"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
Fareed speaks with David Agus, author of "The End of Illness" and one of the world's leading oncologists, about health in America. To see all of this or other interviews, download the show at iTunes.
You also point out something really interesting, which is that we all think that the path to being fit is to go to the gym. And you say if you go to the gym for 45 minutes, an hour a day – that actually doesn't make much of a difference if...
Well, listen, if you sit the rest of the day, sitting for five hours is equivalent to smoking a pack or a pack and a quarter of cigarettes. It's an amazing thing that we design buildings based on LEED certifications, right? It's going to help the environment and everything is recycled, etc. But we're not doing anything on health. The more important you are, the closer your parking space is to your desk. The more resources you have, the more bathrooms in your house. You don't have to walk place to place.
Well, 1953, they looked at the British Transit Authority. There were 26,000 workers. Half were the bus drivers and half were the ticket takers that walked up and down those double decker buses. Well, it was more than half the death rate of heart disease in the ticket takers and significantly less cancer. And they weighed the same...
Because they're the ones walking around?
They smoked the same, everything the same, it's just moving. Your body was designed to move. That's how your lymphatics work. Yet we've engineered our society to sit. We need to change that.
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That's the problem of a modern ever changing world,its ever evolving and there's not too much you can do about it but enjoy the ride..People like myself welcome something innovative making something easier,cheaper to buy ,work or select as long as its doesn't offset their ability to live without bounderies something everyone cherishes today even the laziest of us right.And look what I'm posting on,a cell phone and would you have thought of that just ten years ago,I did and didn't think I'd need it but here I am posting so called to you all,what a world we live in right!!
Work at your desk? Just create a standing desk for $22-29.I know CNN fans love making high-end ideas inexpensively. Here is the link for instructions
http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html
Here is mine at work.
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/560207_10200480000632131_103543238_n.jpg
I'm even cheaper. I just stuck a carboard box and a few books to get my laptop to the right height. Standing is the way to go.
Umm...just take away all the chairs?
taking away the chairs will force people to bend over, given the height of most workplace desks, causing back issues in some or most people.
A few people in my office use exercise balls as chairs.
Standing in one spot all day is worse than sitting. You end up with varicose veins and pain in your feet all the time. I know because I had a stand up job before.
That is my big concern too. Standing and moving, while both different than sitting, are not the same.
Varicose veins are genetic. Standing all day would just make that pre-existing condition worse. But to clarify, you can only have varicosity if if it passed on through your family.
We are very concerned about our health. No where in Western World, can we find so many over-weights. This is not only personal issue, but also wrong politics. Sitting in office, waiting for Asian imports, forgetting about our exports, consuming non-healthy food (we do not classify, neither fast- or slow-food, to be healthy or not – we have other classification), is bringing failure to US, and is not where we want America.
We aren't too concerned if we are as big as the reports indicate.
First world problems.
You do realize that this is the legacy we leave for all emerging markets, right?
It is remarkably scary how many people come home from stand/sit in one place jobs to sit down on the couch and not get up for the rest of the night – except to eat dinner, maybe... Go walk around the yard, sort books, work in the garden in small bursts, do laundry, clean the house, play with children or pets – it is all movement. We need to value everyday motion and activity again as ENRICHMENT activities – not considering it 'just more work' that interferes with our TV time at night.. Sitting in front of TV or playing computer is easy – but what does it get you that you can really see? Nothing. It is a time sink instead of an opportunity for production. Also – if you don't get out and move NOW, good chances are five years from now you will be even LESS able to for one reason or another, overweight, heart disease, back injury... and then it is a spiral that is very hard to escape from.
Obamacare and welfare will do things to you
You're an idiot and a dumb self righteous racist fleebag.
Where did you find something racist in that commet? And for the record, it is "fleabag".
If you think the rich work hard, you are naive.
Well, I'm in the 1% jsut about. I spend most of my time doing the things that others won't do for themselves because it is too hard for them: reading, calculating, thinking (hardest of all), and writing.
Both "Crazylibs" and "Blah Blah" are part of the problem of toxic sociocultural/political environment, to go along with our toxic health. (sent from my high horse, while sitting on my couch)
Was your horse high? Are you High? Is the horse on the couch with you? Evidently sitting on your couch with your high horse is not good for mental activity either.
The equivalent of a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. I am sure everyone believes that. Do these people think they can say anything and we are so stupid as to believe it?
We need warning labels on couches, now. Don't let your pregnant wife sit down, either.
Assault weapons in our society are as dangerous as obesity and bad diet habits.
Ignorance must be blissful out there left of center. All rifles combined are a factor in less than 350 deaths per year. (FBI) That includes what you refer to as "assault weapons". That is a left wing made up name for rifles with cosmetic features similar to military assault rifles. (a real term) Using the term assault weapon marks you as a fool, or at least useful idiot, to those who have served in the military.
According to NIH obesity is blamed for 300,000 deaths per year. Assuming 100 percent of the rifle deaths are from sporting rifles, your left wing math doesn't quite add up...
