Home · Book Reports · 2017 · Get Up Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It

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Thoughts

The most interesting point to me was that the communication between your brain and muscles is a two-way street, signaling when it is time to move or rest. In situations where people are forced to sit, such as in offices and schools, the connection between brain and muscles atrophies, making it harder to get up in the first place. The effect works both ways though, the more active you remain, the easier it is to resume activity after a rest period. Simply put: the more you sit, the more you sit.

Also interesting was the fact that going to the gym for 30 minutes a day is not enough to counteract sitting all day. Regular movement is far more effective at burning calories as well, with 100-150 calories burned per hour on a slow stroll (1 mph) treadmill for several hours a day.

There have been a few television appearances by Dr. Levin. Those I saw were not much more than puff pieces to promote the book, although you can see the treadmill desk in action in some of them.

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• Steelcase launched the desk in its New York showroom on Broadway. A few hours after the unveiling, Diane Sawyer invited us to demo the desks on Good Morning America.12
  • 12 Walking while you work. ABCNews, October 5, 2007. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/WaterCooler/story?id=3771802

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• The story of Salo spread like wildfire, and national television came knocking at their door. ABC News’ 20/20 ran a feature on August 1, 2008, and the office of the future was now the NEAT chairless office of the present.

My research into this led me to build an ergonomic desk.

Exceptional Quotes

a seated body begets a sedentary mind. But the good news is, if a chairaholic takes the first step, gets up and walks, the brain, like a muscle, adapts. The walking brain fires new neuroplasticity factors, and over time the brain adapts to its owner’s newfound propensity to walk. Because the brain is constantly adapting, it takes about three weeks for brain change to occur. A chairaholic can become a walker in three weeks. But watch out! A walker who begins to sit can just as easily become a chairaholic.

Over the last few generations, millions of brains have become sedated by sedentariness. Most people in the modern Western world are sitters. Just as the brain adapts to chairdom, so does the whole of society. If most people become sitters, the structure of society gradually adapts to become chair-based. No sidewalks are laid in new neighborhoods, offices and homes adapt so that sitting is the default body position, theater chairs become softer and wider, drive-throughs develop and shopping becomes a wrist action rather than a leg-based activity. Chicken or egg—did society make the sitters, or did sitters make the society? The answer: Both occurred.

If people sit after a meal, their blood sugar peaks like a mountain for about two hours. If, however, people take a 15-minute walk at 1 mph after a meal, the mountains become safe, gentle, rolling hills. With a 1-mph walk after a meal, blood sugar peaks are halved.

In the internal American voice -the voice inside our collective head- ‘wealth’ and ‘happiness’ are synonymous. Implicit in that narrative is that winning (wealth and success) means beating out the competition. Winning is drilled into us in preschool.

We pushed the five weapons of behavioral change remorselessly: stimulus control, monitoring, cognitive reconstruction, reward/penalty systems and social support.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 01: In the Beginning
• 02: Feed Me, Move Me
• 03: The Brain Strain
• 04: Despite Your Chain, You Are An Individual
• 05: The Chair-Cursed Body
• 06: The Chair-Cursed Mind
• 07: The Chair-Cursed Car
• 08: The Chairman's Vision
• 09: Solutions
• 10: Invent
• 11: Work
• 12: Learn
• 13: Get Up, Step 1, Get Personal
• 14: Get Up, Step 2, Plan
• 15: Get Up, Step 3, Weapons
• 16: Get Up, Step 4, Play
• 17: Defeat the Chairman

· Introduction

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• sitting hurts more people’s health than smoking.

· Chapter 1: In The Beginning

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• Scientists used to argue that frenetic and disordered 2baby movements were wasting energy. The new thinking is different; these early thrashing, wild movements are the stimuli that the limbs need to develop and for the brain to learn how to control them.3 In fact, in premature brain-injured babies with stunted early development, therapists use Kinesthetic Stimulation Therapy, in which they move the tiny limbs to force the brain to reconnect and thrash baby style.4

· Chapter 2: Feed Me, Move Me

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• There are three ways people burn energy: basal metabolic rate, thermic effect of food and activity thermogenesis. A little additional energy can also be burned through stress or medications. Your basal metabolic rate is the rate you burn energy for core body functions and is measured at complete rest without food. It accounts for about 60 percent of daily energy expenditure in a sedentary person. Nearly all of its variability is accounted for by body size—or, more precisely, lean body mass. The bigger a person, the greater his or her basal metabolic rate. The thermic effect of food is the energy expended in response to a meal—many people feel hot after eating a big meal. They are experiencing the energy expenditure associated with digestion, absorption and fuel storage. The thermic effect of food (the energy you burn converting foods into the body’s metabolic fuel) accounts for about 10 percent of daily energy needs and does not vary greatly among people. The remainder of human energy expenditure is from activity—activity thermogenesis. If you sit all day, your activity thermogenesis is almost zip. If you are always running about, your activity thermogenesis is high.

• Activity thermogenesis can be subdivided into exercise and nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).

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• Compared to being at complete rest, watching TV burns 5 calories per hour, folding laundry 100 calories per hour and going for a stroll 200 calories per hour.6

· Chapter 3: The Brain Strain

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• Muscles send the “move-it” or “rest” signals to the brain. The brain’s sensitivity to these signals varies. The more sensitive, the easier to get you to move. Those with lesser sensitivity of the brain are prone to sedentary activity. This creates muscles less prone to moving, a positive feedback resulting in less activity.

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• If you sit all day unstimulated, your brain will fall into ruin.

• a seated body begets a sedentary mind. But the good news is, if a chairaholic takes the first step, gets up and walks, the brain, like a muscle, adapts. The walking brain fires new neuroplasticity factors, and over time the brain adapts to its owner’s newfound propensity to walk. Because the brain is constantly adapting, it takes about three weeks for brain change to occur. A chairaholic can become a walker in three weeks. But watch out! A walker who begins to sit can just as easily become a chairaholic.

