But it was definitely in the wrong direction.

• 21:39Wendy Zukerman?

  Because their body had to adapt to this new state of standing now.

• 21:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, so here's, I asked Bethany, like, why does she think this happened?

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Well, I think that people were standing still at their desk. And all those things I told you about sitting and blood pooling and the muscles not being activated and the heart having to work harder. If you stand very still at your desk, it's even worse. You're standing up even taller.

• 22:08Speaker 07

  So there's even more pressure in the veins of your legs when you're standing. Potentially a reason why we see more stiffening in the people who are standing more than sitting. What's really fascinating is that Bethany only saw this link between standing and stiffer arteries when people were standing at work.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  But outside of work, standing was not, it was actually beneficial. And so I think that, I think that static standing is not something that people really do a lot of.

• 22:40Speaker 07

  Like you just, yeah, at home, do you think it's like, I don't know, like in the kitchen, maybe?

• 22:43Speaker 03

  No, because you're, because you're moving, right? You're cooking, you're throwing stuff away, you're going to the refrigerator. So your muscles are moving. So I think that in our lives, there's very, that just like sitting for a long time is kind of like an artificially created thing. I think standing still for a long time is also an artificially created thing that's not terribly good for us.

• 23:04Speaker 07

  And Wendy, before we move on, I heard something funny from Bethany. It's actually about David Dunstan, the researcher we heard about earlier.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Early on in the, in the like early days of sedentary behavior research, you know, there was only a couple of us doing it. And we would go to these scientific meetings and then all the sedentary behavior researchers would be standing in the back of the room. Right? Because we didn't want to be sitting. So I remember we'd be standing in the back of the room and I remember one time just standing next to David Dunstan and we were like, I was like, I stand all day at my desk. And he's like, oh yeah, I never sit down. You know, like we were, we were thinking, we were really great about how often we use our sit stand desk. And then I remember I saw him right after I published the study that showed that the X, like too much standing at the desk. And I was like, I have got to talk to you. I was like, listen, don't stand all day at your desk.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  I don't know if you're still doing that, but don't do that because that's not good for you.

• 23:59Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, but they were wrong. They were wrong. So they thought they were doing the right thing. I used to be a cocky stander too.

• 24:07Speaker 07

  And there is one other thing to worry about with standing for a long time, and that is back pain. I spoke to one researcher who told me that when they bring people in the lab and have them stand for a long time, about 50% of people are likely to start feeling discomfort and pain. And that's around the same as having people sit for a very long time.

• 24:31Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, interesting. Because I think people often associate back pain with having a crappy posture while you're sitting. But actually, standing can be just as bad.

• 24:41Speaker 07

  So overall, like back pain, plus all those blood problems we heard about earlier, mean that we also shouldn't stand still for hours at a time. Researchers actually recommend that people who have to stand for work don't stand more than four hours throughout the whole day.

• 25:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Wait, don't stand for more than four hours a day, but what if you have to?

• 25:03Speaker 07

  It's about, it's really about those standing still. So if you are someone who has a job where you have to stand most of the day, it's helpful to think about any moment that you can move around a bit more during the day.

• 25:15Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, okay. So we really need to be moving. That's the answer, right? That's how you get the muscles in your legs contracting, helping out your heart, preventing a bunch of these things. So then the question becomes, what's the minimum amount of movement you need? In the middle of a workday, I'm not talking about going out and getting exercise through a run. I mean, if you've got a chunk of eight hours, how do you need to break up that day in order to prevent the bad sides of sitting?

• 25:47Speaker 07

  Right, yeah. Let's go back to David, who did a study on this. And so what he did is he brought people into the lab three different days and had them just sit for seven hours straight.

• 26:00Wendy Zukerman?

  What if they needed to go to the toilet, by the way, and they were on the seven hour sitting? Were they sitting on a toilet?

• 26:06Speaker 07

  No, they were sitting in a nice comfy sofa chair.

• 26:09Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, okay.

• 26:10Speaker 07

  That'd be a crazy study, Wendy, sitting on a toilet for seven hours.

• 26:15Wendy Zukerman?

  I know.

• 26:17Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, so they're sitting on a comfy couch, presumably can get up to pee.

• 26:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, so one of those days, it was just, it was like literally just sitting in the sofa for seven hours straight with bathroom breaks.

• 26:29Wendy Zukerman?

  Sure.

• 26:30Speaker 07

  And then another of the days, he had them walk on a treadmill every 20 minutes for two minutes. And so he had them walk at a light pace.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  What a lot of people call pottering around or, you know, just light ambulation.

• 26:46Speaker 07

  And then another day, he had them do the same thing every 20 minutes, walk for two minutes, but at a slightly faster pace.

• 26:54Wendy Zukerman?

  What did he find?

• 26:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, so what he was looking for was what this did to the glucose in their blood.

• 27:01Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, the glucose, right, which is a kind of like a proxy for your muscles aren't working in the way that we want them to be because the glucose is hanging around in the blood instead of getting gobbled up by the muscles.

• 27:16Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 27:17Wendy Zukerman?

  That's why it's important.

