don’t just sit there, do something

It is awful, just awful – a health disaster brewing as we sit and work in our comfortable, ergonomically, correct office chairs.
NBC News reported earlier this month, “new research shows the ill effects of prolonged sitting is commensurate with similar health afflictions found among cigarette smokers.”
Commensurate? As in equivalent to? The same as? A similar problem? Lifelong smokers tend to develop blackened lungs, cancer, emphysema and asthma and nicotine stained nails. What do prolonged sitters develop? Broad bottoms, fat guts, a bad case of belly dunlap over the belt and pasty white skin?
As an office worker, with a posterior firmly planted in front of a computer all day, every day, I am shocked. After a life time of proudly, righteously avoiding the evils of coffin nails, I find it astounding that I may have been comfortably sitting in the coffin itself all these years.
“Dr. David Coven, a cardiologist at St. Lukes Roosevelt Hospital in New York, states in the report that several new studies show prolonged sitting is linked directly to many of the same diseases contracted by smokers including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer and premature mortality. The report warned that the odds of contracting any of these diseases increased with the amount of time spent sitting during the day,” according to a news release from Steve Bordley of TrekDesk.
We need to do something about this. We need federal legislation mandating that signs be posted prominently on the backs of all office chairs stating, “Prolonged sitting in this chair may be detrimental to your health.” Officer workers need to know this.
And we need to extend the study to cross country truck drivers. They sit for hours driving loads of fuel, groceries and dry goods across the country.  The same diseases threaten them.
Television and radio campaigns must be immediately initiated to warn office workers of the danger of sitting at a desk. Graphic pictures of the corruption our bodies suffer from extended consumption need to be taken. Students from college down to kindergarten need to have posters in their health classes depicting evils of the office chair – the damage developed from prolonged sitting.
It may take time – as it did with anti-smoking laws – but eventually desks and chairs could be outlawed in all public settings: Restaurants, doctor offices, anywhere near an educational facility, public transportation and the close confines of the family car.
Children will learn to beg their parents with tears in their eyes, to “please not sit at that desk Mommy. Get up and walk, Daddy.” Everywhere we will see signs admonishing us to “Don’t just sit there, do something.”
But do what? The work world increasingly depends on warm bodies in front of computers and behind the steering wheel of big rigs.
Not to worry, there is a solution – the treadmill desk as featured on CBS recently.
With a slow moving treadmill instead of a desk, office workers can walk slowly while they type and talk on the phone or work on accounts. Maybe they can even chew gum. All this can be done without the horror of the disease causing office chair.
Steve Bordley is the CEO of a company that designed the TrekDesk – a combination treadmill and desk – which is “designed to fit any existing treadmill. TrekDesk is an affordable, full sized workstation allowing individuals the opportunity to gain the necessary amount of exercise daily to maintain health, prevent disease, strengthen muscles, boost mood and productivity, without requiring additional time during the day or extra motivation. America’s health is at risk as never before yet few understand the severe health impact of sitting at a desk all day,” Bordley said in a news release.
Bordley cares about office workers, but he ignored truck drivers. Surely someone, somewhere could design a TrekTruck that allows a driver to walk inside the cab of a semi-truck barreling down the Interstate. The ingenious inventor could even make the driver’s increase in walking speed on the treadmill work to increase the truck’s speed.
Sitting down all day affects our health, but we will change that, bit by bit. It took a while to change our national mindset and laws about cigarettes, but it has happened and office workers across the nation soon will be able to walk slowly while typing, talking and transcribing. For now cross-country truck drivers will have to settle for getting their exercise walking across the parking lot to the lunch counter at the truck stop.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)