SIO342: New Study on Sedentary Lifestyle and Health

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:12 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 342. I'm Thomas. That's full-time podcaster Dr. Lindsey Osterman.

0:00:21 Thomas: I don't think we're getting into the point where you're making, you like actual living full-time podcast. Here's what I'm saying. If I quit my job to podcast full - time and I make like $15 a month. Am I a full-time podcaster or am I just, I'm just curious.

0:00:38 Lindsey: That's me. I'd say if that's all you're spending your time doing, then yes, you're a full-time podcaster, regardless of whether

0:00:41 Thomas: There you go. Awesome. Welcome full-time podcaster, Lindsey Osterman. If you would like to make that question a little less ambiguous, you can go to patreon.com/seriouspod, support the show, support Lindsey. She's doing amazing. And this is Lindsey's job now. It's really cool. And as such, we're going to get another amazing science thingy today. Well, I actually don't know if it's a good science thing or a bad science thingy. That's kind of the point. So what are we talking about today?

0:00:47 Lindsey: Thank you. Happy to be here.

0:01:08 Lindsey: We are talking about a study that looked at activity profiles, so like patterns of physical activity and how they relate to health. This was another one that you found. Is this another Reddit thing or was

0:01:17 Thomas: This was on, I believe, the Washington Post podcast. And they yeah, they talked about it, but they didn't do a science thing, you know, it was not a science-thingy, trademark Dr. Lindsey Osterman breakdown. And I'm worried about it. Now, a thing that applies to me. But I think it applies to a lot of people because we're a lot of people are working from home now and I've been definitely killing my own personal health ever since I quit my job and now a lot people have joined me in ruining their health by sitting all day and I had thought that the fact that I go really hard on hockey, you three nights a week really intense exercise, you know, I thought okay that should help a bit, but I've always been worried that like the fact that I do, and again, I bet there are people out there who are the same as me, where you're sitting, you're sedentary, except you're getting some hard exercise here and there when you can.

0:01:21 Lindsey: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:02:11 Thomas: And I'm worried that maybe that, I the indication from the coverage of this that maybe that isn't good. Maybe even I'm getting this intense exercise, it's really not counting because just sitting so much of the time. And so I'm here to learn whether or not I'm, you know, going to die prematurely or what.

0:02:24 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, we'll see.

0:02:30 Thomas: We'll see. We'll see. I survived the podcast. We'll see.

0:02:30 Lindsey: No, Yeah, actually, I'm curious to see when we go through the details, if this aligns with your understanding, or if maybe that coverage was a little bit distorted or something. I found this article really, really interesting. There's a lot to get through here. But I did want to issue the early caveat that you're now outside of my area of expertise in terms of the subject matter.

0:02:54 Thomas: OK.

0:02:54 Lindsey: So like a lot of what they're doing in terms of data collection and analysis is very familiar to me. You know, things that I have familiarity with, but I don't know, like I'm not a researcher in this area. So there may be some people who know the area better that would pick up on things that I wouldn't. The reason that I still wanted to do a thing with it, and I didn't necessarily feel the need to bring on a guest to talk about it, is that the results that they're getting are like not super surprising, and they're not out of line with the consensus position in the field. So I feel pretty comfortable saying I thought that was worth that was worth saying

0:03:25 Thomas: Yeah. Definitely, worth saying if were coming out here saying, you know, vaccines don't work and it was a result of you not having the proper, know, you exact specialty. We'd want to know that, you know, the equivalent of that. I mean, like that,

0:03:25 Lindsey: Really. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So the central question in this paper is how different patterns of activity relate to health. And most people have heard the recommendation to get a minimum of 30 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous physical activity at least five times a week in order to improve general health and well-being. I feel like a recommendation that everybody sort of knows, like 150 minutes a week or whatever? The question is, what does that mean? And does the overall context of the activity you engage in around that 30 minutes a day for five times a week matter in terms of health outcomes? So that's the question that they're exploring here. First, we need to define some terms. We spend our waking hours engaging in activities that researchers have sorted into three categories. One of them is sedentary activity.

0:03:56 Thomas: Yeah, I think so.

0:04:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:20 Lindsey: And this, yeah, I mean, most of us, right? Like a lot of jobs require you to be sedentary.

0:04:20 Thomas: That's me. Yeah. Pretty much turning into that sedimentary rock or whatever. I'm going that far. You can find fossils in me, actually. Yeah.

0:04:32 Lindsey: So Like, wow. That's exciting.

0:04:35 Thomas: Little trilobites all over me. Because I, you know, obviously all of my work involves sitting at a computer. Unfortunately, everything I like doing when I'm not working that's not hockey involves sitting at my computer. It sucks. It's I, I wish I enjoyed just walking aimlessly more and

0:04:49 Lindsey: I Yeah, I know. Man. Man, I really do enjoy that, actually.

0:04:57 Thomas: Even though my, my actual job before I quit, it was a desk job, because it's work and you're trying to like avoid work, I would go on long walks all the time, so I've got way more activity because I just be like, I've going to go get a coffee, you know? Again, I know I've said it before, I finished all my work, you fast. And then I'd have all this time and I hate pretending to work. So I just leave it.

0:05:18 Lindsey: Yeah. No, that's a good strategy. No, I'm with you. I feel like the things that I want to be doing are mutually exclusive with not being sedentary to some degree in a way that didn't used to be true. So that is kind of a bummer. Yeah, so to be precise about it, sedentary activity refers to anything that when you are sitting, reclining, or lying quietly. So, yeah, for, well, actually, it's kind of different if you're doing things like talking or eating or like, I looked up some,

0:05:40 Thomas: If I lie down and I just like, blah, blah. Then I'm, then I'm good.

0:05:49 Thomas: Oh, hold on now. Okay. Well, I don't want to interrupt you, but now I'm beginning to get some hope well

0:05:54 Lindsey: Right. Okay. So this is, this way I think that maybe the results are not quite what they appeared to be to you at first. So we'll get into some of these measurement things a little bit more in the methods. But yeah, for now, let's say that like truly sedentary activities, at least in the ways that they were being defined in this article, are like, yeah, sitting quietly or lying or reclining quietly. If you are doing certain things while you are sitting that are a little more active, then that would actually push it up into a different activity category. So that's kind of interesting. I don't know about audio Audio editing, right? That's an empirical question. But yeah. Mean, right.

0:06:28 Thomas: Though maybe I will tell you I like days when I have to record a lot, I, it's exhausting, you know, like there's got to be a certain amount of like using your brain just based on conservation of energy, I'm pretty sure like thinking and talking for hours at a time must use some sort of more energy than not doing that. What about

0:06:48 Lindsey: Kind of not. I mean, no. There was actually a hypothesis for a while of willpower that was called the glucose hypothesis. And the idea was that, yeah, if you're engaging in cognitive effort, that it uses more energy, or glucose, and if you're not, but like, actually, in terms of calories, it's like, it's such a nothing amount, but it doesn't really matter. So. So yeah. But that's different, That's right?

