#1882 The Sit-Down Society - Harps

same thing ad nauseum for years and years. But well, I do know, because I'm always developing, and I'm always opening new doors and exploring new ideas and thinking about how do I so tonight Week three is you and your Body, And I've been thinking I should really make week three week three and week four because it's such a big area and trying to do justice to such a huge component of the physical experience, the human experience,

you know. And by you and your body, we mean everything you know like straight length and posture and immune system and nervous system and you know, skeleton and bone density and function and health and clinical issues like the whole kind of shooting match and sleep and bio feedback and how your social life affects your body and movement in general and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, enough about the promo for the bloody, which it wasn't meant to be, but it sounded like I didn't it

for the mental ship. But so I've been I've been going down a rabbit hole of the impact of sitting. Sitting as much as we sit now, it's hard to get really accurate data on sitting and the impact of sitting physiological, psychological, practical impact of being on your ass for a long time. And so what I'm about to share with you, it's not bro science. Some of it

is actual science. Like there's a study here that I've looked at which is kind of a systematic review or a meta analysis of thirteen studies involving over a million participants, so that that's quite big. But then there's also just the incidental kind of observations that I've made over the years with the people that I've worked with. But there is quite a bit of research and investigation and science available to us now about the impact of I guess,

broadly speaking, just being still and not moving much. And one of the byproducts of living in a time when there has been so much you know, innovation and technology and automation is that we are now way, way, way more sedentary than we were you know, back in for example, the nine and fifties, you know, three quarters of a century. Fuck three quarters of a century ago, and think about that. What about this that since nineteen fifty this is the US, but I would guess, or this is US data, but

I would guess we would be similar. So since the nine end fifties, sorry, nineteen to fifty cententary jobs in the US have increased by eighty three percent, meaning people have moved from jobs which were essentially physically active or occupations that saw them moving a lot, to people who do jobs sitting at a desk, sitting in a chair. And so we are truly where the sit down generation. And not only is there a physiological cost, but there's

a psychological cost. There's a sociological cost. There's an emotional cost, like sitting on your ass for extended periods of time, says the man who is currently sitting on his ass. Ain't great for you. And we know this, But I just want to unpack some of the some of the info and some of the data and talk about what we can do and how we can move the needle a little bit. Because the average, the average Aussie, I'm not the data. I found was like a decade old.

But it seems that the average Aussie spends somewhere between seven and ten hours a day sitting. Now I reckon, well, that might be right, because I guess there are people that are a lot more mobile and a lot more active in other people that are a lot less than if we even it out. But interestingly, the average American sits for nine point five hours per day, or the yeah spends nine point five hours sitting, which kind of

I thought that was quite a bit. And then you think about so I'll mate sits for nine and a half hours, and then he or she sleeps for let's say eight hours, or they're in bed for eight hours or whatever. So that's seventeen and a half hours out of twenty four. That's about you know, let's round it up to eighteen eighteen out of twenty four, or seventy

five percent exactly. We're talking about seventy five percent of the average American's life spent lying or sitting, which is inconsistent with health and wellness and movement and resilience and all of that, isn't it. So this is not a judgment, This is just let's just talk about this is really about about awareness, I guess, and so many people think of excessive sitting, which we do as the new smoking.

And there was a study done which I alluded to before, which involved over a million people in that study, and it found that people who sit for more than eight hours a day, which I reckoni is a lot of us, have a risk of dying increased risk of dying compared

comparable to those people who smoke. So, you know, analogous to smoking, the risks, And of course there's a bunch of variables around that, and that makes a great headline and all of that, but the bottom line is that you know, we think about so what are some of the potential dangers of excessive sitting. I've got a bunch here I want to share with you, so metabolic dysfunction. So when I talk about excessive sitting, there's no absolute,

scientifically defined parameter around that. Oh, if you sit for more than this, that's excessive. And there are other variables like do you go to the gym? Do you do like you might sit for eight hours a day, but you also walk for three hours a day, Well that's probably going to offset the eighth, isn't it. Or you might sit for eight hours a day, but every every hour on the hour, you get up and do five

minutes of movements. So in that eight hours of sitting, you've done forty minutes of moving and you know, so that's going to offset that somewhat as well. But so let's just look at some of the physiological consequences or potential consequences of having your ass on a seat for an extended period of time. And so number one is

