Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. What are you doing right now? Right now? Chances are it involves sitting. Most jobs these days require long hours of sitting and interacting with machines. That's what we do in our leisure time too, which is not so good for our physical as well as emotional health.

A new six-part podcast- I've only said that word a zillion times. A new six-part podcast from NPR wants to explore what they're calling the relationship between our technology, the chair, and the devices, and our bodies, and how to make that relationship healthier. It's called Body Electric. It's hosted by Manoush Zomorodi of NPR's TED Radio Hour. Some of you might remember that she was the host of WNYC's Note to Self back in the day. Hi, Manoush.

Manoush Zomorodi: Hello, Brian. So good to be talking to you, again.

Brian Lehrer: Again and for me, too. We're also joined by one of the experts involved in the podcast, who has an assignment for you, listeners, should you choose to accept it. We'll hear more about that as we go. Keith Diaz is a certified exercise physiologist who directs the exercise testing laboratory. I love this name, the Wearable Device Reading Center, at the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at the Columbia University Medical Center, where he's an associate professor of behavioral medicine. Welcome, Keith Diaz.

Keith Diaz: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Manoush, you refer to the type-tap-collapse syndrome that you want to get over. I don't think that's a medical term, so what does it mean?

Manoush Zomorodi: No, it's not a medical term. It's a term that I think all of us are familiar with, but don't necessarily talk about because we don't think there's a choice. It's that feeling at the end of the day, that you're so tired and drained. Maybe your eyes are burning. Maybe your back aches a little bit. Maybe you're hunched over, but you don't feel like going out and running five miles. You just feel like crashing on your couch and watching Netflix and scrolling on your phone.

I've been thinking about this for so long, Brian. Why do I feel so bad after working on a computer all day long sitting? What is my technology doing to me physically? What this series is, is my exploration, top to toe, about how our digital habits are affecting our health. I hate to be scaremongering because let me tell you, I do love my job, but I just want to do my job better and I just don't want to feel so bad at the end of the day, hence trying to end the type-tap-collapse.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a montage, listeners, from episode one of this podcast series that describes type-tap-collapse. This is about 45 seconds.

Speaker 1: My shoulders sometimes hurt sitting at a computer, hunched over. It doesn't seem like it's something that takes a lot of energy, but it absolutely does.

Speaker 2: I'm not sleeping great. I'm so tense and tight.

Speaker 3: My back aches. I tend to just continuously lean further and further and further into the computer screen.

Speaker 4: I think I feel it most in my eyes. It almost feels like you're drunk or something. It's like it's such a dizzy, destructive- it's almost disassociative.

Speaker 5: I'm just tired and I take breaks. I'll be like, hey, you need a break so stop looking at the big screen and now it's time to look at the little screen. That's not good.

Brian Lehrer: No, not good. Listeners, if you subscribe to The TED Radio Hour, you will have seen episode one of Body Electric in your feed, maybe listen. Even if not, does type-tap-collapse syndrome sound familiar? Does it sound like you and you want to talk about it like the people in that montage? Do you have any hacks for getting over it? We didn't hear solutions in that clip, but I think our guests will have some. Any questions about its effects, 212-433-WNYC, call or text. 212-433-9692.

Keith Diaz, take us in a little deeper from a certified exercise physiologist's perspective. What are some of the physical problems that arise from how much time we spent sitting, typing, and tapping.

Keith Diaz: Sure, happy to. I think I can put it no other way than say that sitting is toxic for our bodies. Decades, now research has shown that sitting increases your risk for most chronic diseases including diabetes, high blood pressure, several types of cancer, dementia, heart disease, and ultimately increases your risk of early death.

Brian Lehrer: Can I just jump in on that for a second?

Keith Diaz: Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Is it sitting per see, or is it living a sedentary lifestyle, where you sit too much and don't have enough exercise to compensate?

Keith Diaz: Yes. What this is really about, we use sitting as just a term that everybody's familiar with, but it's really about sedentary. It's about your body not moving. It doesn't matter what posture you're in. If you're laying down versus you're sitting, still, your body's not moving. That's what's harmful, is not engaging your body in sufficient amounts of physical activity. That leads to development of most chronic diseases.

Brian Lehrer: Manoush, you do start the first episode of the podcast with a little short history of human evolution and how we got to this state. Now we're so sedentary. When did we actually start sitting in chairs, per se?

