_http://www.joyfullivingservices.com/hiatalhernia.html
I've read that the surgery is not recommended because the surgeons can inevitably cut into the vagus nerve by accident or deliberately to deal with the condition.
Only a competent chiropractor or osteopath can also help with this and teach you how to do it.
Two youtube videos on solving the hiatal hernia:
"How to Identify and Correct a Hiatal Hernia: Part 1 "
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrdNfaanpIs
"How to Identify and Correct a Hiatal Hernia: Part 2 "
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX0zKB2_-UM
This condition could affect your ability to do EE properly.
Also this condition can be caused by sitting improperly in recliner chairs/couches or slouching forward when eating or working.
Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?
_https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1
Become a Stand-Up Guy: The History, Benefits, and Use of Standing Desks
http://artofmanliness.com/2011/07/05/become-a-stand-up-guy-the-history-benefits-and-use-of-standing-desks/
You can check the photos there at the link.
Ytain
Hiatal Hernia: An Overlooked Cause of Disease
By: Steven H. Horne
About three years ago Jack Ritchason, a naturopathic physician, corrected a health problem I must have carried since childhood--a hiatal hernia. The impact this simple maneuver has had on my health has amazed me. I immediately noticed a difference in my lung capacity and my digestion and in the months that followed I began to put some muscle on my skin and bones frame and gain newfound strength and stamina.
Dr. Ritchason tells me that this is a common health problem and my own observations as well as those of others confirm this fact. But this is more than a personal observation as the American Digestive Disease Society has estimated that nearly half of all adults--some 60 million people--have a hiatal hernia.
It occurs more often in women than in men. It affects people of all ages, but is most prevalent in people over 50 and highly likely in people over 65.
The Great Mimic
Hiatal Hernia has been called the "great mimic" because it mimics many disorders. A person with this problem can get such severe pains in their chest that they think they are having a heart attack. They may think they have an over acid stomach because they will regurgitate stomach acid after they eat, or their stomach may hurt so badly they will think they have an ulcer. This is just a sampling of the symptoms that may occur from this disorder.
What is a Hiatal Hernia?
When you swallow, your food passes down a long tube known as the esophagus into the stomach. This tube must pass through a muscle known as the diaphragm, which is located near the bottom of your rib cage. This opening in the diaphragm, which permits the esophogus to pass through, is regulated by a sphincter muscle (or "valve") which relaxes and opens when we swallow to permit the food to pass through the diaphram and into the stomach. This sphincter then closes to prevent stomach acid from coming back up into the throat. A hiatal hernia occurs when the top of the stomach rolls or slides up into this opening and becomes stuck there.
Symptoms
Naturally, when part of the stomach is forced into this opening, the sphincter cannot close properly. Thus, stomach acid may travel back up into the esophagus causing burning sensations (heartburn), esophageal spasms, inflammations and ulcers.
stomach The cramped position of the stomach can also stress the vagus nerve, which stimulates the release of hydrochloric acid. This can cause both over and under secretion of hydrochloric acid and stomach enzymes. It may also affect the sphincter or valve at the bottom of the stomach so that digestive secretions "leak" out of the stomach and are lost before they have completed their job.
The hiatal hernia will also interfere with the movement of the diaphragm muscle. This muscle normally pulls downward to expand the chest capacity and inflate the lungs. Since the hiatal hernia interferes with this movement, the person may be restricted to shallow breathing, or will resort to using the chest and shoulders to expand the lung capacity and take a deep breath.
The esophagus may also "kink" in the throat, which will irritate the thyroid gland and may cause some difficulty in swallowing. Often persons with hiatal hernias will have difficulty in swallowing capsules or tablets as they get the sensation that they are "sticking" in their throat.
The irritation on the vagus nerve can cause reflex irritations throughout the body. The vagus nerve comes from the medulla and goes to the heart, esophagus, lungs, stomach, small intestines, liver, gall bladder, pancreas and colon. It also hass links to the kidney, bladder, and external genitalia. Thus, a hiatal hernia may start imbalances in the system such as decreased stomach acid and ph imbalance in the intestines and elsewhere.