0:07:08 Thomas: Talking though yeah I'm I'm exercising

0:07:09 Lindsey: Actually involving.

0:07:10 Thomas: My jaw. That's what I meant as the part of that whole package.

0:07:12 Lindsey: Yeah. No, That sedentary activity estimate suggests that adults spend half or more of their waking time engaged in sedentary activities. If you sleep eight hours a day, then that means you're awake for 16. And people are sedentory for something like eight of those hours. I looked for a more precise estimate of sedentary time among American adults and recent estimates vary somewhat. So I saw some papers that estimated that to be around 7.5 hours and others around 9.5, but it does seem to cluster around that eight hour mark on average. The second activity category is moderate to vigorous activity or MVPA, which is the one that gets all the attention.

And exactly, Exactly. Yes. The most vigorous form of sitting. Yeah. To vigorous activity gets all of the attention and health recommendations. And so this is what we have all come to regard as the most virtuous way to spend our time, I think. MVPA includes brisk walking. So if you're walking at a rate of at least three to four miles per hour, it would push it into this moderate to vigorous category. Also includes all the things that you would sort of typically think think of as exercise, right? So running, jumping, climbing trees, putting on makeup when you're up there,

0:07:50 Thomas: And that's like live streaming.

0:08:20 Lindsey: Right. Yeah I

0:08:20 Thomas: Climbing trees. I want to know if that's anybody listening, their workout. Yeah, I climb. I do a set of 10 trees, three.

0:08:28 Lindsey: I mean, if we have any eight-year-old listeners, then absolutely, that's somebody out there. Yeah, um,

0:08:33 Thomas: What's your personal max in terms of tree? I go to the, uh, you know, the, the parks and I see how tall a tree I can climb to set a new one rep max on tree.

0:08:43 Lindsey: Um, so this category includes periods of intentional exercise, but it also includes moderate to vigorous activity that's done in the course of life. Right. Really heavy loads up and down stairs. Right. That's that's moderate to vigorous physical activity. Right, Digging holes. That would be MVPA. Beating trees with sticks.

0:08:58 Thomas: Oh my God. That's digging holes is, I actually, joking aside, disagree with the classification of digging holes as the most intense work that there could be. So I'm serious. Is gotta be a high, is this the highest category of, oh, it is the highest.

0:09:09 Lindsey: It's very vigorous. Yeah, I'm serious, too. Yep.

0:09:19 Lindsey: It's a broad category. So some researchers will split these up into two things. They'll have moderate activity and vigorous activity.

0:09:20 Thomas: I, ah, Okay, and Damn it, if they do, hole digging better go in the top. Yeah,

0:09:29 Lindsey: Digging is vigorous for So this category is kind of broad, moderate to vigorous, includes a lot of things. Sex counts in. That would count as moderate to vigorous if you're you're doing it right. I, you know, but the third category of activity is light intensity physical activity, which refers to everything that's between sedentary and moderate to vigorous. Standing, ambling is

0:09:30 Thomas: Okay, Ambling, Do they define ambling? Oh, That's walking below the three to four miles an hour, I guess, right? Oh,

0:09:54 Lindsey: Yeah. Right. You're walking like two miles an hour is how I've seen this defined. Ambling, housework, shopping, uh, right, could be in this category or depending on the day could be moderate to vigorous. I think it depends. Cleaning up dog pee, I would think is probably light intensity physical activity. Mostly.

0:10:11 Thomas: Wow. Just Because the rage calories? Yeah, How much is rage? Yeah, because, well, it's not that hard physically to clean up, but the rage, I would imagine, burns a few cows. Gets My Pulse Going Going.

0:10:21 Lindsey: If there's enough rage, it probably pushes it into moderate to vigorous, Yeah, of the time, yeah, I think that doing the work of having to scrub a carpet to get out dog pee would probably be in the light intensity physical activity category. So this is stuff that like, shouldn't feel super effortful, it should feel pretty easy, but It's not sitting, essentially. So housework, you know, cooking, easy gardening, all things like that would count in this sort of light intensity. Yeah, right. So those are the ways that we carve up our activities in this research area. Again, we hear a lot about how important it is to get at least 150 minutes of moderate to to vigorous physical activity every week, which works out to about 30 minutes a day, five times a week.

But the evidence suggests that what it means to have a healthy level of physical activity is a little more complicated than this, right? It's not just about getting that minimum amount of moderate to vigourous activity physical in. Getting that 150 minutes certainly matters, but it also matters how much of your time is spent sedentary outside that time and how much of spent in light intensity physical activity. So studies actually suggest that increased light intensity.

Physical activity accounts for a lot of the health improvement that you see when people reduce their sedentary time. So just being the number of minutes that you spend each week in moderate to vigorous physical activity is an overly reductive benchmark.

0:10:23 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Cause it's like, all right, I get my workout or whatever that you're doing for your vigorous. I get mine, you know, 90 minute lovemaking session, just whatever you do for your rigorous workout, you three or four or five times. And not to mention the medical care you need after that. I mean, that just sounds like a lot.

0:11:37 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, least 90 minutes minimum. Yeah no kidding. Kidding. Yeah.

0:11:56 Thomas: And then it strikes me as very different whether or not with your remaining time, you are like me sitting as still as possible because everything you like to do is on a screen that is two feet in front of you or constantly, I don't know, cooking and walking around and cleaning up dog's mess and stuff. And so you're saying like, that's something that up until this study maybe hasn't been looked at as much.

0:12:07 Lindsey: Yep. Yeah, exactly. A ton, right? So the way that they talked about this in their introduction suggested that this area is moving more toward looking at these three categories of activity in more complex ways. And so this is one of the studies that is doing that, looking at things in a way that accounts for complex interactions between these three categories of activity rather than looking at them as just independent predictors of health.

So, than just counting up, like, number of minutes spent in sedentary and light intensity and moderate to vigorous activity and looking at how much relates to health independently, these researchers in this study are going to use a statistical approach that allows them to extract unique activity profiles from a group of participants that involve different combinations of these three types of activities.

So essentially what they're going to do is take this data that they have on people's activity patterns, and they use a technique called cluster analysis to create these groupings of people that have similar activity patterns. And then they look at a variety of markers that are associated with health, including like blood lipid profiles and body composition and insulin reactivity, and they see how well the activity profiles predict those indicators of health. Pretty cool, right?

0:13:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:26 Lindsey: Comes from a large population-based cohort study called the Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study. So these are Finnish participants. The cohort study includes over 12,000 people who were, quote, expected to be born in 1966, which I think means that their projected due date was in 1966. But you're going to have a handful of people who are born slightly early, late 1965, and a few born in like early 1967 that were born late, right? The people that they actually analyze are a subset of 3,702 people from this cohort study who completed the relevant measures at the 46-year follow-up. So this included wearing an accelerometer, which is an an accelerometer.