Manoush Zomorodi: Well, it's fascinating. Every economic era that there has been, our bodies have adapted, which makes total sense. You're a hunter-gatherer, you're lean, you're nimble, you're fast, you're collecting food. Then you get to the agricultural revolution and there's less running around because food is we grow it in fields, but there's still a ton of movement in our day. Actually, the chair wasn't invented till about 5,000 years ago. Then people just didn't use them. You can barely find any mention of the word chair in the Bible, in the Iliad, in the Odyssey. Then up through Shakespeare, King Lear, it's only mentioned four times.

It's not until we get to the Industrial Revolution when the concept of leisure comes into our lives, and sitting around is something we enjoy doing. Where it comes into work is not until about the 1930s. That's when you have white collar jobs, sitting for a living.

Now, fast forward to us here right now. Nearly 85% of all jobs are sedentary, and 92% of all jobs require digital skills. Even if you are a laborer of some sort, you are spending time dealing with a screen.

Brian Lehrer: Keith Diaz, you're here because how to counteract the harmful effects of sitting so much is what you study. Specifically, how much or how little do we have to move to counter those effects? I take it that standing desks are not the answer. You did this experiment in a lab of sorts. What did you find?

Keith Diaz: What we found was to offset the harms of sitting, you had to take a walking break every half hour for five minutes. Why we found that and how we came to that conclusion was we had people sit in our lab for eight hours, on five different occasions. On one occasion, they just sat for eight hours and we give them bathroom breaks, but then the other days, we had them try these just different ways to break up their sitting. You could be moving every half hour and moving every hour for various amounts of time.

We measured their blood sugar levels. We measured blood pressure. We measured mood. We measured fatigue. What we found is that the only dose that improved everything was taking a movement break or walking break every half hour for five minutes. It reduced the surge in blood sugar after eating by almost 60%. It reduced blood pressure by four to five points. People who took those breaks, they reported feeling having a better mood and feeling less fatigued and feeling more energized.

Brian Lehrer: Walking for five minutes every half hour?

Keith Diaz: Yes. The key point here is that that walking was a relatively light pace. It was two miles per hour, so you're walking a mile in 30 minutes. Most people would find that pace to be slower than their typical pace. We're talking a light walk.

Brian Lehrer: You and Manoush- and listeners heads up, this is where you come in- you and Manoush want to take this one step further and our listeners can help. Who wants to dive in and explain?

Manoush Zomorodi: I do. Keith's findings went viral back in January. I saw them and I was like, "This is so cool. They found that this is the easiest thing you can do." Then I was like, "But, wait Can we do it? Can we take these five minute breaks every half hour? Isn't that going to get really annoying? Is it going to break up our day? Are people going to get up on a Zoom and start shuffling back and forth walking?" That would require a total cultural reset.

I reached out to Keith and I was like, "I don't know if people can do this." He's like, "Yes, I don't know either." We were like, "Let's ask them." Yesterday we launched-- this is pretty unprecedented-- NPR and Columbia are collaborating on a study where we are reaching out to people, asking them, let's see if we can incorporate movement breaks into our day. Let's get real data, obviously anonymous data, but find out what hacks do people have if they do make it happen? At what point does it become untenable? What can we learn about what we can tell--

For me as a tech journalist, what do we want to tell the people designing the next big hardware that we're looking at, wearables, or whatever else we might be doing? What can we do to change the technology that we feel like we have to contort our bodies to do this every single day? I think for Keith, well, I'll let him tell you why he wants to do it.

Brian Lehrer: Then tell our listeners if they can sign up with you or what they should actually do if they want to participate.

Manoush Zomorodi: Yes, let me do that before Keith gets-- I'm excited because I love Crowdsource science. Brian, I've come on your show many times and we've gotten tens of thousands of people to experiment with their behavior, but this is the first time I'm actually partnering with an academic institution.

Listeners, we would love you to see if you want to participate. Please go to npr.org/body-electric, that's npr.org/body-electric. You will find information about the series and a link to the Columbia team. There's an intake form, but it goes really fast. It's about five minutes. This is exciting to me.

Brian Lehrer: Pick it up, Keith. Go ahead.

Keith Diaz: This is, I think, a tremendous and exciting opportunity for scientists to translate what we do in a lab to the real world. I'm just thrilled to be able to try this out and actually hear from people and listeners, does this work? If this doesn't work, I don't want to waste years of my time, of scientific grant funding to do something that people don't want to do. I think this is a really important step for us. Just like when you develop medications and vaccines, there's a phased process to developing these things, we want to take a phased process to, how do we figure out the solution to sitting, and we're moving out from the lab to the real world and we need people's input.

If this doesn't work, I want you to tell me it doesn't work. I want you to tell me why it doesn't work. For listeners who are just saying, "I can't take a movement break every half hour," I want you to participate too and tell me that and tell me why. This is critical information for us to move to the next step is, how is this actually going to work in your everyday lives?

