Exercised. Is sitting the new smoking?

Is sitting really the new smoking?

If we wish to understand how we evolved to be both physically inactive and active, and why that matters, then we need to understand sitting. Most fundamentally, if we evolved to avoid unnecessary physical activity (a.k.a. exercise), how can sitting be so deadly? How does that compare with our ancestors' habits?

If we make a simple search about “sitting & health” in Google, we see that; chairs are out to get us, sitting is the new smoking or sitting down all day are going to kill us.

These articles even state there are studies that estimate the harm of 1 hour long sitting can be compensated with 20 minutes exercise. Although, I am sure these calculations have some kind of logic behind it, according to Daniel Lieberman, author of Exercised and a professor in Human Evolutionary Biology, they do not cover the whole truth.

Evolutionary speaking all animals avoid unnecessary physical activity in order to save energy because they don’t know when and where they will find their next meal. Lieberman even states that there is evidence of Homo Erectus and Neanderthals squatting (apparently squatting creates tiny smoothed regions on ankle bones). Even though we, as modern humans, don’t need to save energy anymore, our bodies did not evolve not to save energy yet. Thus, we all sit because it less tiring than standing, and we created tools to make it even more comfortable and save even more energy, like chairs.

We can also see sitting idle is a normal, adaptive part of the human and ape conditions in variety of studies that cover, modern humans, modern athletes and non-industrialised people, such as hunter-gatherers in Tanzania or farmer-hunters in the Amazonian rainforest, as well as apes.

The issue with the studies that suggest sitting is killing us is that they frame the problem in a wrong way because they classify “the activity” as sitting vs not sitting. Instead, Lieberman suggests, they should use the activity levels as a comparison, based on percentage of maximum heart rate.

In fact, according to the book, the difference between the daily sitting duration an average American who works on a desk job and a typical Hadza adult (a protected hunter-gatherer Tanzanian indigenous ethnic group) is not that different. However, while a Hadza is partaking 2 hours of moderate and 20 minutes of vigorous activities, the average American partakes 20 minutes of moderate and 1 minute of vigorous activities.

…the problem isn't sitting itself, but hours upon hours of inactive sitting combined with little to no exercise.

So, no sitting is not the new smoking, but sitting inactively for long periods of time with no exercise is. Two people who sits the same amount of time in a day, can have two different health conditions according to their sitting patterns.

…for some things, how often and when you do them are just as important as how much. If I gulp down four cups of coffee all at once, I'll become jittery and get a headache, but if I drink them over the course of a day, I'll be fine. Is the same true for sitting.

Scientific evidence shows that there are three health concerns that sitting uninterruptedly for long periods of time:

1. Every hour spent resting is an hour spend not being active.

2. Uninterrupted inactivity harmfully elevates levels of sugar and fat in bloodstream.

3. Sitting for long periods of time may cause inflammation on the body.

I know it sounds morbid but there are some easy ways to counter these concerns.

According to a multiyear analysis of 5000 Americans, breaking up your sitting time with frequent short breaks had up to 25% less inflammation than those who did not rose from their chairs in same number of sitting hours. In the book, Lieberman mentions 100 seconds per every half an hour, but this does not have to be an exact number.

I think just paying attention to get up every 30-40 minutes, to get some water, stretch, have a talk, look outside of the window etc. is good enough.

Another activity he mentions is fidgeting. Apparently, studies show that, my annoying habit that drives my wife crazy, is actually beneficial for blood flow to restless arms and legs.

And lastly he mentions the standing desks;

Such marketing deceptively confuses not sitting with physical activity. Standing is not exercise, and as yet no well-designed, careful study has shown that standing desks confer substantial health benefits.

However, even though there is a lack of careful study, the learnings from this section of the book would suggest getting up and lightly swaying side to side or dancing a bit could be beneficial. I also believe combining standing desks with those mini-treadmills would also be highly beneficial.

Risks don’t cover surprises

We are very good at predicting the future, except for the surprises—which tend to be all that matter.

It is known that most of us are not good at predicting the future.

If I, in the summer of 2019, asked you to imagine the everyday life in 2020, I am 100% sure none of you could predict the 2020 we got. Especially, in today’s interconnected world, where smallest events can have largest results; making a prediction is a difficult feat.

However, Morgan Housel thinks otherwise. He states, in his book Same as ever, we are actually good at predicting the future except for the surprises. And he is right. When we look at the events like; Covid-19, Russia-Ukraine war, or an older example like 2008 Housing Market crash, they have one thing in common; they were surprises for majority of the world. Not many expected these events therefore they weren’t prepared until they happened. And for that reason alone, their damages were greater than their actual size.