0:14:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:07 Lindsey: It measures activity. 3,700 people that they included in their study agreed to wear the accelerometer and provided valid data for at least seven consecutive days out of 14 days that they were requested to wear it. So it was 59% women, and there was an average age of 46.6 years, which makes sense because this was the 46-year follow-up of the cohort study.

0:14:28 Thomas: So the study was that long, but then, because I was about to ask like, like, what accelerometers were they wearing back in the, you know, 70s or whatever? That was just for after that.

0:14:36 Lindsey: Yeah, they didn't use the accelerometers at every point, right? This happened to be something that they did at the 46-year follow-up. Yeah, this was like a longitudinal study where they took one cohort of people and followed them for a very long time.

0:14:51 Lindsey: In a cohabitative relationship, and 88% of the sample were employed. So that gives you sort of a sense. I looked up a couple of these numbers, and they seem fairly close to the national averages for Finland. So it seems was indeed sort of a representative sample. Compared the participants who were actually in their analysis to those who were excluded to make sure that there wasn't like a volunteer bias among The people Who were willing to do the accelerometer stuff and everything. Those comparisons indicated that the included and excluded participants were comparable in terms of a bunch of different measures, including cardiorespiratory fitness, alcohol intake, gender, employment rate, marital status, smoking rate, education, sleep duration.

In other words, there was no evidence that there was a volunteer bias in their sample, at least among those dimensions. So that's good. Let's talk about their measures a little bit. At this particular data collection point, they collected a variety of measures, including direct measures of physical activity, which they got with those accelerometers, right? Capture capture objective information about movement rather than relying on people's self -reports about how much time they're spending sedentary versus moving around. And you can imagine why that's important,

0:15:11 Thomas: Hmm. Right. All right. Yeah.

0:16:00 Lindsey: Right? Actually, curious. If I was asking you to self-report, do you think you would be over or underestimating how much time you spend sedentarily?

0:16:08 Thomas: Would probably overestimate because feel like I'm just sitting all the time. And yet, really, I do a lot of, like, I don't know, random yard work, crap, chores, bullshit. But you never, like. Track how much time that is. So, I, I don't know. Yeah.

0:16:21 Lindsey: Yeah. I kind of had the same sense when I was thinking about this. Maybe it's something we can come back to. But I feel like I don't have great self-insight into how much time I am sitting versus doing other things. So when you see the accelerometer data used, there really is, I think, a pretty big advantage of these over self -reports. So So their participants wore accelerometers during their waking hours for 14 consecutive days, or they were asked to do that. Not everybody had complete data. Accelerometer recordings were parsed into six -second intervals, which were were then classified into the three activity categories based on their metabolic equivalents, or METs. So one MET is the amount of energy expended while sitting at rest. So sedentary activity was operationalized here as time spent in activity that had less than 1.5 METs. Or in other words, activities that require no more than 50% more energy expenditure than just sitting at rest. Know how reliable these sources are, but they seem to be internally consistent when I look across multiple sources. But

0:16:40 Thomas: I- Bet. Oh.

0:17:26 Thomas: Okay.

0:17:26 Lindsey: I found a few lists of activities with the estimated METs associated with them to try to get a sense of the activities that are going to be in each of these categories. So according to what I found, which I'll link, sedentary activities, again, it's mostly just like sitting, but even things that I probably would have intuitively thought were sedentary are either borderline or some of them get pushed into the light intensity category. So and fidgeting, for instance, is like around 1.5. So that would be borderline.

0:17:30 Thomas: Probably.

0:17:55 Thomas: Depends on the breadth of your fidget. The- The- The radius of your figure. I don't know, it depends on what, you know, how you fidget. Hmm.

0:17:57 Lindsey: Probably does. Yeah, I don't know. One source said that sitting and playing piano is two METs. So, that would be light intensity. I don't know, like, how vigorously you have to play the piano in order for that to be the case, but

0:18:08 Thomas: Yeah. Do you have to be like the Phantom of the Opera doing the dramatic, like, when he's the emo, like, tragic playing the piano, or just like, I'm just kind of doing some scales. Scales. I know, it probably depends. Yeah.

0:18:17 Lindsey: Maybe. Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. Well, I took piano for two years when I was a kid, and my piano teacher was always telling me to be more dramatic with my arms when I did it, so maybe if you're doing it properly it's, it's actually light intensity. I don't know, um, sitting and eating, sitting and playing chess, right, both of those are sort of borderline around 1.5 METs.

0:18:34 Thomas: Oh. I- Don't really move when I'm playing chess, but it is that mental energy that I feel like should count, but doesn't apparently. You

0:18:46 Lindsey: Don't know, I do a lot of demonstrative gestures when I'm playing chess about how angry I am, so, uh, I this one tracked for me like chess is

0:18:55 Thomas: Play play angry Shouldn't be like too angry when you're playing, or you're probably doing it badly, like if you're that mad. Oh, okay, well

0:18:56 Lindsey: Oh boy. Uh, am doing it badly Yeah. And I care about it deeply, so it's, it's one of the

0:19:05 Thomas: Then you, maybe you're burning more calories, that's good

0:19:08 Lindsey: Probably true, yeah. If you, if you count all my chess time, like, I, I definitely am like one of of the most active people I know. Yeah. Chess is sad. It's like one of the few things that like I'm really not very good at, but I really love. So it's, yeah, it's painful. Anyway. Sedentary activity, anything below 1.5. And it sort of gives you a sense that there's a lot of things that you could do while sitting that at least by their standards here probably would not be counted as sedentary, which I think is interesting.

0:19:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:33 Thomas: Better start fidgeting more and

0:19:35 Lindsey: Yeah, or I, I wonder, like, what you can pick up with sort of the commercial accelerometers, and like if we could get a sense of what of our activities would fall into these different categories. I don't know. I'd

0:19:45 Thomas: And the accelerometer, so it's measuring actual movement, right? It's not like the heart rate based one, okay Gotcha. Was gonna say, my resting heart rate is like zero. I'm biologically very good at doing nothing. I'm, I have an extreme advantage if doing nothing or moving very little were an Olympic sport, port, I would probably represent our country, our fine, fine country.

0:19:49 Lindsey: Yeah right. And

0:20:08 Thomas: And furthermore, I've noticed the genetic tendencies. Arlo has this too. Phoebe's a little more, she's a Little More Fidgety. Arlo is just, oh man, he, that guy can lounge. That guy, natural lounger. Before he even knew what he was doing, he was lounging.

0:20:07 Lindsey: You should be proud of that.

0:20:22 Lindsey: A talent. It really is. Light intensity physical activity was defined here as anything with METs between 1.5 and 3.0. And so the list I found suggests that these would be activities like strolling, again, leisurely, croquet.