If a person develops poor stomach digestion due to a lack of hydrocholoric acid, they will have difficulty digesting and assimilating protein and most minerals. It will also contribute to food putrefacation in the intestines, causing greater toxicity in the body. This lack of nutrition and toxic condition may contribute towards food allergies, constipation, anemia and immune and glandular system weaknesses.
Two other problems that a hiatal hernia may contribute to are asthma and heart disease. Since the hernia reduces the lung capacity by interfering with natural breathing, it could be a factor in asthma. The hernia may also put pressure on the heart. Gas in the intestines may put pressure on the hernia and push it against the bottom of the heart, which may be one way in which a heart attack can be triggered. None of this spells immediate fatality, but it does point to a major contributing factor in degenerative illness.
Causes
The causes of a hiatal hernia are speculative and unique to each individual. However, there are a number causes. First of all there may be a mechanical cause. Improper lifting, hard coughing bouts heavy lifting, sharp blows to the abdomen (the kind that "knock the wind out of you"), tight clothing and poor posture may contribute to the development of this problem. Improper lifting may be the biggest mechanical cause of this disorder. If the air is not expelled out of a person's lungs while lifting, it will force the stomach into the esophagus.
Secondly, there are dietary causes. Hiatal hernia just about always accompnies a swollen ileocecal valve. The ileocecal valve is the valve between the small and large intestines which permits material to enter the colon from the large intestine, but prevents material in the colon from moving back into the small intestine. When this valve becomes swollen and irritated it cannot close properly. This allows material from the colon to leak back into the small intestine. This is analogous your sewer backing up into your kitchen. This creates gas and indigestion, which puts pressure on the stomach and presses it tighter against the diaphram.
The relationship between the ileocecal valve and the hiatal hernia is a chicken/egg situation ... it is hard to know which comes first. However, it is clear that the ileocecal problem aggravates the hernia. Hence, the things which irritate that valve may be causal factors. These are the basic causes of digestive problems: poor food combining, overeating, drinking with meals, overeating and eating when upset.
Lastly, there are emotional causes. According to one applied kinesiologist text a hiatal hernia comes from repressed anger. A person "swallows their anger" and "can't stomach it." When you get angry, you suck your beadth upward. If you fail to release this anger, your stomach stays up. I have observed that most of the people with severe hiatal hernias have a great deal of emotional stress and hold a lot of it inside.
Identification
The easiest way to tell if you or someone you know has a hiatal hernia is to place your fingers on the solar Plexus, just below the breastbone. Then take a deep breath. You should feel the solar plexus expand and move outward. If there is no movement at the solar plexus and you have to lift your chest and shoulders to take a deep breath, then you probably have a hiatal hernia. You should be able to take a deep abdominal breath without lifting your shoulders.
There are other, more complicated, methods of determining if you have a hiatal hernia, such as muscle testing, but this is a fairly simple and reliable method.
Correction
Since a hiatal hernia is primarily a mechanical problem, the easiest and best way to correct it is mechanically. Medical doctors have attempted surgery to correct this disorder, but the results tend to be poor. Cutting into this area can further weaken it so that the hernia will return in short order. A better method is to manipulate the stomach and bring down the hernia by hand. Unfortunately, you can't do this to yourself. You will need to find a good chiropractor, applied kinesiologist or massage therapist who understands this problems and knows how to correct it.
If you want to learn how to do this adjustment to others, you will have to find someone who does it and have them show you how since it is impossible to adequately describe the technique(s) in writing. They have to be learned through demonstration and practice.
For a chiropractor in your area who knows how to adjust hiatal hernias, click here.
Self-Adjustment
There are some self-help adjustment techniques. They aren't as effective as having someone else perform the adjustment, but they may help. The best one I've tried is to drink a pint of warm water first thing in the morning, then stand on your toes and drop suddenly to your heels several times. The warm water helps to relax the stomach and diaphragm and puts some weight in the stomach. By dropping down suddenly, the weight of the water helps to pull the stomach down. In a mild case, this might be enough to bring the hernia down. In a more severe case it may loosen the stomach and make it easier for someone else to bring it down. It will also help you to keep the stomach down once mechanical corrections have been made.