They [the smartest planners in the world] planned for everything that made sense before getting hit by something they’d never imagined.
Morgan Housel

Of course, when someone is caught unprepared, it doesn’t mean that they didn’t plan for future. I’m sure people planned their 2020 with some amount of risk in head. For example, I was preparing to move to Germany in 2019 and the biggest risk I could think of at the time was being rejected by German Consulate for some reason. However, I could not ever imagine, even in my wildest overthinking sessions, borders to be closed for almost a whole year.

Which brings us to a quote from the book that changed my definition of risk.

Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.
Carl Richards

Thankfully, there are also some answers in the book as well and the keyword is preparedness. Housel writes about how places like Florida, where earthquakes are expected but their time, location or magnitude is unknown; investing in preparedness rather than prediction is more important. In addition to that, he also recommends to be prepared for the unknown on top of the risks that we can think of.

So, in personal finance, the right amount of savings is when it feels like it’s a little too much. It should feel excessive; it should make you wince a little.

The same goes for how much debt you think you should handle—whatever you think it is, the reality is probably a little less. Your preparation shouldn’t make sense in a world where the biggest historical events all would have sounded absurd before they happened.

Although I think it make sense to follow these recommendations I think there is a difference between being prepared and being prepared like Doomsday Preppers.

I leave you to decide where in the spectrum you want to be in.

We continue to learn while sleeping

Sleep is an underrated activity.

Scientifically speaking, the comatose state that feels like a waste of time, has more benefits than we give credit to. It enhances memory and creativity. It protects from diseases like cancer or dementia and lowers the risk of heart attacks, strokes and diabetes.

Out of the many advantages sleep provides, that of memory is particularly well understood. In his book Why we sleep? Matthew Walker explains in detail how sleep allows our brains to prepare for making new memories as well as to secure learned memories.

While we are awake, our brains are bombarded with information. It constantly absorbs this information (intentionally or unintentionally) and stores it in hippocampus.

…the hippocampus offers a short-term reservoir, or temporary information store, for accumulating new memories. Unfortunately, the hippocampus has a limited storage capacity, almost like a camera roll or, to use a more modern-day analogy, a USB memory stick. Exceed its capacity and you run the risk of not being able to add more information or, equally bad, overwriting one memory with another: a mishap called interference forgetting.

By getting a good night’s sleep, our brains move these learnings to the long term memory recorder the cortex. During sleep, more specifically in the lighter stage 2 NREM sleep, short but powerful bursts of electrical activity called sleep spindles occur. These sleep spindles basically carry information from hippocampus to the cortex, thus it simultaneously opens up space for new learning opportunities and secures our daily learnings.

Studies Walker mentions show an impressive 20% increase in learning capability and 20-40% memory retention benefits.

What’s quite important, that the concentration of NREM-sleep spindles is especially rich in the late-morning hours. It means, if you cut your sleep short and sleep 6 hours or less, you are denying your brain the opportunity to replenish the capacity and secure your learnings.

Perhaps more relevant to the modern world is the time-of-night effect we discovered. Those last two hours of sleep are precisely the window that many of us feel it is okay to cut short to get a jump start on the day. As a result, we miss out on this feast of late-morning sleep spindles.

Moreover, these findings are not limited only to textbook memory. Other types of memories such as skill memory (muscle memory) are also positively affected by sleep.

Again, Walker explains, sleep spindles are responsible for these positive effects. However, for skill memory, instead of moving the learnings to the cortex, these memories had been shifted over to brain circuits that operate below the level of consciousness; where they become instinctual habits.

They [actions] flowed out of the body with ease, rather than feeling effortful and deliberate. Which is to say that sleep helped the brain automate the movement routines, making them second nature—effortless—precisely the goal of many an Olympic coach when perfecting the skills of their elite athletes.

Practice does not make perfect. It is practice, followed by a night of sleep, that leads to perfection.

And that’s it, I hope you’ll like this new format. As always 70% of you know me personally, you can just reply to this email and let me know what you think.

Before I forget, today’s quote comes from James Clear, who is the writer of Atomic Habits.

Most people need consistency more than they need intensity.

Intensity:
-run a marathon
-write a book in 30 days
-silent meditation retreat

Consistency:
-don’t miss a workout for 2 years
-write every week
-daily silence

Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress.