A hilarious and provocative article in the latest issue of the journal Jacobin posits that chairs are...well, evil. Author Colin McSwiggen writes, "I hate to piss on the party, but chairs suck. All of them. No designer has ever made a good chair, because it is impossible. Some are better than others, but all are bad.
He writes that chairs are a public health hazard, citing a massive American Cancer Society study that found sitting for extended periods during the day dramatically increases the risk of death. This is true even among the fittest, healthiest yogis among us: "Just being seated, in excess, will hurt you." But McSwiggen argues that this study actually understates the issue because it makes it look like the problem is how much we sit, not the real culprit: the chairs. "Sitting wouldn't be so bad if we didn't sit on things that are bad for us."
While your average chair may not seem as malevolent as the skull chair pictured above, this goes for uncomfortable chairs, (which "encourage the sitter to adopt slouched postures that restrict circulation, impede respiratory and intestinal function, and lead to musculoskeletal injuries") and comfortable chairs, which encourage the sitter to "remain in a single static position for long durations without moving, they put extended, unrelieved stress on the spine, weaken the muscles that support the body's frame and prevent injury, and cause the same circulatory problems as their less comfortable counterparts."
But what about those fabulous ergonomic chairs?? Surely they have solved some of these problems? Well, according to Galen Cranz, a sociologist of architecture and perhaps the world's preeminent chair scholar, ergonomics is "confused and even silly."
Yes, some admirable strides have been taken to make chairs less deadly. But McSwiggen says ball chairs, kneeling chairs, and chairs that encourage sitting in several different positions often don't work with common table heights and are too aesthetically unconventional to be acceptable in most offices.
After a fascinating look into the social history of chairs, McSwiggen concludes that whether you think chairs are the devil inanimate or a necessary evil, "the best habit to develop is not to stay seated for more than ten minutes at a time."
That means YOU. Get up! Read Apartment Therapy while you are walking around yourself. You'll get good at it, I promise. Those initial bumps and scrapes will heal!
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Over at BoingBoing there have been a bunch of posts about standing desks, apropos of that same study. I have kneeling chair in my studio, as well as raised table where I work standing (in one of my lives I'm a sculptor) - both make me feel more alert & awake that sitting in a conventional chair.
I don't know how we will get any work done getting up every ten minutes.
Standing seems to come with it's own set of problems. I stand most of the day at work, and even with a soft pad under my feet I feel some pain in my ankles and legs.
If we did the healthy things, like getting up every 10 min to move around, get enough sleep, have afternoon naps... the world would certainly be a much slower paced place.
McSwiggen, McSwidden or McSwiddon?
So, we evolved moving around to get work done, while now we often must sit still to get work done? Should we return to kneeling, squatting, or lounging on rugs or floor pillows instead of sitting on chairs? That sounds almost pleasant for home, but hard to imagine for an office. Incidentally, I've heard arguments similar to this post against chairs made against flush toilets. Again, it's hard to imagine alternatives that would suit modern life.
Not based on science but from my own personal experience... I question the ball chair as being somehow better than a regular chair. I was doing contract work at an office where the only free office had an exercise ball instead of a conventional chair. I was fine with that as I have very good core strength and posture. What I also have is very loose joints (not to be confused with muscle flexibility). Sitting on the convex surface all day really took a toll on my alignment and sacral joint... I was in a great deal of pain the rest of the week. I think the ball is fine short term but not for an entire workday.
"the best habit to develop is not to stay seated for more than ten minutes at a time." OR, as some of us in the industry like to say "your best posture is your next posture" meaning no one position is healthy, the body is designed to move. It's our lifestyles and techonolgy that encourage us not to, and contribute to the problem.
Simple solution: At work or home office, place your printer out of arms reach so you have to get up.
Also, a large % of the general public (not us smarties here at AT) isn't aware of what good adjustment is on things like desk height, chair height, back angle, location & angle of keyboard and mouse, correct monitor height etc. These things can help. AT should offer a user guide for these things. The word "ergonomic" is a sales tool to people who dont know that the product itself is only as correct as it's adjustment to the specific proportions of the user.
You know, I joked not long ago that Apartment Therapy may need to be re-titled "Whining About First World Problems". I'm starting to think that joke may be sadly more accurate than I thought.
A wicked twist to a lawn chair!
Ironically, I love the look of the skull chair and would totally use that on my patio.
That chair totally looks like the Venture Brothers logo!
Two observations.
One. I'd like to see that study and understand both what it says and how it came to the conclusion in the press. If we have been living like this for decades and people NOT noticeably dropping like flies, I have to wonder how much of a threat this really is. (I am sure standing more is good for you, but I'm not certain SITTING is as bad for you as reported.)
Two. CHAIRS! Chairs are the sculpture of the world of furniture! I love chairs! I'd collect beautiful chairs if I could afford them and the display space they would require! OK, not all are comfortable or conducive to great posture, but still... so many are wonderful to LOOK at! Some women are into shoes, but I think chairs are so much better!!! ;^)
My yoga teacher says humans are not meant to sit in chairs.
What I have read is you should avoid whenever possible sitting with your feet on the ground, your legs defendant. Put your feet up when you can get away with it.
>>sherrybinnh, the study was widely reported. I read some details about it at the NY Times Well blog. It measured a bunch of body functions in people who sat for X straight hours compared to those who got up and moved around at regular intervals. The findings were pretty scary. Sitting for long intervals affects your body negatively in every measure they took, and it happens fast. And the real bummer is that exercising for 60 or 90 minutes at the end of a long day of sitting doesn't undo the bad effects or stop them from happening. Even if you get a lot of exercise at some other time, long stretches of sitting are bad. The precise recommendation is that every 20 minutes, you should get up and walk on a treadmill for 2 minutes. That's the amount of moving around that kept the bad effects from happening in the study.
Who's to say we aren't dropping like flies because of all the sitting? The whole point of the study was that being sedentary is much worse for us and may cause a lot more disease and ill health effects than we have any idea of.
I'm with you on CHAIRS! Love them.
I made myself a standing desk at work about two months ago and I love it. I stand from 30-80% of the day, depending on the day. I focus better and am more likely to walk around...like going to re-fill my water or grabbing something from the printer right away rather than waiting to do it all later.
@AnnKathleen: Good observation, haha.
In many parts of the world, people squat while cooking/cleaning/talking/giving birth/ using the loo. I think that's always an alternative to standing/sitting. Standing too much hurts, sitting too much hurts, you can always squat! Or lay down.
Yeah....my 6th grade social studies told us the first day of school, "If you learn nothing else in this class, learn this: don't believe anything you hear/read and only half of what you see."
She was a wise woman.
p.s. that is one HIDEOUS chair.
"Home" by Witold Rybczynski discussed society as two groups, sitters and squatters. Although the issue was comfort and not health, the shortcomings of the chair were hit on. One argument was that while one group kept trying to get comfortable by creating new and better chairs for millennia, the other group found it easier to get and stay comfortable with minimal effort.
As someone with three auto-immune disorders that affect muscles and joint, squatting is definitely out. We are taught to get up and move every 20 minutes, even if we have to set an alarm to remind us. Having a family and pets makes it easier. You're always getting up to do something, clean something, find something ....