Nutrititional Aids
Until the problem is corrected mechanically, there are some nutritional therapies which may be of help. Immediate, but temporary, relief of pain and discomfort can often be achieved by the use of a mucilaginous herb like slippery elm or comfrey. These herbs absorb the digestive secretions and help to prevent their traveling back up the esophagus and burning it. They also help to prevent irritation of the ileocecal valve. Comfrey can also speed the healing of this problem once mechanical adjustments have been made. Okra pepsin is a good combination for this problem as well.
Marshmallow is also helpful in soothing the mucous membranes for hiatal hernias and other ulcerations in the gastrointestinal system.
A digestive aid will help the person obtain the nutrients they need when the hernia is interfering with digestion.
This may take the form of a hydrochloric acid supplement or a food enzyme tablet, or perhaps an herbal digestive aid such as papaya and peppermint, chamomile tea, safflowers, ginger root and so forth.
Other food or herb products that have been used to help people with hiatal hernias include: raw cabbage juice (where ulcerations have occurred), balm, barley water, brown rice, celery, coriander, gentian, hops, licorice, marshmallow and passion flower.
Dietary modifications may be necessary to relieve the problem and to keep it from reoccurring once it has been corrected. Since the pressure of abdominal gas can push the stomach upward, it would be advisable to avoid gas forming foods like beans. It would also be wise to watch food combinations carefully and to avoid overeating. Dr. Jack Ritchason recommends that people with hiatal hernias avoid eating any heavy meals after 3 pm.
Below you will find a checklist of symptoms which will help you in identifying people who have this problem so they can take steps to correct it.
Symptoms of a Hiatal Hernia
What is a Hitatal Hernia?
A hiatal hernia occurs when the top of the stomach rolls or slides up into the opening in the diaphragm which the esophogus passes through and becomes stuck there.
This condition may create difficulty with digestion (and hence general nutrition and well-being) as well as breathing difficulties, nervous problems, circulatory problems and glandular imbalances. All of the following symptoms have been connected with a hiatal hernia. If you have some of these symptoms especially those marked with an asterisk (*) you may wish to consider being checked for this condition.
DIGESTIVE DIFFICULTIES
*Belching, *Bloating, *Heartburn, *Difficulty digesting meat/high protein foods, Tension or pressure at the solar plexis, Sensitivity at the waist, Intestinal gas, Regurgitation, Hiccups, Lack or limitation of appetite, Nausea, Vomiting, Diarrhea, Constipation, Colic in children, Difficulty in gaining weight or overweight, Ulcers.
BREATHING AND CIRCULATION PROBLEMS
*Difficulty with deep abdominal breathing, *Difficulty in swallowing capsules, *Asthma, *Inability to take a deep breath from diaphragm, Overall fatigue, Tendency to swallow air, Allergies, Dry tickling cough, Full feeling at base of throat, Pain or burning in upper chest, Pressure in the chest, Pain in the left side of chest, Pressure below breastbone, Lung pain, Rapid heartbeat, Rapid rise in blood pressure, Pain in left shoulder, arm or side of neck.
STRUCTURAL COMPLAINTS
TMJ (Temporo-Mandibular Joint Pain), Bruxism (Grinding teeth in sleep), Joint pain, Localized or overall spinal pain, Headaches.
STRESS
*Suppression of anger or other emotions, *Living with or having lived with a quick-tempered person, Dizziness, Shakiness, Mental Confusion, Anxiety attacks, Insomnia, Hyperactivity in children.
OTHER AILMENTS
*Open ileocecal valve, *General weakness, *Difficulty in getting and/or staying healthy, Overactive thyroid, Cravings for sugar or alcohol, Candida Albicans, Menstrual or prostate problems, Urinary difficulties, Hoarseness.
Sources
For more information about the problem of hiatal hernias, read the book "Hiatal Hernia Syndrome: Insidious Link to Major Illness" by Theodore A. Baroody, Jr., M.A., D.C., "Hiatus Hernia" by Penny Hemphill from an Australian Magazine, Nature & Health, and "Chiropractic Handout".
I've read that the surgery is not recommended because the surgeons can inevitably cut into the vagus nerve by accident or deliberately to deal with the condition.
Only a competent chiropractor or osteopath can also help with this and teach you how to do it.
