CALL TO PARTICIPATION: How Much Daily Exercise Is Enough?

After a few years working at Full Sail University, sitting every day at our cubes, I think eight out of the 12 of us were suffering from some form of back strain or other related issues. I don’t know if my teaching colleagues at the public schools I taught at in California had similar problems, but then I didn’t sit next to them all day/every day for years. But something was different sitting at our desks every day at Full Sail. Then it came out that sitting all day was compared to smoking as far as being bad for one’s health, so I experimented with using an exercise ball instead of a chair. I guess too many people were falling over or something, because exercise balls were eventually banned at Full Sail.

A bit later, when I was recovering from my CIDP (which was not related to all the sitting) I found that I needed to get up and take a short five-minute walk every twenty- to thirty minutes just to get through the pain of my illness. I also purchased a motorized sit/stand desk and set up my home treadmill so that I could use my laptop and second monitor while walking. During the pandemic, when I was teaching from home I’d alternate, one hour standing/one hour sitting and I didn’t have nearly the back problems that my co-workers were complaining about. Then when we went back to face-to-face/on campus teaching, I had no problem getting in over 10,000 steps every day walking around my classroom. But since leaving the classroom last Spring, I’ve gained more than 10 pounds. I don’t stand or walk consistently or nearly enough. So I’ve been thinking about what I need to do, maybe get another treadmill that I can add to my sit/stand desk. Then I heard about an experiment being done related to whether all or any of these solutions really counteract all the time must of us spend sitting on our butts.

**Work Evolution: I think I experimented with each mode from 1950s to 2010s**

On a TED Radio Hour podcast, the host discussed, with exercise physiologist and Columbia University Medical Center researcher Keith Diaz, research that was indicating that working out in the morning and then sitting all day might not be the answer. Surprisingly, my prior need to walk five minutes every thirty minutes might be a better solution.

Here’s a link to the audio podcast: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/03/1200611617/ted-radio-hour-draft-10-03-2023

Yay! But what’s more interesting to me is for the the new NPR series called Body Electric, the researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have invited listeners to sign up to participate in further research on how to counter-act our butts-in-seats dilemma. The deadline to sign up is Sunday October 8 before 11PM EST. If you miss the deadline, you can still hear the six-week series. Thus, I’ve called this post a CALL TO PARTICIPATION. Click on the following image to join the study.