Sitting All Day Is Killing You — Here’s What to Do About It | Manoush Zomorodi | TED

0:03 Do you ever close your laptop at the end of a long day and feel like you have

0:09 just enough energy to crawl over to the couch

0:12 to scroll on your phone or watch a show?

0:17 Or maybe both at the same time?

0:21 Yeah.

0:22 During the pandemic, that was all I wanted to do and I couldn't understand why.

0:26 I was safe, I was healthy,

0:27 why didn't I want to close my laptop and go dance around the living room?

0:31 Where did all my energy go?

0:34 I'm a journalist.

0:36 My specialty for the last 10 years has been trying

0:39 to understand how our tech habits change us as people,

0:43 and so I decided I was going to find out why

0:45 sitting in front of a screen makes us feel so exhausted.

0:50 Because we have all heard about the mental effects, right?

0:54 But what about our physical health?

0:57 Well, as I quickly learned,

1:00 looking at screens has not only reshaped our days, it is reshaping our bodies.

1:05 According to researchers at Johns Hopkins, every day,

1:08 the average 19-year-old moves about as much as the average 60-year-old.

1:13 Over the last 20 years, rates of type 2 diabetes in young people have doubled.

1:18 Three in four American adults has a chronic illness.

1:22 Many of those are preventable.

1:25 At least one chronic illness.

1:27 And the WHO says that this is a global problem.

1:30 They predict that by the end of the decade, which is not that far away,

1:33 this lifestyle will likely lead to 500 million

1:36 new cases of preventable conditions like heart disease,

1:40 obesity and diabetes, costing governments 27 billion dollars a year.

1:46 Typing, swiping, scrolling, sitting.

1:51 This is the rhythm of our modern life.

1:54 But I don't know about you, I can't throw away my phone, right?

1:57 Like, I can't go off the grid.

2:00 So how can we stay connected without slowly destroying our health?

2:06 That was the question running through my mind when I came across this guy.

2:10 Keith Diaz is a physiologist at Columbia University Medical Center,

2:14 and he has spent his entire career trying to figure out how little

2:18 can we get away with moving so that sitting doesn't kill us, basically.

2:23 And in 2022, he published a small study that gives us a great idea.

2:27 He found that just five minutes of gentle

2:30 movement every 30 minutes had dramatic effects.

2:33 It slashed blood sugar and blood pressure.

2:37 In another study, he found that inactive people

2:39 who traded 30 minutes of sitting for 30

2:42 minutes of movement every day could lower

2:44 their risk of a premature death by 18 percent.

2:48 And so maybe you're like, "Yeah, I worked out this morning,

2:52 so I'm good." Or maybe you're like,

2:54 "Phew, I'm so glad I got that standing desk." I am so sorry, but no.

3:02 (Laughter) If you sit or stand for the majority of your waking hours,

3:08 your health is in jeopardy too.

3:11 "Don't stop working out," Keith told me, but he said,

3:14 what you have to do is break up these long stretches of sedentary screen time.

3:19 When he told me this, I was like, really?

3:21 Like, how big a difference can these movement breaks make for someone who is,

3:25 you know, relatively healthy?

3:26 I decided I would join the study.

3:29 So one day I went to his lab and I

3:32 sat and worked on my laptop for eight hours straight.

3:35 The next day I took those movement breaks every half hour or so.

3:40 They checked all my vital signs

3:42 and the results were actually quite extraordinary.

3:45 My glucose was cut nearly in half.

3:48 My blood pressure was down by five points, and my mood was so much better.

3:54 The science was clear, but like,

3:57 what did it matter if no one could actually do these movement breaks?

4:01 Like it was easy in the lab.

4:03 Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and led me over to the treadmill.

4:06 So we decided to ask people, out in the world,

4:09 out in real life, to see if they could do it.

4:13 We, our teams at NPR and Columbia,

4:15 combined forces to create a podcast and a global

4:19 clinical trial called the Body Electric study.

4:21 And over 20,000 people signed up.

4:24 We had to cap it at 20,000 people, and they could choose a movement dose,

4:29 so they could move five minutes every half hour,

4:31 five minutes every hour, or every two hours.

4:35 They could dance around the house, they could pace on calls,

4:38 they could walk the dog, they could take out the trash, it didn't matter.

4:42 They just had to break it up, break up those long periods of sitting.

4:46 And you guys, I was so excited.

4:49 I was like, we are going to launch a movement for movement.

4:54 Yeah, I've got a way with words.

4:56 (Laughter) But I am not going to lie, those first few days were so tough.

5:02 It takes a lot of intention and a little rebellion to upend

5:06 a world that is quite literally built around screens and chairs.

5:11 But when people figured it out,

5:13 when they started getting those breaks into their lives,

5:17 they started having breakthroughs.