0:20:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:39 Thomas: Canoeing leashes.

0:20:42 Lindsey: Yeah, that's how they described it.

0:20:44 Thomas: Oh, croquet is a good one. I could play play myself at croquet all day. I like that.

0:20:44 Lindsey: Yeah. Croquet. While standing, of course. Golf with a cart, be housework, and slow ballroom dancing. All of those would be light intensity physical activities.

0:20:51 Thomas: Nice. I'm just imagining the workout I'm building based on all this. All right. I got a ballroom dance, play some croquet with myself, canoe, but not too hard. Just like canoeing in my canal that I have at my house, you know.

0:21:00 Lindsey: Yeah. A little don't We all, so, uh, that's light intensity physical activity. Moderate physical activity was anything with METs exceeding 3.0. So this includes all the usual suspects, anything that you would consider actual exercise is above that three, as well as a number of things that you might not guess would be counted in this category. So brisk walking, anything greater than like to four miles per hour, or something like that, MET associated with it that would be above threshold, right? So four mile per hour, or 15 minutes per mile, has right, a average MET of 5.0. So that would be firmly in this category. In one of the lists I found, archery and leisurely biking, yeah, both have METs of 3.5. So those would both count in this Category 2. Yeah.

0:21:48 Thomas: Archery. What? I feel like archery is another thing that's not very active. I mean, you got to hold the bowstring, I suppose. Bows

0:21:59 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a little strenuous to do that. It's not super easy to pull that bow back. It's not, it is definitely not what I think of when I hear that recommendation of getting at least 30 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous physical activity, right? So that's kind of why I wanted to point this out, right, in their study, they don't distinguish between moderate and vigorous, right. Moderate is three to six METs, vigorous is six plus. And, you know, some other studies do make that distinction. So it's, you hard for me to tell as an outsider.

0:22:02 Thomas: Yeah yeah so you're saying You need like a 4.5 level or something? Is that what you're saying? Hmm.

0:22:31 Lindsey: Just, I'm think it's worth keeping in mind when we talk about the results that when they say that their participants got X number of minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity, they don't mean exercise necessarily. Like it's a much broader category than that. It includes some things that I think a lot of us would not consider really, all that in so um I don't necessarily know that this is a problem, you know, the recommendation does refer to moderate to vigorous physical activity, so I don't know it's a problem.

0:22:42 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:22:57 Lindsey: But like somebody who's a expert in this area might be able to see something about this operationalization that I wouldn't, so I thought it was worth pointing out.

0:23:05 Thomas: I'm just excited to set up my um archery course where you you do a little light rowing, you're flowing along in your canal and your canoe, and then there's some targets on the side, pull out your bow, shoot a few targets, that sounds really fun actually, I would for real do that if I had a castle. I don't know what you would need to do on that.

0:23:08 Lindsey: Art, oh, oh. It does actually sound very fun Certainly one of our listeners has a castle. I should, yeah, absolutely.

0:23:24 Thomas: Does anyone have a castle? Let us know. Live Live show at your castle, by the way, if you do.

0:23:29 Lindsey: Yeah. They performed, again, something called a cluster analysis with these data to differentiate four distinct activity profiles based on how much time people spent in each of these different categories of activity, and we'll talk about those profiles in detail in just a second. Terms of other measures, they had several measures of health, which were their outcome variables. They used the activity profiles to predict these specific indicators of health. They took a number of body measurements that are commonly used as health indicators, including height and weight, which were used to calculate BMI, which is a garbage measure, by the way.

0:23:58 Thomas: Have we talked about this on here? I don'T know if we have, but BMI is a joke. It just My whole life, I have come up on the BMI thing as morbidly obese.

0:24:00 Lindsey: I don't think so. Yeah, it is. Nope.

0:24:09 Thomas: You've seen me, I'm not that. I think it's because I have a very large upper body or it's all it is, is height and weight. So like, if you have a lot of healthy weight, like, I don't know, bones or muscle or something that doesn't contribute to your height, then that's just doesn't help. You know, like it just, it's just going to ruin your measure. Right.

0:24:15 Lindsey: That's right. So if you... Yeah. No, it, it's absolutely a garbage measure. It, is a consensus position, and yet they keep, they it in these studies. I don't know. It's very weird, but

0:24:30 Thomas: Are we still doing it? It's the worst too, because whenever I've done any fitness thing or a gadget or a program, you know, it always starts off with that to like set up your goals and it'll be for me. It'll be like, oh, you're going to die soon. Write a will. Your fitness goals. Decide who you're gonna leave your estate to as your fitness goal. Because my upper body, I guess, is a little broad. I don't know.

0:24:47 Lindsey: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It'S, it'S ridiculous. Yeah, no, anybody, anybody who has like above average muscle mass is going to register as like having a high BMI and yeah, there's no way to distinguish it's yeah, So yep. That's cool. Include that because every study that looks at this kind of stuff includes BMI. And that's dumb, but they they have a bunch of other measures as well. So another thing that they look at is waist circumference. And my understanding, which again, as an interested but non -expert outsider to this field, is that waist circumference is actually a stronger correlate of health than BMI.

0:25:04 Thomas: So weird.

0:25:26 Thomas: Makes sense.

0:25:27 Lindsey: It's actually, I think, even better than total percentage body fat because it's influenced by the storage of visceral fat in particular. So abdominal fat that's sort of like around your organs, which is more associated with certain health risks than just like total body fat, for instance. So that pattern of weight gain seems to be somewhat unique in terms of how it predicts things. At least that's my understanding. Also measured body composition via bioelectrical impedance analysis. And they're measuring like percentage body fat essentially, or like lean tissue versus fat tissue. You. And the way that they do that is by passing an electrical signal through your body.

0:25:41 Thomas: Yeah,

0:26:01 Lindsey: There's like a handheld version of this device that you grip with both hands and the signal is sent for, you know, from one hand to the other. Also one that's like a scale, it's integrated into a scale. And so they send the impulse through the bottom of your feet, right?

0:26:01 Thomas: I think I have that. Still says I'm just morbidly obese. I Don't know, nothing works.

0:26:13 Lindsey: Oh, do you? No.

0:26:16 Thomas: I promise I'm not. I'm not. I don't know why everything says I am. It's weird.

0:26:24 Lindsey: Particular way of measuring body composition. It's better than some methods of doing it. There actually is some error around it.

0:26:32 Thomas: Yeah. Also, who knows if the scale I have is actually any good at it. It could just be crap.

0:26:35 Lindsey: That's, yeah, actually, that's true. Like some of the commercial ones are not going to be able to do the same thing. Reason But it works is that the rate at which the signal can travel through lean tissue is like faster than through fat, right? Because fat's an insulator. Yeah, so my understanding is that these are pretty, accurate. There's not like a huge error But they're also heavily affected by things like whether you've eaten recently and how hydrated you are. That also affects the signal speed.