• 27:18Speaker 07

  And what he found was pretty exciting.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  This is one study where I triple checked, quadruple checked the statistics. So across the same time period, glucose are 25% lower throughout the day in which we're breaking up that sedentary time.

• 27:39Speaker 07

  So it worked and it actually worked for both the light walking and faster walking. It dropped blood glucose about 25% and the same for insulin. Here's David.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  So we were heartened that walking light with life intensity led to improvements in the blood glucose control. We then thought, well, this could be beneficial in an office situation because if people are walking around the office, that's a break.

• 28:08Wendy Zukerman?

  Right, if you're walking to the toilet, that's included. You're walking to get a coffee. You don't need to be running around the office. This is much more practical.

• 28:17Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:18Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm. Are you really excited by this finding, Michelle? I mean, I'm glad it worked, but the implication that every 20 minutes, we might have to be moving around.

• 28:30Speaker 07

  Well, David told me that that study was sort of his best guess at the time, and he understands it's not the most practical. So what he likes to tell people now is take a few minutes to walk every half hour instead of 20 minutes.

• 28:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm.

• 28:45Speaker 07

  So a little better, but that's the best thing you can do. And exactly that, like Bethany said, she likes to go to the bathroom that's across the building to get those extra steps in.

• 28:56Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm.

• 28:57Speaker 07

  It doesn't take much for you to see the benefits of breaking up that sitting with just a bit of movement.

• 29:03Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah. And it is absolutely true that when I'm sitting for a long period of time, I'm acting like it's comfy and it's the greatest state of nature. But it's not really. After an entire day of sitting, I guess I do feel pretty gross.

• 29:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, like you start to start feeling cramped up. And sometimes my back starts to hurt a little bit, too.

• 29:28Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes, exactly.

• 29:30Speaker 07

  So to lean into that and be like, all right, maybe I'm gonna stand up and take a little stroll.

• 29:36Wendy Zukerman?

  So you're a gamer. Are you gonna start pausing the game every half an hour?

• 29:40Speaker 07

  I probably should.

• 29:44Wendy Zukerman?

  You probably should.

• 29:47Speaker 07

  I mean, it's made me think a lot more about getting up in general when I can afford to. I won't get up during our Zoom meetings, but maybe sometimes we can take walk and talk meetings, you know?

• 29:58Wendy Zukerman?

  We could, we should, we should, we should have a timer. We could do it right now, Michelle. We've been sitting for two, let's do it. Off we go.

• 30:06Speaker 07

  All right.

• 30:07Wendy Zukerman?

  Here we go. Here we go. How long do I need to do? This is great.

• 30:12Speaker 07

  For two minutes.

• 30:13Wendy Zukerman?

  Are you having fun?

• 30:15Speaker 07

  Lots of fun.

• 30:20Wendy Zukerman?

  All right. All right.

• 30:22Speaker 07

  I'll also mention, like, in later studies, David and other researchers have found that things like simple resistance exercises helps, too. So things like squats or glute squeezes, heel raises. So those are things that you could do at your desk if you can't.

• 30:41Wendy Zukerman?

  Like a glute squeeze, like right now? Is that just what it sounds like? Just bop. I don't know why that's the sound effect, because I guess the audience can't see anything, even if you're watching. Bop.

• 30:52Speaker 07

  Wendy's just squeezed her butt.

• 30:54Wendy Zukerman?

  I did. What else is there? A squat. And what was the third one?

• 30:58Speaker 07

  Heel raises or calf raises.

• 31:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, these things can help, too. That's great.

• 31:03Speaker 07

  All about getting those muscles going and preventing that pooling from happening.

• 31:07Wendy Zukerman?

  Excellent.

• 31:09Speaker 07

  So how worried are you about sitting now? How are you feeling about your sitting?

• 31:15Wendy Zukerman?

  Um, it's good to know the science. It's good. I've been avoiding it for a really long time to really understand the science here. And now that I know it, I feel better. I do feel, I feel like I understand more about what my body is doing day in, day out. And that feels good. I don't need to be afraid of the facts, Michelle. And now I'll just sit less, move more, I'll make an effort. I will. You've changed me, Michelle.

• 31:42Speaker 07

  Oh, so happy.

• 31:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Thanks, Michelle.

• 31:45Speaker 07

  Thanks, Wendy.

• 31:47Wendy Zukerman?

  That's Science Versus. Michelle, how many citations are in this week's episode?

• 31:51Speaker 07

  There are 63 citations in this week's episode.

• 31:53Wendy Zukerman?

  63. And if people want to see them, learn more about the science of sitting, where should they go?

• 31:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, just head over to the show notes and find a link to the transcript there.

• 32:01Wendy Zukerman?

  Great. Thanks, Michelle.

• 32:02Speaker 07

  Thanks, Wendy.

• 32:05Wendy Zukerman?

  This episode was produced by Michelle Dang with help from Merrill Horn at Katie Foster Keys and Rose Rimler. We're edited by Blythe Terrell, Wendy Zukerman, that's me. I'm the executive producer. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Video editing and sound by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Boomer Hidaka, So Wiley, Emma Munga, and Peter Leonard. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to, including Dr. Caitlin Gallagher. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. You can join us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're also on YouTube. I'm Wendy Zukerman. Back to you next time.