Photo by Pete Souza (Wikimedia Commons)
Presidential deliberations: Barack Obama chooses his chair.
“We sit in our car, we sit at our desk, we sit to eat dinner, we sit in front of the TV or our home computer,” rattles off Chris Sebelski, associate professor of physical therapy at Saint Louis University. In years past, all that sitting would have been broken by far longer periods of standing, walking, lifting, scrubbing. Not that we want the chores back…but what’s all this sitting doing to our bodies? And is it OK as long as we fork over enough money for a fancy chair?
“People spend their whole career trying to design an ergonomic chair,” she points out, “and there’s still no one chair that’s going to be perfect, because people have so many different body types.” Even if you custom designed a chair to fit every measurement, you’d need to keep shifting, she adds. “There’s an expectation that the chair will do it all, and once we set it, we’ve set it for life.”
Au contraire, says Sebelski, suggesting a daily routine that’s more like a game of musical chairs. “At the 20-minute mark, change the height of your chair. If the lumbar support is set to maximum, lessen it. We think, ‘OK, I’m in the perfect position,’ and then we just stay there. But the position is static, and it puts pressure on specific parts of the body. Over time, those parts that are doing the majority of the work are going to wear down, and those parts that are not doing any work are going to get lazy.”
There’s plenty of research in the great sitting versus standing debate: studies in Canada and London found higher risks of early death among those who spent most of their time sitting than among those who spent most of their time standing.
But even a standing desk isn’t the solution, if all you do is stand there, or slump exhausted on a stool. The idea is to keep moving, alternating position, rotating the wear on your body the way you care for your tires.
And while you’re at it, read Sebelski’s advice for redesigning your work space.
