Sitting for a long time shrinks your brain even if you exercise
17 comments
·May 16, 2025ta988
thayne
Or there are confounding factors. Like diet for example, or what these people are doing while they are sitting.
cko
As someone who started a fully remote job (sedentary) 1.5 years ago, this worries me a bit. I've been reading that those giant bouncy balls and treadmill desks are a gimmick and that standing still for a long time gives you varicose veins.
What is a good routine? Do I switch positions (right now I'm slav squatting) and maybe throw in some short bouts of exercise every 30 minutes?
rogerrogerr
Treadmill desks aren’t a gimmick IME. I use one every day, I swear it helps with focus and generally feeling good. I’ve found out I can walk for longer than I can stand. Make sure to set a 3° incline to save your knees.
I’d recommend trying it. This guy overanalyzed the whole topic, great resource: https://ocdevel.com/walk/guide#why_desk
jeffbee
It's not clear that a treadmill would even register as activity by their method, which requires sustained acceleration of the wrist, which wouldn't be happening if you can keyboard. For that matter, riding a bicycle at 40kph wouldn't count as activity, either.
amluto
A bike at 40kph can have quite a lot of vibration. How much depends on the road and the bike.
user_7832
Honestly as long as you’re talking decent care of your health in other aspects (exercise - cardio and strength training, diet, enough sleep, avoiding stress if possible), with a bouncy ball seat (or even a standing desk) you’ll be good enough. You might have a few % issues statistically compared to someone who does the same but doesn’t have a desk job, but proper lifestyle has a multi fold effect - way stronger than a few %. If you occasionally get up and gently stretch (say every hour) and get the blood flowing, that’s probably almost all the way there.
Don’t forget, even though desk work is relatively new to the last century/industrial revolution, humans have been sitting for a long time - traders and teachers, scholars and students (probably not a good example sample but you get the idea). You’ll be fine.
ch4s3
807 ± 97 minutes sitting is a long time, around 13 hours.
electromech
Hold my beer...
...
On second thought, grab me another beer.
morkalork
Walking to the bathroom to pee out all the beer counts as moving right?
inverted_flag
I wonder if this holds up in younger adults as well.
readthenotes1
Based on figures 1, 2, 3, I wonder if it holds up in older adults
j_bum
Yep, I had the same exact thoughts.
Would like to see the partial residuals plotted...
Are they over fitting their model? I cannot understand how we can look at a set of data like that, see that there are, perhaps, *maybe* some associations, and then make such serious conclusions from the stats.
electromech
n = 404 p = 0.003
I'm too dumb to understand how that math works.
zxexz
It doesn’t. At least not in a way that’s, at best, misleading.
gonzo
Perhaps if you sit some more…
hyfgfh
So what you are saying is that exercise is useless ... got it
What if it is the opposite and beeing sedentary is a marker of cognitive decline (in this case genetic, but maybe it is also the case for other risk factors).