Is working standing up too expensive? It could cost you as little as $10

Spending too much time sitting down is clearly unnatural, particularly if you sit down on very comfortable chairs. Sitting down per se is probably natural, given the human anatomy, but not sitting down for hours in the same position. Also, comfortable furniture is an apparently benign Neolithic invention, but over several years it may stealthily contributed to the metabolic syndrome and the diseases of civilization.

Getting an elevated workstation may be a bit expensive. At work, you may have to go through a bit of a battle with your employer to get it (unless you are "teh boz"), only to find out that having to work standing up all the time is not what you really wanted. That may not be very natural either. So what is one to do? One possible solution is to buy a small foldable plastic table (or chair) like the one on the figure below, which may cost you less than $10, and put it on your work desk. I have been doing this for quite a while now, and it works fine for me.

The photo above shows a laptop computer. Nevertheless, you can use this table-over-table approach with a desktop computer as well. And you still keep the space under the foldable table, which you can use to place other items. With a desktop computer this approach would probably require two foldable tables to elevate the screen, keyboard, and mouse. This approach also works for reading documents and writing with a pen or pencil; just put a thick sheet of paper on the foldable table to make a flat surface (if the foldable table’s surface is not flat already). And you don’t have to be standing up all the time; you can sit down as well after removing the foldable table. It takes me about 5 seconds to do or undo this setup.

When you sit down, you may want to consider using a pillow like the one on the photo to force yourself to sit upright. (You can use it as shown, or place the pillow flat on the chair and sit on its edge.) Sitting on a very comfy chair with back support prevents you from using the various abdominal and back muscles needed to maintain posture. As a result, you may find yourself unusually prone to low back injuries and suffering from “mysterious” abdominal discomfort. You will also very likely decrease your nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), which is a major calorie expenditure regulator.

With posture stabilization muscles, as with almost everything else in the human body, the reality is this: if you don’t use them, you lose them.

Low nonexercise activity thermogenesis: Uncooperative genes or comfy furniture?

The degree of nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) seems to a major factor influencing the amount of fat gained or lost by an individual. It also seems to be strongly influenced by genetics, because NEAT is largely due to involuntary activities like fidgeting.

But why should this be?

The degree to which different individuals will develop diseases of civilization in response to consumption of refined carbohydrate-rich foods can also be seen as influenced by genetics. After all, there are many people who eat those foods and are thin and healthy, and that appears to be in part a family trait. But whether we consume those products or not is largely within our control.

So, it is quite possible that NEAT is influenced by genetics, but the fact that NEAT is low in so many people should be a red flag. In the same way that the fact that so many people who eat refined carbohydrate-rich foods are obese should be a red flag. Moreover, modern isolated hunter-gatherers tend to have low levels of body fat. Given the importance of NEAT for body fat regulation, it is not unreasonable to assume that NEAT is elevated in hunter-gatherers, compared to modern urbanites. Hunter-gatherers live more like our Paleolithic ancestors than modern urbanites.

True genetic diseases, caused by recent harmful mutations, are usually rare. If low NEAT were truly a genetic “disease”, those with low NEAT should be a small minority. That is not the case. It is more likely that the low NEAT that we see in modern urbanites is due to a maladaptation of our Stone Age body to modern life, in the same way that our Stone Age body is maladapted to the consumption of foods rich in refined grains and seeds.

What could have increased NEAT among our Paleolithic ancestors, and among modern isolated hunter-gatherers?

One thing that comes to mind is lack of comfortable furniture, particularly comfortable chairs (photo below from: prlog.org). It is quite possible that our Paleolithic ancestors invented some rudimentary forms of furniture, but they would have been much less comfortable than modern furniture used in most offices and homes. The padding of comfy office chairs is not very easy to replicate with stones, leaves, wood, or even animal hides. You need engineering to design it; you need industry to produce that kind of thing.

I have been doing a little experiment with myself, where I do things that force me to sit tall and stand while working in my office, instead of sitting back and “relaxing”. Things like putting a pillow on the chair so that I cannot rest my back on it, or placing my computer on an elevated surface so that I am forced to work while standing up. I tend to move a lot more when I do those things, and the movement is largely involuntary. These are small but constant movements, a bit like fidgeting. (It would be interesting to tape myself and actually quantify the amount of movement.)