metabolic dysfunction. So blood sugar, insulin, and fat metabolism or burning fat are impaired when we sit for long periods of time, So blood sugar goes up, We're more predisposed to have a slower metabol metabolism, put your teeth in harps, go back to speech therapy, and more likely to gain fat. Of course, and of course sitting versus standing where we're expending less energy. Standing versus walking, we're expending less energy and so on. So it has an impact on our

metabolism and also on our endocrime system. What's happening with our hormones. Number two on the list is that people who excessively have compared to people who don't, have an increased risk of heart disease type DO, diabetes, obesity, stroke, and also certain cancers, which is pretty fucking terrifying. Number three on the list is a muscle atrophy or muscle wasting, especially through the bum glutes, hip flexes. Those are the

muscles at the front hamstrings. So everything really, I mean everything, like everything your core and just think about if you're sitting, and also think about this like posture. Think about what's happening posturally with people when you sit as I'm doing now, like I'm adjusting my posture right now, so I'm sitting

up straight like a bloody tree. If you think about sitting at a desk all day and you're looking at a computer and you are working over the top of a keyboard, then unless you're a complete kind of weirdo, you're probably who's sitting like bolt upright like a robot,

which none of us do. Then you're probably sitting with your shoulders forward of your hips rather than over your hips in alignment, and you're probably sitting with your head at least, if not all the time, at least part of the time, with your head forward of your shoulders,

so you've got your hips in the chair. Then you've got your shoulders forward of your hips, then you've got your head forward of your shoulders, and you've probably got your forearms up on the desk part of the day, which means you are probably sitting in a chifotic kind of posture, which means kind of a little bit of a hunchy back, shoulders sitting forward and rolled a little bit, and you're probably predisposing well, you're definitely, if that's the case,

predisposing yourself to neck issues, shoulder problems, headaches, and a bunch of a bunch of other really unpleasant things. And so our body just wasn't built to sit. Of course we can sit, but it wasn't like this is not how we work optimally. Number four on my list is poor circulation, so which can to swollen legs, varicos vein,

and even DVTs in extreme cases. Number five on my list is mental fog, potentially because we've got reduced blood flow because we're not moving, we're sitting still, our hearts beating slower where we don't have that same level of blood throat blood flow around our body. So we've got reduced cognitive performance at tension and memory. In other words, sitting consistently means our brain works less efficiently and less effectively,

so there's cognitive impairment. So just standing, of course, we're going to talk about some options and solutions and some potential strategies in a moment, but let's just continue with the potential dangers. My second last one is mood and

mental health. So there's a real strong correlation between sedatory behavior in general, which probably sitting is at the top of the sedentary behavior pyramid, So there's a strong correlation between that and depression and anxiety as also, we know there's a strong relationship between movement and exercising and walking and even being out doors and mobility and getting your

heart rate up and getting a bit sweaty. We know there's a correlation between that and reduced depression and greater levels of calm and happiness and contentment and all of those things. So there's not only a physiological component to this, but there's also a psychological and mental health and cognitive

component as well. And I guess overall, and this is a bit this is a bit die, but we know that all of that can equal a shorter lifespan, and not only a shorter lifespan, but a shorter health span, so higher all cause mortality. Even people who exercise a bit, Even people who exercise. We know that exercising is great, of course, but even people who say exercise one hour a day but still sit a lot, they are still at a higher level of risk. Of course, sitting a

lot and not exercising is even worse. But you're not going to offset excessive sitting and lying with sixty minutes of something. It's certainly going to help, but it's not going to totally undo that. I was I was talking to a guy. It was last year. Now I was going to say the other day. It wasn't the other day. It was. It was last year. But I've spoken to a lot of people in a similar boat, and we were talking about He came to me, and we were having a look at the overall kind of model of

living that he's in the middle of it. In other words, we're looking at his last We're looking at work, we're looking at food, We're looking at exercise habits or lack of habits, as it happened to turn out, we're talking about incidental activity, occupational activity. We're talking about smoking and booze and a whole bunch of stuff. And I said to you him, Okay, I want you to tell me a typical day from when you get out of bed, and this is a really interesting exercise for you to do.