Forgive him, Karl Rove was his math tutor.
Nah, that leftist tool never listened to Rove. His math and thought process is pure left wing Obama/Feinstein...
Death by food! Eat your selves to death! Then you see children like their parents. Evolution is a MFer.
I do need to move around more in my cage that keeps me out of the rain and sun.
I walk about 1.5 hours every day, and walk continuously the whole time. Most of the time, I walk to grocery instead of drive. I live in the Portland metro area where there's lots of people and stores are nearby. I rarely see anyone on the sidewalks. They are all driving. I am sure that many of these people could be walking instead, and I have no idea how they can stand to stay so inactive all day. Sure I like to be a couch potato but if I don't walk every day I feel like garbage. Do most Americans feel like garbage most of the time? Also I really have respect for manual laborers. They're exercising and doing something useful! I really wonder if the most harmful invention in the history of humankind is the automobile.
I sat around from 2005 til 2010 sometimes 9 hours a day playing World of Warcraft. Now my hip hurts and I can barely walk, plus I look like Gollum from Lord of the Rings movies. I'm bald and fat, I can barely breathe, can't walk or jog, and I have carpal tunnel syndrome. I'm only 28. But, I had fun playing that game.
Wow. I call shenanigans. I play online games and had a 2.5 year period where it was many more hours than it should be. I am over-weight, but that would be true regardless. However, I breathe fine, walk fine and could definitely run like he11 if someone was after me, lol.
Then again, I wasn't stuffing cheetos in my mouth while puffing on a bong either. Perhaps you should have ventilated your mom's basement a bit better.
Don't be a drama queen.
I've been a computer gamer for much longer than that, and used to play 14 hours a day on weekends or days off, heck up until age 28. I still game with my personal time, and at 31 I feel great. Thing is, you gotta TRAIN your body for your intensive WoW/gaming sessions. Work yourself up to being able to run three or so miles on the treadmill and spend half an hour lifting weights. Stretch a lot first, especially at the start. You'll find your joints feel better, your carpal tunnel goes away, and that you're better prepared for the physically demanding world of binge gaming.
Bloomberg is planning a law to make it a crime to sit for 5 hours.
If he could get the ignorant people and courts to go along with him that would be another good idea along with his drink maximum sizes.
Interesting "study" with the ticket takers and the drivers... The major difference was sitting vs. standing? How about the stress for the driver from negotiating commuter traffic safely, on schedule, and being responsible for the lives of his passengers? Oh sure, the job stress of the ticket taker must have been close enough to equal to dismiss this variable, right?
Stress has been shown to have major effects on health. It may explain why prayer and spiritual "healing" can be effective for some people by calming and reassuring them, thus reducing stress.
I have little respect for observations by "experts" who blatantly ignore the scientific method of isolating variables.
"Half were the bus drivers and half were the ticket takers that walked up and down those double decker buses. Well, it was more than half the death rate of heart disease in the ticket takers and significantly less cancer. And they weighed the same..."
Well I wonder how stressful driving a bus is versus walking around collecting tickets. They should have compared bus ticket collectors with the people in the movie theater that collect your movie tickets.
All you have to is encourage people to move more. Rewarding people who move more or weigh less, is going to yield anecdotal contrary evidence based on facts, that won't budge when compared to any large population analysis, because everyone knows they too, are the exception. Moving more is nonjudgmental. Recommending ways to move more always leaves a significant portion of listeners out, as they can't or won't move more that way, for whatever reasons. Inclusive means not leading from the pulpit, and not browbeating specific poor examples.
"if you go to the gym for 45 minutes, an hour a day – that actually doesn't make much of a difference if..."
That's the biggest crock of s–t I've ever heard. Exercising for 45 min to an hour per day is more than enough exercise, who writes this garbage? Of course you have to eat healthy too which is almost impossible with today's food industry. 90% of American food is now loaded with high fructose corn syrup and MSG. And Aspartame (and other artificial sweeteners) is nothing less than outright poison that was of course "approved" by the criminal FDA.
Very nic
I just hope that when the economy collapses all these fatties get to really feel the pain of their wastefulness. Kill the fatties first because they will require too much food to sustain and their work output would be subpar compared to a normal person. They will also harbor disease.
Actually, fat people will require less food,they're fat so they have fat to burn for energy. Skinny people on the other will need plenty of food since they don't have as much energy stored as fat.
Wow, I quite smoking in November! It is hard to believe my body hardly noticed the difference because I work a desk job. Great information. Our headquarters has treadmill desks. I'm thinking I need one in my home office now.
Just walk three miles a day, es facil.
Why didn't this guy have the interview while walking or grossly moving?
If you get off your butt it is all too easy to run afoul of the law, no matter what you try to do lately....stay seated.
the best thing that could happen to the world would be total economic collapse. perhaps the lie of adequate oil reserves will precipitate this.