Two youtube videos on solving the hiatal hernia:
"How to Identify and Correct a Hiatal Hernia: Part 1 "
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrdNfaanpIs
"How to Identify and Correct a Hiatal Hernia: Part 2 "
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX0zKB2_-UM
This condition could affect your ability to do EE properly.
Also this condition can be caused by sitting improperly in recliner chairs/couches or slouching forward when eating or working.
Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?
_https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1
By JAMES VLAHOS
Published: April 14, 2011
DR. LEVINE’S MAGIC UNDERWEAR resembled bicycle shorts, black and skintight, but with sensors mounted on the thighs and wires running to a fanny pack. The look was part Euro tourist, part cyborg. Twice a second, 24 hours a day, the magic underwear’s accelerometers and inclinometers would assess every movement I made, however small, and whether I was lying, walking, standing or sitting.
James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has an intense interest in how much people move — and how much they don’t. He is a leader of an emerging field that some call inactivity studies, which has challenged long-held beliefs about human health and obesity. To help me understand some of the key findings, he suggested that I become a mock research trial participant. First my body fat was measured inside a white, futuristic capsule called a Bod Pod. Next, one of Dr. Levine’s colleagues, Shelly McCrady-Spitzer, placed a hooded mask over my head to measure the content of my exhalations and gauge my body’s calorie-burning rate. After that, I donned the magic underwear, then went down the hall to the laboratory’s research kitchen for a breakfast whose calories were measured precisely.
A weakness of traditional activity and obesity research is that it relies on self-reporting — people’s flawed recollections of how much they ate or exercised. But the participants in a series of studies that Dr. Levine did beginning in 2005 were assessed and wired up the way I was; they consumed all of their food in the lab for two months and were told not to exercise. With nary a snack nor workout left to chance, Dr. Levine was able to plumb the mysteries of a closed metabolic universe in which every calorie, consumed as food or expended for energy, could be accounted for.
His initial question — which he first posed in a 1999 study — was simple: Why do some people who consume the same amount of food as others gain more weight? After assessing how much food each of his subjects needed to maintain their current weight, Dr. Levine then began to ply them with an extra 1,000 calories per day. Sure enough, some of his subjects packed on the pounds, while others gained little to no weight.
“We measured everything, thinking we were going to find some magic metabolic factor that would explain why some people didn’t gain weight,” explains Dr. Michael Jensen, a Mayo Clinic researcher who collaborated with Dr. Levine on the studies. But that wasn’t the case. Then six years later, with the help of the motion-tracking underwear, they discovered the answer. “The people who didn’t gain weight were unconsciously moving around more,” Dr. Jensen says. They hadn’t started exercising more — that was prohibited by the study. Their bodies simply responded naturally by making more little movements than they had before the overfeeding began, like taking the stairs, trotting down the hall to the office water cooler, bustling about with chores at home or simply fidgeting. On average, the subjects who gained weight sat two hours more per day than those who hadn’t.
People don’t need the experts to tell them that sitting around too much could give them a sore back or a spare tire. The conventional wisdom, though, is that if you watch your diet and get aerobic exercise at least a few times a week, you’ll effectively offset your sedentary time. A growing body of inactivity research, however, suggests that this advice makes scarcely more sense than the notion that you could counter a pack-a-day smoking habit by jogging. “Exercise is not a perfect antidote for sitting,” says Marc Hamilton, an inactivity researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
The posture of sitting itself probably isn’t worse than any other type of daytime physical inactivity, like lying on the couch watching “Wheel of Fortune.” But for most of us, when we’re awake and not moving, we’re sitting. This is your body on chairs: Electrical activity in the muscles drops — “the muscles go as silent as those of a dead horse,” Hamilton says — leading to a cascade of harmful metabolic effects. Your calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to about one per minute, a third of what it would be if you got up and walked. Insulin effectiveness drops within a single day, and the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes rises. So does the risk of being obese. The enzymes responsible for breaking down lipids and triglycerides — for “vacuuming up fat out of the bloodstream,” as Hamilton puts it — plunge, which in turn causes the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol to fall.