And I've done this. I've done a version of this hundreds of times with people where I'd say, all right, I want you to not that often lately because I'm not working as an excise physiologist, excise scientist, personal trainer anymore, but over the years I did this hundreds of times and often would get a similar outcome. So I can't remember, I can remember the numbers, I can't remember exactly what his day looked like, but I'm going to roughly describe it to you. So we would get out of bed, okay,

So he's just spent eight hours in bed. He gets out of bed, and he walks to the kitchen and he sits and eats, and then he has a shower, which of course he's standing, and then does a few bits and pieces. Then not long after, he's in the car sitting, and then he has a whatever, a thirty forty five minute drive, and then he gets to work and then he walks, however many steps to his desk in his office, and then he's at work. He owns his own business, he's in the corporate space, and then

he's sitting for eight to twelve hours. Well, no, that's not true. He's at work for eight to twelve hours, depending on the day. But apart from lunch where he gets up and goes he works in a building where there's a cafe at the bottom of the building, apart from those steps there, And obviously then when he's doing lunch, he's sitting anyway, it's not like he's it's not like

he's standing eating a sandwich. And then at the end of the day, which has been mostly sitting, doesn't work out at a gym, by the way, or didn't at this particular stage of the conversation. Then he would get back into his car. Then he would drive home seated. Of course, be good ones. They bring out those new standing cars, rn't it. And then he gets home and didn't go for walk. Typically would not go for walk

because he was tired from work all day. And then he would collapse on the couch because he deserved it, because he'd worked hard. It's been a long day's kind of toil. And then he would go sit at the table, have dinner with the family. He might do a few things. He might do the dishes, there might be a few. But after that then he would go sit on the couch or he would go sit in his home office and do more work. But either way he would be sitting. And then he would go to bed and be lying

for another eight hours. And that was basically his autopilot. That was his groundhog day. And we figured out that this dude spent about ninety minutes a day standing or walking. So a typical day, not every day, not all the time, but an average, especially workday for him Monday to Friday. Also often a Saturday would be a work day as well, because he was the boss. But at the very least Monday to Friday he would spend somewhere in the ballpark of twenty two to twenty two and a half hours

sitting or lyne. And I don't need to tell you what shape he was in. Now, this is not this is not criticism, This is awareness. Is like, well, when you don't eat well and when you drink a fair bit of booze. He didn't smoke, which was good, and you have a very stressful job and By the way, when you do really stressful work, you produce lots of

interesting hormones. Let's say that cortisol, adrenaline, nora pronefrin, which can help you basically fuck up your endocrime system and gain weight and also create sell your inflammation cellular say that clearly harps inflammation, which can lead to disease, and a whole lot of other things. Right, So there's all

of these compounding shit variables. Because although he was managing his business, and although he was managing his money and building brand and building career and building wealth and doing all of these things that you're taught to do. I feel like I'm diverting a little bit and diverging from the sit down conversation. But nonetheless, what he wasn't doing

was he wasn't working on him. And so one of the decisions that he and I made, prompted by me when I said, all right, well, let's put some practical things in place, was he decided, with my prompting that he would do a minimum of ten thousand steps a day. Now, depending on how fast you walk and how tall you are in your stride length and there's a bunch of variables, but on average, So minimum, by the way, minimum ten thousand,

that's the requirement. That's the minimum requirement. So some days he was doing fifteen, some days he was doing ten.

And what happened with him was honestly, like, really, this is not just a story for the show, but nothing short of astounding, because I reckon his average steps per day were three or less, three thousand or less, and so he went to ten thousand plus so it was three or four or sometimes five x. And with that came a myriad of positive changes psychological, emotional, even behavioral

and social, but also of course physiological. So his body got better, his brain worked better, he reduced his blood pressure, he reduced his risk of a whole lot of stuff, He dropped some weight, he felt better, felt better, his back pain diminished, and so on, and so this was through and that was really only it built from there. But for the first three months that was all he kind of focused on, was just moving more, was sitting less, moving more. And so there is a real solution that

doesn't need to be complicated. You don't need a gym, you don't need three degrees, you don't need a PhD. But I think it's a really good thing when we talk about health and wellness and human optimization. It's such a simple thing. Not, by the way, simple doesn't mean

easy or painless, but it's such a simple thing. Like it's one of those things where, oh, you don't need to join a gym, you don't need resources, you don't need you don't need to be trained, you don't need to learn anything new, you don't need a fucking cheer squad. You just need to sit less, and you need to