It seems that one can induce an increase in NEAT, which is largely due to involuntary activities, by doing some voluntary things like placing a pillow on a chair or working while standing up.

Is it possible that the unnaturalness of comfy furniture, and particularly of comfy chairs, is contributing (together with other factors) to not only making us fat but also having low-back problems?

Both obesity and low-back problems are widespread among modern urbanites. Yet, from an evolutionary perspective, they should not be. They likely impaired survival success among our ancestors, and thus impaired their reproductive success. Evolution “gets angry” at these things; over time it wipes them out. In my reading of studies of hunter-gatherers, I don’t recall a single instance in which obesity and low-back problems were described as being widespread.

Nonexercise activities like fidgeting may account for a 1,000 percent difference in body fat gain! NEAT eh?

Some studies become classics in their fields and yet are largely missed by the popular media. This seems to be what happened with a study by Levine and colleagues (1999; full reference and link at the end of this post), which looked at the role that nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) plays in fat gain suppression. Many thanks go to Lyle McDonald for posting on this.

You have probably seen on the web claims that overeating leads to fat loss, because overeating increases one’s basal metabolic rate. There are also claims that food has a powerful thermic effect, due to the energy needed for digestion, absorption and storage of nutrients; this is also claimed to lead to fat loss. There is some truth to these claims, but the related effects are very small compared with the effects of NEAT.

Ever wonder why there are some folks who seem to eat whatever they want, and never get fat? As it turns out, it may be primarily due to NEAT!

NEAT is associated with fidgeting, maintenance of posture, shifting position, pacing, and other involuntary light physical activities. The main finding of this study was that NEAT accounted for a massive amount of the difference in body fat gain among the participants in the study. The participants were 12 males and 4 females, ranging in age from 25 to 36 years. These healthy and lean participants were fed 1,000 kilocalories per day in excess of their weight-maintenance requirements, for a period of 8 weeks. See figure below; click on it to enlarge.

Fat gain varied more than 10-fold among the participants (or more than 1,000 percent), ranging from a gain of only 0.36 kg (0.79 lbs) to a gain of 4.23 kg (9.33 lbs). As you can see, NEAT explains a lot of the variance in the fat gain variable, which is indicated by the highly statistically significant negative correlation (-0.77). Its effect dwarfs those related to basal metabolic rate and food-induced thermogenesis, neither of which was statistically significant.

How can one use this finding in practice? This research indirectly suggests that moving often throughout the day may have a significant additive long term effect on fat gain suppression. It is reasonable to expect a similar effect on fat loss. And this effect may be stealthy enough to prevent the body from reacting to fat loss by significantly lowering its basal metabolic rate. (Yes, while the increase in basal metabolic rate is trivial in response to overfeeding, the decrease in this rate is nontrivial in response to underfeeding. Essentially the body is much more “concerned” about starving than fattening up.)

The bad news is that it is not easy to mimic the effects of NEAT through voluntary activities. The authors of the study estimated that the maximum increase in NEAT detected in the study (692 kcal/day) would be equivalent to a 15-minute walk every waking hour of every single day! (This other study focuses specifically on fidgeting.) Clearly NEAT has a powerful effect on weight loss, which is not easy to match with voluntary pacing, standing up etc. Moreover, females seem to benefit less from NEAT, because they seem to engage in fewer NEAT-related activities than men. The four lowest NEAT values in the study corresponded to the four female participants.

Nevertheless, if you have a desk job, like I do, you may want to stand up and pace for a few seconds every 30 minutes. You may also want to stand up while you talk on the phone. You may want to shift position from time to time; e.g., sitting at the edge of the chair for a few minutes every hour, without back support. And so on. These actions may take you a bit closer to the lifestyle of our Paleolithic ancestors, who were not sitting down motionless the whole day. Try also eating more like they did and, over a year, the results may be dramatic!

Reference:

James A. Levine, Norman L. Eberhardt, Michael D. Jensen (1999). Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in resistance to fat gain in humans. Science, 283(5399), 212-214.