Hamilton’s most recent work has examined how rapidly inactivity can cause harm. In studies of rats who were forced to be inactive, for example, he discovered that the leg muscles responsible for standing almost immediately lost more than 75 percent of their ability to remove harmful lipo-proteins from the blood. To show that the ill effects of sitting could have a rapid onset in humans too, Hamilton recruited 14 young, fit and thin volunteers and recorded a 40 percent reduction in insulin’s ability to uptake glucose in the subjects — after 24 hours of being sedentary.
Over a lifetime, the unhealthful effects of sitting add up. Alpa Patel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, tracked the health of 123,000 Americans between 1992 and 2006. The men in the study who spent six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting had an overall death rate that was about 20 percent higher than the men who sat for three hours or less. The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher. Patel estimates that on average, people who sit too much shave a few years off of their lives.
Another study, published last year in the journal Circulation, looked at nearly 9,000 Australians and found that for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11 percent. The study author David Dunstan wanted to analyze whether the people who sat watching television had other unhealthful habits that caused them to die sooner. But after crunching the numbers, he reported that “age, sex, education, smoking, hypertension, waist circumference, body-mass index, glucose tolerance status and leisure-time exercise did not significantly modify the associations between television viewing and all-cause . . . mortality.”
Sitting, it would seem, is an independent pathology. Being sedentary for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you go home and watch television afterward or hit the gym. It is bad whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin. “Excessive sitting,” Dr. Levine says, “is a lethal activity.”
The good news is that inactivity’s peril can be countered. Working late one night at 3 a.m., Dr. Levine coined a name for the concept of reaping major benefits through thousands of minor movements each day: NEAT, which stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. In the world of NEAT, even the littlest stuff matters. McCrady-Spitzer showed me a chart that tracked my calorie-burning rate with zigzagging lines, like those of a seismograph. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to one of the spikes, which indicated that the rate had shot up. “That’s when you bent over to tie your shoes,” she said. “It took your body more energy than just sitting still.”
In a motion-tracking study, Dr. Levine found that obese subjects averaged only 1,500 daily movements and nearly 600 minutes sitting. In my trial with the magic underwear, I came out looking somewhat better — 2,234 individual movements and 367 minutes sitting. But I was still nowhere near the farm workers Dr. Levine has studied in Jamaica, who average 5,000 daily movements and only 300 minutes sitting.
Dr. Levine knows that we can’t all be farmers, so instead he is exploring ways for people to redesign their environments so that they encourage more movement. We visited a chairless first-grade classroom where the students spent part of each day crawling along mats labeled with vocabulary words and jumping between platforms while reciting math problems. We stopped by a human-resources staffing agency where many of the employees worked on the move at treadmill desks — a creation of Dr. Levine’s, later sold by a company called Steelcase.
Dr. Levine was in a philosophical mood as we left the temp agency. For all of the hard science against sitting, he admits that his campaign against what he calls “the chair-based lifestyle” is not limited to simply a quest for better physical health. His is a war against inertia itself, which he believes sickens more than just our body. “Go into cubeland in a tightly controlled corporate environment and you immediately sense that there is a malaise about being tied behind a computer screen seated all day,” he said. “The soul of the nation is sapped, and now it’s time for the soul of the nation to rise.”
Become a Stand-Up Guy: The History, Benefits, and Use of Standing Desks
http://artofmanliness.com/2011/07/05/become-a-stand-up-guy-the-history-benefits-and-use-of-standing-desks/
You can check the photos there at the link.
In the past couple of years, as studies have come out sounding the alarm on the ill-effects of excessive sitting, the popularity of standing or stand-up desks has soared. Those who have read much of the coverage of this trend might be forgiven for thinking that standing to work constitutes a new hip fad.
But as it is with many things, everything old is new again. For the stand-up desk was cool long before the cats in Silicon Valley got hip to them. They’ve actually been a secret of great men for centuries. Today we’ll explore the standing desk’s place in history, discuss the benefits of using one, and outline how you can rediscover this old/new tradition.
The Standing Desk in History
Searching the historical record, and by historical record I mean Google Books, you’ll find mentions of the standing desk in a variety of places.
Old inventories of furniture from state legislatures and other government bodies during the 19th century often include an entry for stand-up desks. And in industrial journals you’ll find references like this one:
“Mr. W. H. Thompson, President of the gas company, with his hat off, stood near the centre of the room, behind a standing desk used by the weigher of the establishment. To his right Emerson McMillin, with his silk hat on, chewed at a cigar.”