0:26:43 Thomas: Yeah, makes sense. Yeah oh, I drink a ton of water. Is that gonna mess me up or will it help me?

0:27:01 Lindsey: I don't remember if that's going to speed up or slow down transmission, but it feels like it might speed it up.

0:27:06 Thomas: Yeah, well, yeah, because water is a good conductor, So, hmm, okay, but then that would mean it would say I was right now, Ah, whatever.

0:27:06 Lindsey: Um, Yeah, yeah, I Know, yeah. Yeah.

0:27:15 Thomas: Anyway, I'm very hydrated all the time. Just constantly.

0:27:18 Lindsey: Um, so they used that to measure body composition. Um, also took blood samples after participants had fasted overnight for 12 hours and abstained like drinking coffee and stuff, um, sounds awful. From these blood samples, they got measures of blood glucose levels, which is an indicator of health because if you're fasting, glucose is higher, right? That's an indicator of diabetes or pre-diabetic. They also measured serum insulin. Elevated levels of insulin in a fasted state can indicate insulin resistance, which is associated with various forms of disease, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Low fasting insulin is associated with type 1 diabetes. And also assessed like lipid profile. So total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglyceride levels, the combination of high LDL relative to HDL and high triglycerides has been associated with cardiovascular disease.

0:27:26 Thomas: You I want to take a moment to recognize the people who went through this study. It sounds like they had to do a lot of crap. There's like electrical charges going through their bodies. They got accelerometers.

0:28:13 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, it's intense, right? Did some intense data measurement. I don't think that this was typical at like every checkpoint in the study, but yeah, for whatever reason they did this at this follow-up.

0:28:24 Thomas: Right, yeah. And it makes me think like if they did all these other things, just get rid of the BMI part. It's nothing. It's worthless.

0:28:31 Lindsey: Right? Yeah. It's dumb. Yeah. So finally they controlled for a number of covariates in their analysis to ensure that the associations between the activity profiles and these health indicators weren't produced by things that are very likely to be confounds in that relationship. So for instance, it's possible that existing health problems, like if you have heart condition or something, or lifestyle factors like smoking, could cause changes in both activity levels and the health indicators that they measured. So they controlled for a lot of these possible confounds to see, like, you does the activity pattern account for something beyond those? Can never control for all possible confound. That's why experiments are so important. But they did include some really important ones here, including sex, birth weight, which is a risk factor for for certain health problems in adulthood um Yeah.

0:28:31 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Really? Really? Lasts all the way until if

0:29:16 Lindsey: It's not causally. It's because it tends to be associated with other things. If you, if you have low birth weight, for instance, high birth weight I think too, but I think most of the health risks that I know about, at least, are associated with low birth weight. Yeah, yeah. So sex, birth weight, uh, heart rate during a four minute single step test, which was assessed as a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness. So I had to look up what this is. I assumed that this was like having people walk on a treadmill or something. But they have people step on and off of a platform at a controlled rate for four minutes.

0:29:24 Thomas: Oh, interesting.

0:29:42 Thomas: Hmm. Okay.

0:29:44 Lindsey: And then don't specify how quickly participants were asked to do this in this paper, but they described it as submaximal, suggesting that it was not an and especially strenuous rate, right? Also collected self -reports of average sleep duration, that's an important one, education level, employment status, marital status, household income, and a variety of lifestyle factors, including smoking, alcohol use, health -related quality of life, diagnosis of hypertension, heart problems, and diabetes, and use of medication for hypertension, high cholesterol, and Diabetes. And they controlled for all these in their analyses. Those are important control things, I'll get into the results. So let's start with the activity profiles that emerge from their cluster analysis. Data suggested four distinct activity profiles among their participants, which they labeled according to the most distinguishing features of each profile. And they named the profiles active couch potatoes.

0:29:51 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Right. Yeah,

0:30:38 Lindsey: You guess? Well, that- that is? Uh,

0:30:40 Thomas: That's me. Someone who sits all the time but is active occasionally.

0:30:43 Lindsey: -huh, that's what I would have thought. That's not actually what that is. Yeah, um, It's It's Yeah, it is a literal potato, worth health outcomes of all the things, just actual potatoes. Yeah, um, Yes, I'll We'll See? Yeah, They

0:30:46 Thomas: Who's actually a potato. Okay. Or best. I don't know. They don't have diabetes. We didn't detect any, you know, hypertension.

0:31:02 Lindsey: Have incredibly high fasting glucose, though, wouldn't they? Uh, because it's just, I, um, So four categories: active couch potatoes, sedentary light movers, sedentary exercisers, and movers. Those are their four clusters.

0:31:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:16 Thomas: Movers and shakers.

0:31:18 Lindsey: Yeah. All

0:31:19 Thomas: Social climbers. There's some other category. We'll get. Yeah.

0:31:20 Lindsey: Yeah, So who are these Active Couch Potatoes? I think that the term active couch potato is unclear as a label, because their use of active in this phrase is actually similar to the use of willful and willfully ignorant. So,

0:31:33 Thomas: Oh, so someone who's really potating just

0:31:36 Lindsey: Yes, Aggressively Potatoing. Yeah, it's like Engaging in sedentary activity like it's their job, which maybe it is, by the way, in Fairness, yeah,

0:31:37 Thomas: Totally. Oh, man. OK. Maybe don't use that adjective in your thing about activity. That's kind of a little weird.

0:31:48 Lindsey: Know, Right, It's A little weird. Yeah,

0:31:51 Thomas: Is it a translation issue? Is it to finish? Finnish, you know, yeah, intentional couch, but yeah, whatever. Like you said, willful.

0:31:52 Lindsey: I No Idea. Yeah, Are probably better descriptors. I'm having trouble coming up with one on the spot, but couch potatoes that Might be good. Extra Or Just couch potatoes, I Would, that would do it. Yeah,

0:32:05 Thomas: Yeah. I don't know if it matters whether or not they're intending to. Are you worried that we're going to count somebody who's like tied to a couch or something?

0:32:10 Lindsey: I Don't know. Yeah, pass. Yeah, so Active Couch Potatoes exhibited, uh, the most sedentary activity of any group, and the lowest amounts of light intensity physical activity and moderate to vigorous physical activity. So folks in this cluster had an average of more than 600 minutes, or 10 hours, of sedentary activity each day. And from looking at their graph, it looked like the actual average within the group was probably something like close to 12 hours of sedentary time per day. So lots of sedentory time here. Terms of light intensity physical activity, again, had like relatively low amounts here. So less than 220 minutes, or three hours approximately, of light density physical activity each day. Of moderate to physical activity each day, this group had around 35 min of moderate -to -vigorous physical activity measured each day, right? This is low relative to the other people in the sample, but note that that does actually exceed the minimum recommendation of 30 minutes per day for at least five days per week, right.

