Sitting, it would seem, is an independent pathology. Being sedentary for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you go home and watch television afterward or hit the gym. It is bad whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin. “Excessive sitting,” Dr. Levine says, “is a lethal activity.”
This article published in the NY Times last week is seriously tempting me to slip into depression. When I think of my life over the next 18 months or more, I will very likely be sitting at a desk for 9 hours a day. While I do fidget quite a bit, it still probably won't be enough to counteract the ill effects of my pseudo ergonomic desk chair/straight jacket.
Dr. Levine... is exploring ways for people to redesign their environments so that they encourage more movement. We visited a chairless first-grade classroom where the students spent part of each day crawling along mats labeled with vocabulary words and jumping between platforms while reciting math problems. We stopped by a human-resources staffing agency where many of the employees worked on the move at treadmill desks — a creation of Dr. Levine’s, later sold by a company called Steelcase.
Dr. Levine was in a philosophical mood as we left the temp agency. For all of the hard science against sitting, he admits that his campaign against what he calls “the chair-based lifestyle” is not limited to simply a quest for better physical health. His is a war against inertia itself, which he believes sickens more than just our body. “Go into cubeland in a tightly controlled corporate environment and you immediately sense that there is a malaise about being tied behind a computer screen seated all day,” he said. “The soul of the nation is sapped, and now it’s time for the soul of the nation to rise.”
Oh, I know this feeling too well, this malaise he refers to. I'm feeling it right now. My body was not created to sit still. Someday I will be my own boss and ditch this cube and all cubes forever!
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