School classrooms were sometimes outfitted with standing desks. In an 1899 book, School Hygiene, Dr. Ludwig Wilhelm Johannes Kotelmann described the rationale behind their use:
“It has in late years been repeatedly suggested that even with the proper kind of desk much sitting is liable to injure the abdominal organs and the circulation. Desks have accordingly been proposed which can be arranged for standing as well as sitting. These are hardly necessary for the lower and intermediate classes, since the pupils here rise when questioned, and tumble about vigorously on the play ground during recesses. They are rather to be thought of for the upper classes.”
The book showcases some of the designs for student desks that converted from sitting to standing:
In another instance of the everything old is new again phenomena, schools are once more experimenting with giving students adjustable height desks, which allow them to stand and work. Educators feel such desks help students focus more, since kids (and adults!) aren’t made to sit still all day.
The stand-up desk has also been the favorite workstation of many a great man from history.
Thomas Jefferson is perhaps the most famous user of the stand-up desk. His six-legged “tall desk” had an adjustable slanted top that was large enough to place a folio. Jefferson used the desk to draw up brilliant architectural blueprints for buildings like the Virginia State Capitol.
Jefferson was not the only head of state to favor the standing desk. Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck would be standing at his desk by five in the morning, ready to sort through all the proposals and business of the day. When Winston Churchill was not lounging in bed, he liked to lay out the galley proofs of his next book on an upright desk and pore over them, looking for needed corrections.
Many authors felt like standing up to work got their creative juices flowing. Charles Dickens used one, as revealed by the description of his study by a visitor: “books all round, up to the ceiling and down to the ground; a standing desk at which he writes; and all manner of comfortable easy chairs.”
Ernest Hemingway discovered the standing desk method from his editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, Maxwell Perkins. In Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir, AE Hotchner describes Hemingway’s set-up in his home in Havana:
“In Ernest’s room there was a large desk covered with stacks of letters, magazines, and newspaper clippings, a small sack of carnivores’ teeth, two unwound clocks, shoehorns, an unfilled pen in an onyx holder, a wood carved zebra, wart hog, rhino and lion in single file, and a wide-assortment of souvenirs, mementos and good luck charms. He never worked at the desk. Instead, he used a stand up work place he had fashioned out of a bookcase near his bed. His portable typewriter was snugged in there and papers were spread along the top of the bookcase on either side of it. He used a reading board for longhand writing.”
5 Reasons to Use a Stand-Up Desk
So should you follow in Jefferson’s and Hemingway’s footsteps and start working on your feet? Here are five reasons to consider making the switch:
1. To Avoid an Early Grave
Excessive sitting is slowly killing you. I know. It seems like hyperbole. But it’s not. A study found that men who sit for more than six hours of their leisure time each day had a 20% higher death rate than those who sat for three hours or less. The epidemiologist who conducted the study, Alpha Patel, concluded that excessive sitting literally shortens a person’s life by several years. Another study showed that men who sat for 23 or more hours a week had a 64% greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours per week or less.
So why is sitting so frighteningly bad for you?
Well sitting is the ultimate passive activity; you burn more calories chewing gum than you do slouching in your chair.
When you sit, the electrical activity in your muscles flat lines, and your body uses very little energy. Powering down your body like that for long periods of time leads to a cascade of negative effects. Your heart rate, calorie burn, insulin effectiveness, and levels of good cholesterol all drop. Your body also stops producing lipoprotein lipase and other molecules that are only released when you flex your muscles, such as when you are standing and walking. These molecules play an important role in processing fats and sugars; without them, your metabolism suffers. Add these factors up, and it’s no wonder that those who sit for long periods of time each day have larger waistlines and worse blood sugar and blood pressure profiles and are at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer than who sit less.
And if you think you’re off the hook because you get in a bout of vigorous exercise each day…you’re not. Studies have shown that exercise does not counteract the negative effects of sitting. It’s like thinking you can snack on Twinkies all day, and then offset that by running for an hour.