0:33:14 Thomas: This was the lowest group?

0:33:14 Lindsey: Yeah. This is the, yeah, this is the worse off group. Yeah.

0:33:18 Thomas: That's interesting. Is it just that Finnish people are better than us, or is this not a good goal? Maybe fitness goal. So,

0:33:19 Lindsey: Yeah, well, think it probably has to do with the thing we were talking about earlier, in terms of them not parsing out moderate from vigorous, right? There's a lot of things they could do that would count as moderate activity here that, that don't look like exercise at all. Right. Again, like the guideline is about moderate to vigorous physical activity, so that's not the author's fault, like that is our couch potatoes, that is what they look like in terms of their activity profile. And then we have got sedentary light movers, so these folks have an intermediate amount of sedentary time and relatively high levels of light intensity physical activity, um, are somewhere between 8 and 10 hours of sedentary activity each day on average. Graph suggests a little less than 600 minutes of sedentary activity per day. So that's a little less than 10 hours. Folks also have about 300 minutes or five hours per day of light intensity physical activity, which, right, is relatively high in the sample. They have around the same amount of moderate to vigorous visit physical activity per day as the couch potatoes do. So about 35 minutes on average. No

0:34:23 Lindsey: Difference.

0:34:23 Thomas: Could be that these people are just fidgeters, maybe?

0:34:26 Lindsey: It Could be, right? Or, you know, like people that are sort of like up and moving around and doing housework and chasing kids and clean up dog pee and shit like that, right? Moving around a lot, but they're not really engaging in a lot of exercise. They look similar to the couch potatoes in terms of the amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity. Third cluster is sedentary exercisers. So, look similar to sedentary light movers in terms of sedentary time. They are also in that eight to 10 hour range of sedentary activity. They differ in terms of their patterns of light intensity versus to vigorous physical activity, so have relatively high moderate to fiscal activity. Their, their average exceeds an hour per day. Graph suggests that this cluster gets around 75 minutes of moderate to physical activity per day on weekdays, and that actually bumps up to about, about 90 minutes per day on weekends.

0:34:26 Thomas: Wow.

0:35:16 Thomas: So,

0:35:16 Lindsey: They're getting a lot of that moderate to vigorous category of right? And they're getting not that much of the intensity physical activity. So their average is about 250 minutes, right, that's a little more than four hours, which is, you an hour less than sedentary light movers we're getting, right? That's our sedentary exercisers. And then the fourth category is movers. So these folks have sedentary the time of all the clusters and the highest proportion of time spent in light intensity and moderate to physical activity. These folks spend less than 540 minutes a day in sedentary activity, activity. So that's less than nine hours. Graph suggests that their actual average in terms of how much time is spent in sedentary activity is, is less than 450 minutes, like a little bit under that. That's really, you like seven and a half hours of sedentery activity. They get on average about 400 minutes or 6 .7 hours of light intensity physical activity. They get around 60 minutes on average of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day, right?

0:36:19 Thomas: These are people who work on their feet, maybe? Yeah.

0:36:21 Lindsey: Probably, right, does sound to me like, given much space they have for this stuff, it sounds like, yes, they might have jobs that require a lot of physical activity, they're moving a lot relative to the other people in the sample. Of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity they're getting is like something like twice the recommended amount, um, their light intensity is up very high and their sedentary over overall is quite low, right. That's our, our four categories, um. To, before you heard that summary, like, changes in terms of where you think you might fall in these four categories.

0:36:49 Thomas: Well, Yeah. Now It sounds like, I, there wouldn't, well I know I would definitely fall somewhere, but it sounds there wouldn't be any difference between me, well, intense workouts three times a week versus if I was doing doing somewhat vigorous workouts three times a week. It sounds like it would count about the same. Am I missing that? Or is that right?

0:37:07 Lindsey: In Yeah, in terms of the way they're measuring it, that would be about the same. Yeah.

0:37:10 Thomas: Yeah. Which I don't know if that matters, but it does sound like, maybe, I won't be able to get as much from these results as I would hope. Mean, if we don't have the difference between those two things represented

0:37:20 Lindsey: No, I, I would have liked to see a little more granularity on that as well, um, like I think that you were assuming that you were an active couch potato. I kind of doubt that that is correct, right?

0:37:29 Thomas: No, no, yeah, once you explain that terminology, yeah, I'm not that.

0:37:32 Lindsey: So, like what do you, where do you think you are? Yeah.

0:37:32 Thomas: Uh, I don't know, I guess, well, if you average it out by day, because it was in terms of days, right, not weeks, when they give those like number of hours that they were doing, so mean I still think I'm barely the second one. I don't think I'm even cracking the third group. Yeah.

0:37:41 Lindsey: Uh, What, the sedentary exercisers? Oh.

0:37:47 Thomas: Just the next one up from the worst. I don't know.

0:37:50 Lindsey: Sedentary light movers.

0:37:53 Thomas: I don't, I don't know. Cause it, cause the amount, the thing is I don't exercise like every day. So I don't know how it averages out, you know?

0:37:54 Lindsey: So, Well, is I think that if you, if you total up the number of minutes per week, and then give that to me as a seven-day average, like, I think that that's appropriate. Okay.

0:38:03 Thomas: I say, yeah, I don't know, three, four hours a week probably.

0:38:12 Lindsey: I guess that would be light mover, right, sedentary light mover. Yeah.

0:38:13 Thomas: Yeah. That's kind of what I was thinking. The second group.

0:38:16 Lindsey: Is, I, I think where I would place myself too, it's, if I'm in a different category, it is probably mover, just because I do tend to get up a lot I'm, and doing sedentary things. But I, it, think is more probable to me that I am that in sedentary light mover category.

0:38:28 Thomas: Okay. And not to get, spend too much time on my particular weird habits, but I just want to note that like my, my three, four hours a week of exercise is the most intense and like interval training that you could even do. Like it's, and so if I were just doing some like decent exercise during that time, I would be coded the same, right? That was kind of what I was thinking.

0:38:38 Lindsey: Yeah. Yes.

0:38:49 Thomas: Okay. So maybe there's a difference there, but maybe there'S not, we can't really tell from this study.

0:38:49 Lindsey: Yeah. That's right. Yeah. That's right, yeah. And I, I think, would look more similar in terms of their measures than we actually are in terms of how we do this. Like I everywhere now, right? So that means that probably I'm getting like 40 to 60 minutes of walking in, which would count as moderate to vigorous according to how they're categorizing things. But that does feel different to me than going super hard and playing hockey a few times a week.

0:38:59 Thomas: Nice. Exactly. Yeah.

0:39:18 Lindsey: So like I do think that like a version of the study that distinguished between moderate and vigorous could be interesting here, but I

0:39:26 Thomas: At least it's shielded me from knowing for certain that I'm getting bad news. I have some, some, uh, reasonable doubt involved in whatever you might say the results are here.