• Over the last few generations, millions of brains have become sedated by sedentariness. Most people in the modern Western world are sitters. Just as the brain adapts to chairdom, so does the whole of society. If most people become sitters, the structure of society gradually adapts to become chair-based. No sidewalks are laid in new neighborhoods, offices and homes adapt so that sitting is the default body position, theater chairs become softer and wider, drive-throughs develop and shopping becomes a wrist action rather than a leg-based activity. Chicken or egg—did society make the sitters, or did sitters make the society? The answer: Both occurred.

· Chapter 4: Despite Your Chain, You Are An Individual

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• Ergonomic practitioners found that the new breed of seated office and factory workers were developing back and eye strain, neck cramps and wrist problems. And so these new scientists started to adjust chairs, tables and conveyor belts to help seated workers sit without as much pain.

• An average person can use up to 70 labor-saving devices before he or she gets to work; examples include coffee makers, electric razors, alarm clocks, heaters, coolers, email and drive-through breakfasts. Our daily lives are run by tools of convenience, each one of which serves to render us legless and inactive.

· Chapter 5: The Chair-Cursed Body

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• If people sit after a meal, their blood sugar peaks like a mountain for about two hours. If, however, people take a 15-minute walk at 1 mph after a meal, the mountains become safe, gentle, rolling hills. With a 1-mph walk after a meal, blood sugar peaks are halved.

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• furniture company called Ergotron. Ergotron was getting into the NEAT business, building standing desks.

• for every hour you sit watching television or listening to a lecture, your life expectancy decreases by 22 minutes.4

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• regardless of a woman’s body weight, strolling for an hour a day reduces breast cancer risk by 14 percent, compared with being sedentary.14

· Chapter 6: The Chair-Cursed Mind

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• The brain is like a muscle—if you don’t use it, it shrinks.

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• When I first entered residency, the call schedule was one night in three. Every third night, instead of going home at 5 p.m., I worked through the night and then the next day. … After the 40-hour stretch, I would get home exhausted, collapse into a chair, eat and then sleep. Every third night was the same.

• Why do doctors do this? Can’t more doctors work for less hours? When I go to the doctor, I sure hope they have been awake for 30+ hours straight…

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• Sleep is as good for us as sitting is bad.

· Chapter 7: The Chair-Cursed Car

· Chapter 8: The Chairman’s Vision

· Chapter 9: Solutions

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• The average American sits 13 hours per day; 86 percent of Americans sit all day at work and 68 percent hate it.

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• In the internal American voice -the voice inside our collective head- “wealth” and “happiness” are synonymous. Implicit in that narrative is that winning (wealth and success) means beating out the competition. Winning is drilled into us in preschool.

• In the broader US society, winning is the goal. Winning is success. Success is money. Money is happiness. The American economy is based on a money-is- happiness mentality: Shop till you drop

· Chapter 10: Invent

• The cell phone will become a portable health hub; daily life will become more game-ified so that actively moving around your city becomes more fun. Also, I anticipate that social media will integrate body sensors so that you can “Like” the activity level of a friend and nudge another friend who is sitting too much.

· Chapter 11: Work

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• 68 percent of workers hate sitting all day.2

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• The idea of treadmill desks is simple: (1) Get a treadmill and place a stand over it at about chest height; (2) put your computer and mouse on the stand; (3) switch on the treadmill at 1 mph; and (4) voilà! Walk and work. Treadmill desks have spread around the world; manufacturers told me that as of 2011, at least 50,000 of them were in use.

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• Home-based workers took to the treadmill desk concept with passion. They sent me photographs of treadmill desks made from cardboard boxes, reconfigured shelving units and homemade wood- framed structures. Most people worked on treadmills, but some used exercise bicycles or gliding machines that mimic cross-country skiing. Reports started to come in; some users lost 45, 50 or 70 pounds, and others experienced decreased back pain or improved sleep.

• [Steelcase] built the first commercial treadmill desks in 2007.

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• We pushed the five weapons of behavioral change remorselessly: stimulus control, monitoring, cognitive reconstruction, reward/penalty systems and social support.

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• Ergotron released a range of inexpensive standing desks

· Chapter 12: Learn

• Pilot programs in schools. It all sounds appealing, but we must remain vigilant that it is not the cheese leading to a common core type curriculum. There was multiple mentions of things like real time electronic feedback where the teacher could view what the students were doing on their iPads.

· Chapter 13: Get Up, Step 1, Get Personal

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• There are only three reasons a person does something: the cue, the response and the reward. The cue is the stimulus to do something; you might not think you want a piece of candy until somebody offers you one. The response is something you’ve learned to do; when somebody offers you the candy, you reach out, take it and say thank you. The reward is the sweet taste in your mouth, the sugar high and also perhaps a memory from childhood when your dad gave you a candy.

• Broadly speaking, rewards that excite people feed into one of their three primal drives: money, sex and power.

• Money is a “primal” drive?!?

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• Multitasking, the Harvard Business Review has reported, is associated with a drop in IQ of 11 points.5

· Chapter 14: Get Up, Step 2, Plan

· Chapter 15: Get Up, Step 3, Weapons

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• The more time you spend on Facebook, the lonelier you are likely to be.

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• What I now suggest is that people follow a self-training period, using an activity tracker, for three weeks and then deliberately stop using it. During that three-week period they will work out what they need to do to decrease sitting time by, say, 20 percent. I then recommend that they continue their program and reuse the activity tracker three months later—like a car tune-up.

· Chapter 16: Get Up, Step 4, Play

· Chapter 17: Defeat the Chairman