New Habits: Sitting Less
By Coeli Carr
Remember how Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, seconds before he got whacked at sea, asked Tony Soprano for permission to sit? If you’re thinking: “Sitting as a prelude to death,” that assessment may not be too far off the mark – even if the big guy never did have the chance to slide into a seated posture on the way down.
Ironically, the profound awareness that too much sitting is bad for you strikes home when you realize just how much it hurts to stand up. But for aging baby boomers who feel they need to take care of themselves after enduring long commutes to work, high doses of stress, and extensive periods of being on their feet, sitting often becomes a kind of reward. It’s like that fancy dessert – full of sugar and fat – that you know is bad for you but you eat it anyway because you deserve it, goddamnit, you earned it.
Why is sitting in a chair so bad for you? It compresses the spinal disks, and this compression has consequences – especially for people over 50, most of whom already have verifiable disk degeneration, an arthritis precursor.
If you have degeneration of a disk or disks (the disk is the structure that separates one vertebra from another), then the compression that results from sitting with your back in the typical swayback position will generally exacerbate your condition. That’s because the compression closes up the space that the nerve root occupies, and less room means irritation and pain.
“No matter what age you are, sitting for more than 30 minutes at a time without getting up will compress your disks,” says Andrew Was, a chiropractor in New York City. “When a disk is compressed, the water of the gelatinous material in the disk is squished out a little bit. You don’t want that to happen because the disk begins to dry out.” Absence of fluid is also a foundation for the onset of arthritis, he says.
How does a person over 50 who wants to preserve a healthy spine – or at least to maintain mobility in an already compromised spine – negotiate the necessary evils of sitting?
Here are some tips.
• Do not sit for more than 20 or 30 minutes straight. “If you must, set a timer to tell you it’s time to get up,” says Eleanor Demos, a licensed massage therapist in Sarasota, Florida. If you’ve got a coffee and tea station in your work area, return the paraphernalia to the kitchen – and periodically visit there to take a caffeine break. Or if you work at home, and have been threatening to cook more, now’s the time to assemble a snack (or lunch or dinner in 20-minute segments) by walking to and from your kitchen.
• When you do sit, pick the best chair. Dr. Was gives his highest marks to the chair that gives you lumbar support, as well as a lot of options, such as allowing you to sit in a combined kneeling-and-sitting position, or to adopt the waterfall position where your knees are lower than your buttocks. Ms. Demos cautions against a one-chair-fits-all philosophy. Buying a chair too constructed to a particular shape only works for a person with that shape, she says.
• Perform certain typically “sitting” tasks like reading, making telephone calls, balancing your checkbook, organizing or reviewing paper work, and even writing letters or notes, while standing up. What was reputedly good enough for the standing scribes, Goethe, Gunter, Grass, and Hemingway, should be good enough for you, too. “See if there’s any place you can create a work area for a lectern,” suggests Demos. Also, Dr. Was notes, by standing, you decrease the pressure on the often-vulnerable fifth lumbar disk by half.
• Perch. Demos suggests periodic “perching,” which means sitting with just your sitting bone on the front edge of a tall stool. “With your feet on the floor, your weight is partially on your seat and partially on your legs, and your lumbar spine is not so compressed.”
• Lie down. Studies have shown that lying flat on your back exerts much lighter pressure on the spine than sitting or even standing. “While lying on the floor on your back, put your feet up for 15 minutes to open up the back, to stretch it out a little bit,” says Was.
• Be smart when exercising or doing yoga. “Not all yoga positions are helpful, and sitting positions can be tough,” says Was. “The thing that breaks the disk apart the most is compression of the spine with rotation.”
• Don’t bend forward at the waist, which compresses the front part of the vertebrae, says Was, who advises loosening up your hamstrings so that motion takes place in your hip joints, legs, and knees. And try not to engage your back – it’s the ability to have more range of motion in your low back and neck that causes the problems, he says.
• Beware the fatigue factor. True, when one sits in a supportive chair, part of the work is done by the chair. “If you have balanced your body on the line of gravity,” Demos says, “you will not slouch until the muscles that are engaged become fatigued. But once your muscles do get tired, you will slouch, no matter what chair you’re sitting on.” That’s why movement, which increases circulation to the muscles, is so important.
• Move the waste-paper receptacle far, far away from your desk, and walk – don’t toss – your refuse into it.
Perhaps the best way to ensure a healthy spine is to recognize that sitting is not to be taken for granted. On the contrary, sit judiciously and only as much as is necessary to achieve professional and personal goals.
Don’t regard getting up every 20 minutes and moving around to energize your muscles as an inconvenience. Think of it as the big payoff, the way to earn the privilege of sitting some more.
