You Better Stand Up For This…

We’ve all heard it from time to time – we shouldn’t sit at our desk so much. We need to pay more atten­tion to proper ergonom­ics or we’ll get carpal tun­nel syn­drome, become fat, or even get a bad back. But is sit­ting really that bad for us? Well, I found out the hard way that it’s even worse than that.

As many of you know, I suf­fered a severe disc her­ni­a­tion ear­lier this year. My left leg had nerve dam­age and I under­went back surgery. The prob­lem had me laid up in bed for months and on Vicodin for even longer. The suf­fer­ing was long and the heal­ing might be even longer.

Lying in bed, I kept won­der­ing what I could have done to cause so much pain. My phys­i­cal ther­a­pist repeated the same answer to me that my back doc­tor had given me: too much sit­ting. What? How could some­thing so sim­ple and seem­ingly harm­less cause so much pain and misery?

Well, the more we sit, the more pres­sure we place on our spine. Our discs get the brunt of this force and over time, will weaken and even rup­ture if we have been slouch­ing at all.

The National Insti­tutes of Health reports that 8 out of every 10 peo­ple in the US suf­fer from back pain at some point in their life. The prob­lem is so preva­lent, in fact, that only headaches are a more com­mon neu­ro­log­i­cal ail­ment. We spend on aver­age over $50 bil­lion each year on back pain issues. And it costs com­pa­nies bil­lions too, as it’s the most com­mon cause of job-related dis­abil­ity and a lead­ing con­trib­u­tor to missed work (exhibit A right here).

Chairs, Like Shoes

Talk­ing with a friend about how bad sit­ting is for the body I was struck by the sim­i­lar­i­ties between chairs and run­ning shoes. Just like how the thick, cush­ioned run­ning shoes out there are prov­ing to be more harm than good, big, cush­ioned chairs and couches usu­ally cause worse pos­ture and more prob­lems for us.

Look­ing into the sim­i­lar­i­ties between chairs and run­ning shoes fur­ther, more sim­i­lar­i­ties are read­ily found. Chairs and couches are rel­a­tively recent phe­nom­ena, just like run­ning shoes. The thicker, more padded the chair, the worse it is for us, just like run­ning shoes. And the longer we use chairs, the worse we often get, just like run­ning shoes.

1. Chairs and couches are recent phenomena.

Look­ing back over human his­tory, we can see that we’ve only begun to sit down on chairs rel­a­tively recently. Chairs weren’t com­monly used until around 500 years ago, and much of the world still prefers to squat rather than sit. Couches are even more recent. Per­haps progress isn’t always the best thing for us.
> Look for oppor­tu­ni­ties to stand or walk instead of sit­ting down – walk­ing meet­ings can be highly pro­duc­tive as it’s also the way the brain works best.

2. The thicker, more padded the chair, the worse it is for us.

One of the first things my phys­i­cal ther­a­pist told me was I can not sit down in a couch. The prob­lem with couches is that you sink down into them. Big cush­ioned chairs and couches pro­mote bad form. Couches are gen­er­ally the worst because your butt slides down into them so your lum­bar is forced to curve out­wards. You also often end up with your butt below your knees which also pro­motes an extrud­ing lower back, the oppo­site of the nat­ural curve of the back.
> Choose chairs with a straight back and use a small pil­low to sup­port the nat­ural curve of your back.

3. The longer we use chairs, the worse we get.

The longer we sit the worse our back gets. The good news is that we don’t have to get up for too long to help our backs ‘reset’. Don’t sit more than 45 min­utes or so with­out stand­ing up and walk­ing for a bit (even 30 sec­onds can suf­fice). One way to help your­self do this I’ve found is to drink lots of water. That way, you have to get up to go to the bath­room reg­u­larly, keep­ing you from sit­ting for extended peri­ods of time.
> Get up every 30–45 min­utes for at least a 30-second stroll and stretch.
> Bet­ter yet, see if you can set up a higher desk so you can stand at it.

Get Up and Get Going!

No mat­ter how you look at it, our bod­ies are not meant to be seden­tary. Our brains work best dur­ing move­ment and our mus­cles and skele­ton are designed to walk and run, not sit. So get up and get out there for a walk or run. Not only will you reap the ben­e­fits of exer­cise, you won’t be sitting.

We usu­ally find out that we’re not young any more too late. Be proac­tive and don’t sit for long peri­ods. Remem­ber to keep your back upright, sup­port your lum­bar, and get going more. Believe me – you don’t want to end up like me.

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