5:18 They told us that they felt less pain.

5:21 They told us that they had more energy.

5:24 They said that they felt more positive about life in general.

5:28 In the end, of the people who started taking movement breaks,

5:32 80 percent managed to stick with them for two solid weeks.

5:35 And yes, this was a self-reported study

5:38 with a lot of very motivated participants.

5:41 Hello public radio.

5:42 But still, the data showed that the more often they took breaks,

5:48 the better they felt.

5:49 People who went outside got an extra boost.

5:52 Some people lost a few of those stubborn pounds,

5:55 and most people actually liked taking the breaks.

5:59 But the biggest surprise to me was

6:01 that the breaks did not hurt their productivity.

6:04 People said they got back to their desks and they were able to focus,

6:08 and they felt that the work they did was actually of better quality.

6:12 So this research is going through the scientific process right now.

6:16 But Keith explained to me some of the reasons

6:18 why these gentle breaks can have such an outsized impact.

6:22 So when we sit, our arteries get bent at our hips and our knees,

6:27 kind of like a kinked vacuum hose.

6:29 Blood starts pooling in our legs and our muscles stop contracting.

6:34 But leg muscles need to move, be stimulated,

6:36 in order to clear out fat and sugar and reduce blood pressure.

6:41 If they don't, over months and over years,

6:44 that's when those chronic conditions can start to creep in.

6:47 And then there is our posture.

6:49 Sitting compresses the diaphragm.

6:52 We start taking shallow breaths.

6:54 Shallow breaths lead to less oxygen going into our blood and up to our brain.

6:59 Less oxygen in our brain means we get tired and lose focus.

7:03 Feel free to take a deep breath right now if you want to.

7:07 And that is where screens come into the picture.

7:10 So screens can mess with something called interoception.

7:14 Interoception is the body's way of telling you what it needs.

7:18 It needs a snack, it needs to go to the bathroom, it needs to move.

7:22 The more we focus on screens,

7:24 the less we listen to the signals that our body is sending us.

7:28 Your body could be begging for a break, but what do you do?

7:32 You keep scrolling past the anxiety, scrolling past the exhaustion.

7:38 That eventually can lead to burnout, yes.

7:41 And again, those chronic conditions.

7:44 So how can you start making a change in feeling better?

7:49 Well, first, think about your most sedentary stretches

7:52 of time and then make yourself a mantra.

7:55 So like if you are a student, you could say,

7:57 "I'll take an extra lap around the quad before class instead of checking TikTok,

8:02 so I get to class with more oxygen in my brain

8:05 and I can actually focus." Or if you work from home,

8:08 you could decide that on long Zoom calls,

8:10 "I will march in place in order to manage

8:13 my glucose and avoid the post-meeting crash." If you're a parent,

8:17 you could say "I will take a lap around

8:19 the soccer field once so that I have enough

8:22 energy to get through the dinnertime chaos." You can

8:26 have a dance party while you microwave your leftovers.

8:28 You can walk the concourse instead of sitting and waiting for your flight.

8:33 A mix of all these habits will keep your muscles firing and your mood steadier.

8:39 My favorite story came from a 43-year-old woman named Dana, who works in HR.

8:44 So Dana was a type-2 diabetic with all kinds of health issues.

8:48 Her doctor told her she needed to take a long, brisk walk every morning,

8:51 and she was doing this, but her numbers just were not changing.

8:55 So with her doctor's permission, she decided to join the study.

8:58 She started fitting in movement breaks between all of her meetings,

9:02 and within a couple of weeks,

9:03 she told me her blood pressure dropped by 40 points,

9:07 her cholesterol went down and her doctor

9:10 told her she could start tapering her insulin.

9:13 She's actually off all of her meds today.

9:16 Yay, Dana, we love you, Dana.

9:18 (Applause) So we know that too much time

9:22 online is not great for our mental health.

9:25 But it's not just in our heads, it's in our bodies.

9:30 We need movement to be as much a part of our lives as screens are.

9:35 We need our schools, our neighborhoods,

9:37 our workplaces to give us time and space just to move.

9:40 You can help push this reset forward.

9:44 Take movement breaks.

9:46 And when people look at you like you're weird,

9:48 just tell them why you're doing it.

9:50 Because you just want to feel a little better.

9:52 Get them to put down their phone and join you.

9:55 Start soon, start small.

9:58 Should we start now?

10:00 Yeah, can we have some music?

10:03 You could do— you could do the march.

10:07 You could do the shuffle.

10:10 Little hands in the air, if you can't get up.

10:13 Feel it.

10:14 You're alive.

10:16 You're alive.

10:27 Love you guys.

10:28 (Cheers and applause)