figure out how you're going to do that. And many of you will know the me story of you know about I guess it's about seven months ago now, I and this is embarrassing, but fuck it, it's just true. I was I was informed by my phone, who apparently counts my steps, who knew I was informed by my phone that I didn't walk enough, and essentially that I was a lazy fuck. Didn't say it in those exact words, I'm going to be honest, but pretty much it was saying,

you're a lazy fuck. You need to move more. And when I looked at how many steps I was walking on average a day, mister bloody inspiration education, you know, exercise science, I was walking around four to five thousand steps a day, which is shit. And as a result, I was reasonably tired and sluggish, and I didn't know it, but my brain definitely wasn't working anywhere near optimally. It was working, but it was probably, you know, it was probably struggling a little bit, as it seems to be

right now as I talk. But anyway, so I increased. I went from that day when I got that message, I went, well, fuck it, that's it. I'm going to do a minimum of ten thousand a day myself, which I used to do but over the years I just whatever, It's all bullshit, isn't it. I was about to give you some big fucking reason. Fuck your reason, harps. Anyway, the last six or seven months, six or seven months, I've walked minimum of ten I would say I've averaged.

I had a looked just before I started this, and it's kind of two o'clockish. It's two fifteen exactly now, and I've already done nine thousand today, So today will probably be I don't know, a fourteen to fifteen thousand step day. But in the moving, in the moving, in the getting up out of my desk, in the increased energy expenditure and mobility. A bunch of great things have

happened for me. My body is better, My lower back is less sore, my blood pressure of genetically high blood pressure, thanks Mom and Dad, that's naturally lower now, my resting heart rate is lower, and I'm typically walking about three times as far as I was averaging this time last year, which is good. So there are simple things that we can do. I've also, you know what else I've started doing.

What did you start doing? Thanks for asking. I've also started doing, which I've spoken about once or twice, but I've started doing walking meetings and walking coaching. So yes, I still meet the odd person and then some normal people at the cafe. But also what I do is I ask people if they want to meet at the cafe.

We walk for thirty minutes, then we sit for thirty minutes, so it's an hour, but we go and we walk thirty minutes, which is again depending on all those variables, somewhere in the ballpark of thirty sorry, three four thousand steps something like that in that timeframe, depending on a bunch of stuff. But so I've figured out a way. This is literally what I did. I said this to myself. What are the things that I currently do on my

ass that I can do not on my ass? So what can I do standing or walking or moving or in any place position other than sitting on my bum And so as much as I can when I'm coaching, when I'm mentoring, if it's on the phone, even if it's on this sounds precarious, but even if it's on

a video call, I will walk around quiet streets. I'm not walking down the middle of a busy street, but I just amble around suburbia chatting to someone on a video call, keeping my self, keeping my awareness and alertness about me, And that for me has been a real game changer as well. And there are a few other things that we can do. Obviously, stand up workstations are becoming more and more popular. One of the this is full disclosure, right, So I have a fucking million dollar

stand up workstation. It's got two motors, it's electric, it's razzle dazzle. I will sometimes sit at this fucking desk that I'm at right now for two weeks and not stand once. I'm being honest, I'm being honest. But then I will do a week where I'm standing by the way. I have been standing more in the last few weeks, but there have been times in my ownership of the aforementioned desk where I would go four weeks without even

thinking to the table up into a standing position. So stand up workstations are good, but apparently only if you use them, so they're great. Our body wasn't meant to I don't know it was our body designed. If you're a god person, you're going to say it's designed. If you're an evolution person, you're going to say it evolved. Either way, pick your origin story. So our body either was designed or evolved. You choose not to be sitting it evolved. Slash was designed to move. To move. We

need mobility for help. We need more ability for function of joints and ligaments and tendons and muscles, and our heart and our cardiovascularan respiratory system, and you know, our bone density, a skeleton stability, skeletal stability, balanced coordination, all of these things that don't happen, in fact, the opposite happens when we're sitting. So as much as you can, so here's a couple of things. Here's an idea or two.

One do an inventory or a stock, take on your own sitting hours or sitting habits, and don't bullshit yourself, like, don't bullshit yourself. Don't pick a good day. Don't go on today because today was good. Pick a normal, typical day. And look, you might go through this process and come out the other side and go, nah, I'm good, shut up, harps, and I'll go well done. You you're probably the exception.

