By Ashley Wiebe

Study proves sitting is not comparable to smoking

Oct 3, 2018 | 4:58 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Jeff Vallance, PhD, has heard the claim before, that sitting for prolonged periods of time is just as bad for your body as smoking.

“Some credible health institutions, such as the Mayo Clinic, if you go onto their website, you can see that they make the claim that sitting is the new smoking,” he said.

He and eight co-authors set out to prove the claim false. The study, Evaluating the Evidence on Sitting, Smoking and Health: Is Sitting Really the New Smoking? was published in September in the American Journal of Public Health.

Superintendent of the Medicine Hat Public School Division, Mark Davidson, switched to a standing desk in his office about a year ago.

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“I have a habit, when I sit, of tucking my feet up underneath me and crossing my ankles and it started to produce problems for me, plantar fasciitis,” he said. “It was uncomfortable, it was harder for me to run and those kinds of things. Part of that could be being middle aged, but part of it was tucking my feet underneath me all the time.”

“Smoking impacts every single organ in every single system in your body,” said Vallance, who is an associate professor with Athabasca University and works with the University of Calgary. “Sitting, we’re still finding out a lot about what the health consequences are, but we know that the impact of those two behaviours on health are simply not comparable.”

He adds that there are some other differences between the two.

“Smoking is an addiction and there’s some physiological responses that come with that and those include withdraw. We don’t have any of that happening with sitting,” he added.

Davidson switched to a standing desk, which has helped keep his feet flat on the floor.

“There are days when I’m here in this office almost all day,” he said. “It’s not often, but on a day like that, I stand about 80 per cent of the time.”

Standing desks are something officers and staff at the police station use.

“I find that when I am standing up, I find it a little more energizing, where as being seated, the body can get stiff,” said Inspector Joe West. “I find I move around a little bit more with the stand up desk and just over all feel a little bit more productive.”

“Standing is certainly better than sitting and moving is better than standing,” Vallance said.