Apparently, sitting is the new smoking.
“Every hour you spend sitting takes two hours off your life,” says Dr. James Levine, director of obesity research at the Mayo Clinic. “Sitting is more dangerous than smoking. We are sitting ourselves to death!”
Finally — at long last — here is the vice for me!
I knew better than to start smoking, when I was a girl, having watched both of my parents work hard to finally quit; drinking is too expensive; and hoarding books only means that, eventually, you must read books about de-cluttering.
But honestly — if just plain sitting down in a chair is bad for you, sign me up!
What makes sitting so bad?
Apparently, sitting can shorten your “telomeres,” which are part of your DNA; and the shorter your telomeres, the weaker and older your cells. Short telomeres are bad.
So researchers want us to get up and wander.
After generations of parents telling children to “sit still and stop fidgeting,” we’re supposed to get out of our seats and fidget more.
I hope this turns out better than when they told us to stop eating eggs and butter.
“Eat this non-fat substitute, instead,” they insisted — until, years later, they said, “Oops, turns out that trans-fats are worse than butter, and eggs were fine all along.” That’s 30 years of breakfasts they owe me.
Now they tell me that sitting in a chair is as bad as smoking?
I can only think of one similarity: The fact that there you are, quietly trying to relax, when some busybody scientist comes up and tells you to stop.
But let’s take see where this analogy takes us — or, as Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing characters would say, “Walk with me.” (Who knew he was giving us medical advice?)
Smoking was banned, not just for killing the smoker, but because the fumes were toxic to all the non-smokers near them, as well. So — must we similarly be protected from “second-hand sit”?
Does this mean that sitting won’t be allowed any more in office buildings, except outside in designated “Sitting areas?”
“Eeek!” the smokers will point and shriek. “They’re ruining our health! Get them out of our sight!”
Pity the poor sitters.
We’ll shuffle wearily off, to somewhere behind the loading docks, screened by bushes from the rest of humanity walking energetically by.
We’ll finally sneak home, after taking a breather on a park bench, only to have our spouses scream, “I can smell it on your clothes! You’ve been sitting again!”
How will people ride in buses or subway cars? The phrase “strap-hanger” will mean even more, as people will file into their Standing Room Only space in the made-over public conveyances.
Perhaps they will clip themselves onto hooks and hang from the ceiling like bats, swaying wildly with every lurch of the bus.
I’ll bet the airlines have plans for this already. It’s better than they ever dreamed, packing us in literally like sides of beef, with no seats at all, and telling us “It’s for your own good.”
How do these scientists know sitting is so awful? They say, “It’s not how we were designed to live.” But how do they know? Did they travel back through time to humanity’s start, on the African savanna? (Standing up the whole way, of course.) I find it quite believable that early man — and woman — spent hours sitting at a meerkat hole, waiting to snatch one when it popped out; or another several hours on a river bank, waiting for a fish to bite.
Unless the researchers met with our Maker, who laid it out for them — “Let there be no chairs!”
And how does Dr. Levine propose to get us all to quit the vice of sitting? Must it be cold turkey? Or will he develop the equivalent of a nicotine patch?
Say, a little adhesive bandage I can slap on my butt and which, after an hour or two of sitting, starts to sting? “Ouch! What is that?”
Then I’ll have to jump up and roam around for an hour or two, until it no longer hurts to sit again. “Yikes! There it is again!”
After a long dangerous day of sitting, I’ll go home and lean against the door jamb until it’s time for bed.
I tell you, it makes me want to make the world safe for vice.