0:39:30 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah, yes, this brings us to the real question here. How do these activity profiles relate to health? Might surprise you. I don't know. We' ll see. Of course, linear regression, because this is, yeah, obviously, they're cool.

0:39:45 Thomas: Duh. Yeah, obviously. Come on. Would

0:39:47 Lindsey: So obviously, yeah. So they did linear regression models. They used these to evaluate how well belonging to a particular activity cluster predicted health indicator, that the they measured. Couch potatoes were selected as the reference group for the regression analyses, meaning that when if I say that light mover is associated with a better score on some health indicator. What I mean is that they're better compared to the active couch potatoes because they're the reference group. I think that's important. They did not do comparisons between like light, light mobers and sedentary exercisers, for

0:39:48 Thomas: We even waste our time with it if they didn't?

0:40:12 Thomas: Right.

0:40:21 Lindsey: Instance.

0:40:21 Thomas: You can't like it from their relative score to the the bottom one is now it works statistically for some reason. Oh, okay. Oh,

0:40:25 Lindsey: Well, not Yeah. Like have tables So you can look at like, how the numbers differ, like, the scores that they got between the other categories, but they don't do any significance testing between them. So yeah, so the only thing we know about significant differences for is between the couch potatoes and the and each of the other three groups. Those are the only comparisons they do. Yeah. Conducted their analyses in a stepwise fashion, meaning that they ran regression models that only included the activity profile as a predictor of the health outcomes first, then they added in all of their covariates afterward to see if activity profile retained a unique relationship with the health outcome after those potential confounds were accounted for. So that gives them information about both like whether there's a predictive relationship there at all and then whether it's unique after you account for all the covariates, um,

0:40:36 Thomas: Okay. Interesting. Okay.

0:41:11 Thomas: I is that normal good science thingy stuff, or gotcha. Okay.

0:41:14 Lindsey: For sure, um, want to see like is there a significant association and if there is, is there still a significant association after you control for pre-existing health factors and stuff or is that, yeah, yeah, they did some additional to help rule out pre-existing health conditions as the explanation for associations between activity profiles and health. In particular, this analysis, these regression analyses on the entire sample, but then they also repeated the analyses just among participants who criteria. So they repeated the analyses among participants qui were getting enough sleep, seven to nine hours per night, who didn't have have hypertension, who didn't have heart disease, and who didn't have diabetes to see if the association still held, right?

0:41:15 Thomas: Yeah makes sense. Um, like trying to kind of make sure something else isn't accounting for these effects, or okay.

0:41:59 Lindsey: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. To see if you can get same effects in healthy subsample of your total participants. Okay, what do they find? The unadjusted models, which means the models that did did not include any of the covariates. It's just a straight up comparison to see if the profiles predict health. The unadjusted models, active couch potatoes had the worst health indicators compared to all of the other profiles. The health indicators were consistently worse for this group. The size of the difference kind of varied. So it was between like 1 .4 % and 33 % worse. They were consistently worst. And virtually all ofthe comparisons were significant. Significant, light movers, sedentary exercisers, and movers—all three of those groups are better than couch potatoes on all of the health indicators that they measured. They're all significant.

0:42:00 Thomas: Okay okay yeah Yeah. Sure. Seems like sitting around all day is not good.

0:42:50 Lindsey: Yeah, not the best. Not the best." Only exception to this was was one measure, right, two-hour glucose, which means they measure your glucose cost two hours after you drink a sweetened beverage, right, the difference between sedentary light movers and couch potatoes was not significantly different regarding that one measure. Everything else was significantly different, and so, like, to me, I'm like, okay, well, that's probably a type two error, like, Yeah, yeah, so again, those are the unadjusted models, right, but it's definitely showing a very consistent health difference on these indicators between couch potatoes and everybody else. The adjusted models, which included all covariates, suggested broadly that all three profiles do look better than the active couch potatoes on a lot of indicators, but there was some attenuation of relationships.

So the relationship between activity profile and health indicators weakened in some cases or dropped to non-significance in some cases, but the general pattern of couch potatoes being worse off held, right? It was just that some things got a little bit weaker. So compared to active couch potatoes, light movers had lower two-hour insulin, lower fasting serum insulin levels, lower triglycerides, lower adiposity, which means lower body fat percentage.

There were no differences after adjusting for covariates between sedentary light movers and couch potatoes regarding cholesterol ratios, fasting glucose, the two-hour glucose test. Particular relationships dropped to non-significance. To active couch potatoes, sedentary exercisers had lower levels of two-hour insulin, lower fasting serum insulin, low triglycerides, better total to HDL cholesterol ratio, better LDL to HDL cholesterol ratio, lower body fat, fat mass, visceral fat, and waist circumference, lower two-hour glucose, lower BMI.

Only things that there was no difference between sedentary exercisers and couch potatoes on was glucose. That was the only thing that was not a significant difference after adjusting for covariates. So in other words, it's still essentially significantly different on almost everything, everything except that one indicator.

0:43:11 Thomas: Yeah. A type two error.

0:44:51 Thomas: Right.

0:44:51 Lindsey: Movers, the results look extremely similar. Are significantly different from couch potatoes on virtually all indicators, just like the sedentary exercisers. The only things where there's no significant difference after adjusting for covariates are for two-hour fasting glucose and BMI.

0:45:08 Thomas: Again, like you said, we don't know the difference between this group and the other group because they're just compared to the couch potatoes. That's kind of weird.

0:45:14 Lindsey: Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I mean, I weird to just choose one reference group. I mean, your makes number sense that they want to see like how of these groups has an advantage over the least healthy group as their central analysis. But I would have liked to see that. From And looking at the numbers though, like if I just look at the raw numbers, I can't tell significance from that. But the movers and the sedentary exercisers actually do look comparable on most of the dimensions that I saw.

Like sometimes it looks like movers look a little bit better than the sedentary exercisers and sometimes vice versa, but they both look sort of comparable if you average across those things in terms of how they stack up against couch potatoes, is kind of interesting. Found similar results when they repeated the analysis with only the healthy subgroup of participants. So these are the folks that got good sleep and didn't have hypertension or heart disease or diabetes.

Again, they did that in order to determine whether these relationships are because of pre -existing health conditions or not. They found that, no, you got the same results. So this suggests that indeed, right, the activity probably is predicting better health outcomes. It's not just about that potential reverse causality. You

0:45:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:21 Lindsey: Can't say that for sure without experimental or, you know, perspective data, but this was a good analysis to with that interpretation. Summarize, with the worst outcomes worst health markers were potatoes, right? The people who got the lowest amounts of light intensity and moderate to physical activity had most sedentary time. The two profiles, you know, in terms of the values that seem to compare most favorably to couch potatoes were the movers and the sedentary exercisers, right? Sedentary light movers are still better off than the couch potatoes, but the effects are just seem to be much smaller. And a third of them drop to non -significance after you adjust it for covariates. And that wasn't the case with these other two groups, the sedentary exercisers and the movers. It's pretty interesting, I you feel better? Do you think you're going to die?

