Friday, July 5, 2013

Things I Just Don't Get: Sitting VS Sleeping


Lately doctors everywhere are coming out of the woodwork telling us that sitting can kill you. They say if you work in and office and sit all day you're gonna die early. No exceptions, it's your destiny! Never mind that humans have been sitting since... well, since we first developed asses. Suddenly it's bad for us. In fact it's so bad that they're urging us all to stand at our desks. Like that's ever going to happen.

First of all, I call bull hockey on this. I've been working in various offices since the late 1980s and I've yet to see a single dead body slumped over at a desk. If what these doctors are telling us is true then the floors of offices nationwide should be strewn with corpses.

Secondly, what about sleeping? If sitting can kill you, then sleeping ought to be positively lethal. Every time I go to bed should be my last. At least when I'm sitting at work I occasionally get up to go to the bathroom or to a meeting. And I probably walk back and forth to the printer twenty or thirty times in a day. I don't sit all day.

When I'm sleeping though I lie motionless for eight hours like a big banana slug. So shouldn't that be at least as bad as sitting? Logically it should be worse. So where are all the doctors warning us about the dangers of sleeping? Why aren't they telling us we should all be standing while we sleep?

It's another thing I just don't get!

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