Brian Lehrer: What would define or measure whether this is working for those of us who participate in this experiment? Do we need a blood pressure monitor at home or something?

Keith Diaz: No. All we're doing is asking people to sign up and we'll send you text messages. We'll ask you to try taking the movement breaks, and we'll send you text messages five times a day to check in and say, "Hey, did you take any movement breaks in the last two hours or three hours? If so, what did you do? How did it work? What helped? If not, why not? What was your barriers? What prevented you from doing that?" It's simple. In terms of participation, you just go sign up online and you'll start receiving text messages and we'll ask you to try this out for a couple of weeks.

Brian Lehrer: Sal in Queens has a testimonial here on WNYC. Hi, Sal.

Sal: Brian, I love, love, love your show. I was a financial consultant up until I was, let's see, 40-something. I was about 240 pounds, starting to have to have blood pressure issues. Even though I was taking martial arts at the time, it didn't make a difference. Sitting down is death. I've been managing institutional kitchens now for the last 20 years. Probably do 40,000 steps a day. I take a vitamin and I'm under 200 pounds and I feel like I'm 15 years old. You have to move. As far as how to apply it into everyday life, I love writing. When I want to write, I go climb a mountain. That's all I've got. I love you guys.

Brian Lehrer: Sal, thank you very much. All right. I don't know. There's the poster 61-year-old for this lifestyle change. How about Janet in Huntington? You're on WNYC. Hi, Janet.

Janet: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I love your show. Well, I'm 63 and I move all day long. I walk about three, four miles a day, but about 10 years ago, I changed my life. My tip is to get a standup desk so you don't have to sit down. You just get one of these variable height standup desk. You put it on your desk. It has room for a laptop, one or two monitors, and now you're standing. You're no longer sitting. You've changed your life. I changed my life by doing that. If I have to print a piece of paper, I send it to the printer that's in the other room, so I have to take multiple steps. I used to wear a Fitbit that would go off every 20 minutes. "Okay, you got to move."

Brian Lehrer: There you go.

Janet: It changed my life completely when I got out of the chair.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Keith, do you write off a standing desk as irrelevant?

Keith Diaz: Inconclusive, Brian. I think there's some evidence to say that it could be potentially beneficial for lowering blood sugar, but it also could be potentially harmful for things like it could increase your blood pressure, it increases risk of lower back pain. I don't want to dismiss Janet. If it's working for Janet, you keep on doing it.

I think the trick here is not to do too much standing at a time. The adage that I usually say is, the best posture is the next posture. Don't sit for too long, but standing for too many hours at a time also is problematic and it could be an occupational hazard. I always endorse, if people are going to do something, movement is the best thing. We know without a doubt that movement is helpful and beneficial. Standing, it's still up for debate.

Brian Lehrer: Christine in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Christine.

Christine: Yes, hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, Christine. You're a chiropractor?

Christine: I am a chiropractor and an acupuncturist. I've been in practice for about 35 years. I know something about movement because I used to be a dancer. What I would say is that as Albert Einstein said, if you don't move, your balance is going to go off, and that's a paraphrase. It is so true that as we get older, the thing that really affects us that is noticeable, is loss of balance, proprioception. The more that we can work on that, the better off we are going to be.

As a chiropractor who does cranial work, I've noticed that people who have had any kind of head trauma, any kind of injury to their-- like a fall where they hit their head kind of thing, or a sports injury, like that, they really eventually aren't balancing as well, and that leads to further injury and further aging.

Brian Lehrer: Balance. Christine, thank you very much. We're just about out of time. Manoush, you want to tell people one more time how they can sign up to participate in this movement experiment from their homes or offices? Probably not from their cars, right? You don't want people to get up from their car radios and walk to the backseat while they're on the BQE.

Manoush Zomorodi: I don't think that's going to work. No.

Brian Lehrer: How can they participate and how can they hear your podcast series?

Manoush Zomorodi: I love that idea. Please, recruit your colleagues. Get your mom to do it with you, maybe your family. Go to npr.org/body-electric. Thousands of people have already signed up. The deadline to do so is on Sunday night at 11:59 PM ET, Eastern Standard Time, so npr.org/body-electric

Brian Lehrer: The TED Radio Hour with Manoush airs Sundays at one o'clock on 93.9 FM, and at 8:00 PM on AM 820. 1:00 PM on FM, 8:00 PM on AM. Of course, you can always find it on our website. Thank you Keith Diaz of Columbia University Medical Center for adding your expertise to the segment. We really, really appreciate it.

Keith Diaz: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More in a minute.

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