0:46:21 Thomas: Uh huh. I I mean, it's so hard to know what the hell any of that really means. Why don't you bottom line it for us non -science people? All sounds like we're better off than couch potatoes. And I say we, I kind of feel like a couch potato, but maybe I'm not. Hopefully I'm Not. I don't know.

0:47:23 Lindsey: I Think the bottom line is that, yeah, the spending a lot of time in sedentary activity is a problem. We already knew that, right? Takeaways that the authors focus on here are that active couch potatoes are the worst off, even though they meeting the minimum recommended moderate to physical activity on average. And yet they still have the worst health profiles. And the authors attribute this to the fact that they have the highest sedentary time.

0:47:40 Thomas: Okay. Okay.

0:47:48 Lindsey: Other three activity profiles are, look different in terms of, you know, know, how much time are they spending in light intensity versus moderate to vigorous physical activity. All of them enjoyed better relative health profiles when you compared them to the couch potatoes. It's worth noting that all of the profiles, all four of the profiles, exceeded the recommended eight -hour maximum of sedentary activity per day on average.

0:48:10 Thomas: Exceeded the. Oh, okay. Really? So, does that mean? Is nobody not doing that essentially? Or in, in Finland?

0:48:12 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody is sedentary. That's what that says to me. Well, I would be super surprised if the U.S. is better about that. The percentage is of people that get in less than 80 hours of Sunday. I bet It's low. Oh, sure

0:48:25 Thomas: Oh yeah. True. Be worse. I will. Say, I do think weather influences this, you know, and so I can imagine in warmer areas it's easier to get outside, walk around. I, I could imagine regional differences, but right

0:48:35 Lindsey: No That's a really good point, because Finland pretty far north, right? Don't they don't think they've got crazy, uh, length changes, right? So wonder what the time of year thing looked like for when they were doing this stuff. It's interesting, but everybody's sitting too much, and

0:48:47 Thomas: Yeah, yeah interesting but everybody is sitting too much. I we invent a shock collar that just, when, when I sit for that long, it just, just eventually, it's like, your time's up. Sorry. And it just starts going to town on me.

0:49:04 Lindsey: So you want like an aggressive Fitbit, because, like, Fitbits will bother you if you sit too long. You

0:49:10 Thomas: Don't, I also can't wear a fit. I need like a, I don'T wear any, anything. And yeah, I need something, something that I won't notice I'm wearing until it just really kicks in and just kicks my ass for sitting around too much. Somebody invent that please. I'm envisioning like a patch on the, my back or something, you know, and then it just goes like, and I'm like, I'm up, I're up. And I just have to walk around until I go to bed.

0:49:27 Lindsey: Hmm. Uh, it sounds like a million dollar idea. Fully support this. We yeah

0:49:35 Thomas: Yeah. Need more strongly coercive, borderline abusive technology. You know, I think that's what we need.

0:49:40 Lindsey: I've been saying that for years. Well,

0:49:43 Thomas: Well, what do you take away as a sitter a little bit? A fellow sedent? I don't know, are you taking away from this? Do you think that the conclusions were basically valid, or what do we see as your takeaways and maybe the weaknesses? Recognizes

0:49:58 Lindsey: Again, outsider, this, this appears to be competently conducted to me from the things that I am familiar with here, and again. Again, none of this is inconsistent with what we know from existing consensus positions in this area. It's just like a little more complicated or a little bit more nuanced in terms of the relationships that they're showing here. So I have no reason to doubt the conclusions that they are coming to. And I mean, the central conclusion here just really doesn't seem all that surprising to me, which is that you want to be minimizing sedentary activity to the extent that you can. Um, there's benefits to both the, the moderate to vigorous physical activity, there's also benefits here, from these results, it seems like, from light intensity physical activity. I don't know, I'm thinking about getting a standing desk, like, seemed like a obnoxious thing, but, hmm.

0:50:30 Thomas: Yeah I have that and doesn't work as well as I would hope, because standing is also incredibly uncomfortable after a certain amount of time. So just switch, I just switched to a different uncomfortable position, and then I'm like, ah, I hate this, and then I sit back down. I need a, I need like a chair that, like, each of my legs and arms and then starts walking me, you know, in a way

0:50:51 Lindsey: Yeah, actually Wait, that's a thing, isn't it? Like, don't some people have like a standing desk, but they do like a, like, under it

0:51:12 Thomas: Not at all what I was describing. But yeah, that is a thing. The thing you described, that's not insane, is a thin, yeah, the thing I was describing is not a thing. If you've seen the Rick and Morty where the dogs take over, like I'm imagining that kind of suit for me like where my body is just limply sitting in it, but I guess it wouldn't count, because I need to move you know yeah No, this is impossible, it can't be done. Scientists haven't figured, figured out how I'm going to not sit for eight hours or more a day. So, oh, well, try again next study.

0:51:13 Lindsey: Oh, Oh, Okay, all right. Right, and the robot that hmm it wouldn't count yeah, that's right, yeah.

0:51:42 Lindsey: I Donno, I'd be, I'd be curious to actually see some objective, because I dono, like, as a, as a parent, there's... there's like a certain amount of light intensity physical activity that you just can't get away from. So, like, I

0:51:54 Thomas: I'm pretty good at sitting. I're pretty good. It's sitting there there at school slash daycare all day. Then they come home, you know, yeah, you got to move around. Weekends are different. You, weekends when they're home is definitely different. There's still a lot of sitting involved. You, it's like, all right, let me set you down doing something, or so that I can work or do whatever, you know, oh, all right, well, move around, everybody. Uh, I guess I'm away unscathed in terms of like my specific lifestyle, not being like necessarily adjudicated, so I can always hope. Thanks.

0:52:00 Lindsey: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Doubt you're in the worst category. So yeah.

0:52:25 Thomas: That means a lot of human, not like in the study, just like a person, the people I'm in the second worst category. I love it all.

0:52:34 Lindsey: Thank you.

0:52:34 Thomas: Right, well, that's a science thingy. Good, excellent breakdown as always, Dr. Lindsey Osterman, professional podcaster, who would love your support at patreon.com/seriouspod, and uh, working on bonus stuff for patrons only, um, perks to get over there. Uh, we might make, uh, Lindsay read all our papers. You know, grade them, do some grading, so lots of good stuff.

0:52:40 Lindsey: That's It's true. Yep, yep. I've got my red pens all lined up. I'm

0:52:58 Thomas: Right, thanks so much for listening, everybody, we'll see you next time.

0:53:10 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com slash groups slash SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.