From head to toe, our bodies have adapted to accommodate our devices. The majority of American workers spend most of their weekdays sitting and looking at a screen. So we find ourselves in the midst of a slowly developing health crisis characterized by alarming early-onset diabetes and hypertension. Plus, not a medical term, but by the end of most days, we feel like shit.
Many of us ignore the Apple Watch’s nagging beeping reminders to get up and move. Others mistakenly believe that if they exercise before sitting at their desk and work up a sweat early in the morning, they can just sit for hours. And then there are the disciples of the standing desk, but unfortunately, this too cannot correct irregular blood sugar or lipid levels.
After researchers at Columbia University Medical Center set out to pinpoint the minimum amount of movement needed to offset the harms of a sedentary lifestyle, they discovered: 5 minutes of gentle walking every half of time It’s effective. A controlled study at Columbia’s Exercise Lab makes that easy. There, a clinician taps you on the shoulder every 30 minutes and directs you away from your laptop and onto a treadmill set at 2 miles per hour. But what about in the real world? Is it possible to add regular travel breaks to your deadline-driven days? Sure, you might be able to tolerate exercise, but what about interruptions?
That’s what we spent three weeks this fall finding out. unusual project: We asked National Public Radio listeners to take part in a study conducted by fellow Columbia University researchers to see if they could incorporate regular exercise breaks or “snacks” into their day, and to find out why. We asked them to report whether they were able to do so or not. Over 20,000 people registered (the system almost crashed). Here’s what we learned:
Exercise breaks also improved mental health. Participants reported feeling better, having more positive emotions, and fewer negative emotions on the days they took exercise breaks. They also felt more energized and reported an average of 25% less fatigue.
The break had no negative effect on work performance. Participants reported feeling more engaged at work and slightly improving the quantity and quality of their work on days they took exercise breaks.
However, it is difficult to make time for frequent breaks. Many participants struggled to take an exercise break from their daily routine every 30 minutes. Only 50% of them reported being able to take exercise breaks that often. Commonly cited barriers included pressure to be productive at work, feeling too busy to take breaks, and concerns about disrupting workplace cultural norms.
Participants found that taking exercise breaks every 1 to 2 hours was more practical and had less impact on daily life, with 70% to 80% of participants taking regular breaks at this interval. I reported. However, feeling too busy and pressure to perform at work are still regularly reported as barriers to taking even infrequent breaks.
Our findings demonstrate that public interest and research participation is critical to identifying barriers to mobility disruption and developing real-world solutions. But we also hope this project will quickly advance a broader conversation about cultural reset, which will require a collective effort. Just because society has come to think that constant sitting is the norm, we shouldn’t accept sacrificing our overall mental and physical health.
We all know that sitting too much is bad, but what if it was acceptable to get up in the middle of an endless Zoom meeting and shuffle from side to side? Advise your kids about screen time What if we instead asked them if they set aside “walk time” every day?
I used to accept smoke breaks, but these days, few people squint when someone looks at their cell phone during a meeting. Behaviors, both good and bad, are often contagious, but we need our workplaces and schools to be willing to make time and space for movement. Our educational institutions need to encourage people who want to change their relationship with chairs and devices.
The World Health Organization says that if we continue to sit like this, we will almost 5 million Over the next decade, people will develop heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases, costing governments $27 billion a year. Equally important, we are now accepting that many of us live without physical bodies, denying the next generation the simple pleasures of feeling strong, healthy, and mobile. It will be.
Manoush Zomorodi is host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour, creator of the Body Electric series, and author of Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self. Keith Diaz is a certified exercise physiologist, associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, and director of the Exercise Testing Laboratory at the Columbia Center for Behavioral and Cardiovascular Health.