And if you are the exception, and if you're a person who does not typically sit very much, well done, carry on. Ignore me. Ah tickety boo. But if you are one of the people that, like me, really needs to or you know, I still need to improve, but I'm much better than I was. If you need to stand more, walk more, sit less, then maybe here's an idea. And this is a bit uncomfortable, but fuck it. Uncomfortable is where we grow. Ah, why don't you track your

sitting hours for four weeks? Why don't you do that? And why don't you or even one week and don't change it? Or maybe you don't need to do that. Maybe you can just go you know what, typically I'm

sitting for this long. Either that, or perhaps keep a diary for a while and just you know, you might track it, you might find that you're okay or maybe not, so that in conjunction with more steps, you might People in the corporate space are really encouraged every thirty to sixty minutes to get up and do something for you know, generally, if it's every thirty minutes, it might be just a two minute something. If it's hourly, it might be a four minute something. I have also, this is a thing

that I do periodically, which I should do more. I'm going to say, but it's not a bad idea is if you are going to sit perhaps an idea. Now, I don't know if you've got any injuries or stability issues or how old you are, So this is not a recipe or a formula or absolute advice, but this is a thought that you might want to consider. That is, sit on a ball. Get it out, for god's sake. What's the fucking recommendation apps sit on a ball? Why do I say sit on a ball versus sit on

a chair? All right, good question. When we sit on a chair or a bench or a stool or whatever, we really don't need to balance because our ass is sitting on a flat thing that's not moving. You know, there's a little bit of balance and stability involved because

we've got to keep our spine erect. But what happens when we sit on a convex round, So on a surface that's rounded on vex, and the bottom of it's rounded and the top of it's rounded and it's pumped up quite a bit, we are now sitting on something

that's unstable, kind of like my mind. And what that means is, if you're sitting on something that's unstable, you now need to use your stabilizing muscles through your ankles, your knees, your legs, your core, your hips to keep you stable so you can sit relatively still at your desk and do the work that you need to do. But also, unlike sitting in a chair, it's much less likely that you're going to slump because you can't lean your back against anything and in fact slumping within it.

I'll put it this way, if you sit on a ball the wrong way, you're probably going to create more problems than solutions. But the idea of sitting on a ball is that you become more awareness of balance and posture and stability and what's happening with your spine in real time, and where your head is compared to where

your shoulders are compared to where your hips are. So now rather than sitting in that forward flexion position of hunchy mcunster, the hunchback of Notre Dame, that chipodic kind of shoulders rolling forward, head sitting forward human question mark, instead of doing that, now we're sitting in a more upright, aware, conscious position. Now, ah asterisk. Would I suggest that you start sitting on a ball eight hours a day, I

definitely would not. I definitely would. I would suggest that you start in small installments, just like I suggest that you don't go from eight hours sitting at a desk to eight hours standing at a desk, because also that's

not a smart mood. But what we're going to do over time, whether it's sitting on a ball, whether it's doing two minute activities every thirty or four minute every sixty minutes, or whether it's at a stand up workstation or on a ball or whatever it is, that we're going to integrate it intelligently and systematically over time so that it's not just another thing that we do where we did it for three weeks and then our back and then we went fuck it, and we were averted

to our old ways. So we need to do it intelligently and methodically so that rather than it being a short term kind of intervention that doesn't last, but it's something that sets us up for a healthier back, healthier posture, healthier metabolism, healthier body composition, healthier heart and lungs over the long term. So and in closing, So it ain't it's not about never sitting, of course, it's about what's it about. It's about, I guess it's about reclaiming movement

as your default state. It's about respecting your biology. Like your body, your muscles, your ligaments, your tens, your spine. None of that was made for marathons of stillness. Like you weren't built to be sitting at a desk. You weren't. Your heart wasn't made to beat quietly in a chair all day. Your body's a vehicle, not a chair accessory. You need to move it often on purpose, even when you don't need to, even when you don't need to,

even when you can. You know you can comfortably sit in a chair all day, but you also know what that's going to do to you over the long term, and just like smoking, the damage doesn't happen in a day or two. It creeps up on you over time. So maybe it's time for you, maybe to sit less see tomorrow