2. To Lose Weight
As mentioned above, when you sit, your heart rate and calorie burn go down. Health experts will tell you that weight gain typically creeps on gradually from consuming a few too many calories here and there, and slowing down in small ways as we age. We just keeping putting on a couple of pounds each year until a decade goes by and suddenly we’re tubby. I did a test with my heart rate monitor and found that my heart rate was 10 beats higher when I was standing than sitting, and I burned 54 calories in an hour of sitting as opposed to 72 in an hour of standing. That doesn’t seem like much, but if you sub in four hours of standing for four hours of sitting a day, that could translate to 7 lbs a year!
3. To Save Your Back
When I go to the gym I see all these middle-aged guys lying on the floor and contorting their bodies into weird stretches in an attempt to alleviate their chronic back pain. These aren’t blue-collar men who’ve strained their back from years of heavy labor; no, they are white collar guys whose pain stems from not using their backs enough. Years of slouching in a chair has taken a toll. Standing up engages your back muscles and improves your posture. Many folks who have made the switch to a stand-up desk have reported that the change cured their back pain.
4. To Increase Your Focus
Standing up can increase your focus in several ways. First, you don’t get that sleepy feeling where you desperately want to put your head down on the desk and pass out; your muscles are engaged and you’re less comfortable, so you stay alert. And second, it lets you be more active so you can release your restless energy. You can move around more, shift from one leg to another, and start pacing around whenever you’d like.
And perhaps there’s something to be said for the argument one hears from creative-types that standing increases your blood flow, thus keeping your brain juiced for inspiration.
5. To Gain a Satisfying Tiredness
While you get less sleepy while working standing up, at the same time you gain a satisfying overall tiredness by the end of the day. I hate going to bed feeling like my body hasn’t done a damn thing all day. When you stand up while you work, you earn that satisfying body-used feeling, and at night you fall asleep fast into a restful snooze.
Making the Switch to the Stand-Up Desk
So you’re sold on the whole standing desk thing. How do you get started?
Well of course you can just buy a standing desk outright. BeyondtheOfficeDoor.com carries great, Made in America desks that are built with electric motors that easily adjust the desks up and down, so you can alternate sitting and standing. Or you can shop for more classic styles on sites like standupdesks.com
Luckily, you need not have $800 to drop on a new desk if you want to start standing up while you work. The options for jerry-rigging a stand-up desk are limited only by your imagination, and the tolerance levels of others for your potential eyesore of a creation.
I use a kitchen counter that’s about the right height for working. And I also frequent a coffee shop that has a high table that can be used with stools or for standing up. In my old place, I stacked together a bunch of large books and placed my computer on top.
You can also raise your whole desk by placing it on top of cinder blocks or milk crates. Or you can set a coffee table on top of your current desk.
And you don’t even have to start with a desk at all. You can stack together some plastic storage tubs or boxes, or use a book shelf or even an ironing board. Folks have also had luck with modifying IKEA furniture to their purposes.
Of course the third option is to build the desk yourself. I’m going to be doing just that, documenting it, and sharing how I did it with you guys once I’m done.
Finally, here are a few things to keep in mind no matter what form your standing desk takes:
If you work in an office, some or all of these options may not be viable. You can talk to your boss about getting a different desk. And you can always stand up to surf the web and such when you get home. I personally like to pace around while reading my Kindle.
Excessive sitting isn’t healthy, but standing all day long in the same place isn’t the best thing for you either. Ideally, you want to move around and change positions throughout the day, standing sometimes, then sitting, then pacing, and so on. So keep that in mind when buying or making a desk; get an adjustable one so you can both stand and sit, or have a place to sit near your upright desk (or use a stool). You might consider getting just a podium to place next to your regular desk.
For the best ergonomic positioning, create a stand-up set-up that puts your arms at about 90 degrees while you type. If you’re keen on getting the ergonomics just right, check out this write up from David Martinez on how to find the perfect height for your desk.
Standing up while you work will take some getting used to. At first it will seem tiring, but as you continue to do it, your body adapts, and you’ll be able to stand for longer and longer periods of time. You might also consider getting a soft pad to stand on to give your dew beaters some extra cushioning.
So get to work like Jefferson, and soon people will be saying that you’re a real stand-up guy!
Ytain