At the end of your life, you die. What you should focus on isn't that you're going to die, or even when you're going to die, but how you want your life to be until you die.
Meanwhile... 85% of Americans looks up the word sedentary....
Since your liberal buddies love to show "mercy" to the criminals, it's not safe for people to be on foot or bike. If you want people to walk, then you take the criminals when you catch them and send 'em to Nevada to bust up rocks or to pick up trash on I-95 for about 25 years (no parole). Or if they shoot somebody, then hang them by the neck until dead. It worked for the Nazi's after Nuremburg convictions, and it will work now. Example: DuPont Circle in Washington D. C. has now been thugerized, where it's about like walking in New Orleans after dark. Oh wait a minute, we'll have to ask Al Sharpton if it's OK to punish criminals.
uh? how about not being afraid to go out of your house? whats going to get you? terrorists? I dont know what all you conservatards are so afraid of. you're always afraid of something, like someones out to get you. i walk the streets of my town without fear. i fly without fear. i go to the bathroom without fear. This country is relatively safe compared to most. Quit sleeping with a gun next to your bed and stop watching FOX news. quite being so paranoid red state retards.
by the way i frequented dupont circle for years and i've never seen this "thuggery" that you speak of. Just because you see black people doesn't mean they're thuggin. Do you mean there's not enough white people to make you safe ya nazi?
This is hilarious. Dupont Circle is a known hom-ose-xual hotspot of DC. And of course we all know that thugs and hom-ose-xuals always like to hang out with each other.
"Well, listen, if you sit the rest of the day, sitting for five hours is equivalent to smoking a pack or a pack and a quarter of cigarettes."-
No way do I believe this!
Well not all of us can be surgeons or work at the McDonald's drive thru. Some of us are truck drivers, accountants, etc... We have no choice but to sit for our jobs!
What proof of this is there really? Is there a study that says that folks in wheelchairs/disabled have higher rates of cancer than those who don't?
I agree we need to move but not so much on concrete or pavement. Our bodies are built for the earth(soft ground). the ground gives like we give. Cement and pavement take a terrible toll on our bodies. I worked in the grocery business until I was 28. I had to quit my job. My calves, feet, legs got to where they ached day and night. I crawled for 3 months back and forth through the house. I can tell a difference when I walk on dirt opposed to concrete. I can walk further, longer and faster with less pain afterward.
that is so true. i feel like its actually wearing out my joints as opposed to walking/running on earth.
What rubbish.
First, the world is filled with rocks, and people manage to live, work and travel over hard rock surfaces on a daily basis without whining about it. Second, if you're in pain with your precious feet swaddled in modern shoes, which provide more padding and support than anything in the past, there's something far more wrong with you than the surface you're squishing your foam-encased feet on, quite possibly psychosomatic.
Their messge would have had more credibility (not that I doubt) if they didn't do the interview sitting....
"We need to change that."
Maybe you could start by not deriding people who actually work out on a daily basis because they're not working out enough. The most common reaction to such condescension is for people to dig in their heels and simply stop exercising at all.
Maybe you should consider publishing your screeds on paper and making people walk to pick them up, instead of pushing your blather out onto the Internet on a regular basis. You're only encouraging people to sit passively in front of a screen by disseminating your opinions this way; you're a huge part of the problem, and you offer no solutions, only criticisms.
Its funny that they are sitting while giving an interview about not sitting
I cant wait until my job is sent overseas so I can collect unemployment for a couple of years just like everyone else without a job does.This working isn't fun when I can get food stamps and spending money instead so go ahead dems/repubs,ship more jobs out of America.
Actually, we were, like most animals, designed to move at slower pace, most of the time, and with rapid pace, for limited periods, a few times a day.
if you look at any animals in the wild, they will be moving slowly about, looking for food, may have brief periods of high activity while attaining food, or fleeing danger, and will spend a good deal of time, resting.
Man's activities, on the other hand, have always been more associated with activities within a group (not unlike ants), with many of the activities involving the production of goods for use, such as clothing, pots, baskets, and other things associated with saving and preserving food for future consumption. While many of those used to be more physical, today, most things have become mechanized to some degree, and it is the mechanization, which has allowed the shift of labor from essentials, to "work" activities, and most of those 'work" activities are now, sitting types of activities.
For instance, we no longer use a hand, or human power mower........we use power mowers, that are mostly self propelled, or riding, and, weed eaters, to maintain our yards. Big time savings, big human energy savings, and much bigger waistlines, as a result.
The best exercise for humans, is manual labor, in accomplishing tasks. That works all muscle groups, increases heart rate, increases circulation, and improves mind-hand coordination. Still, there are lines of diminishing return, as well, as labor that actually can injure the body, is something that needs to be avoided.
In truth, it is the willingness to do physical labor, that is the obstacle to maintaining a healthy weight, and maintaining good physical condition. That willingness, has become so reduced, that it is nearly impossible to get anyone to do anything, much less take a walk.........which is about as little as you can do.