Lectures, tutorial group meetings, self-study in the library or in your room: those who study, generally spend a lot of time sitting. In her thesis on ‘savvy sitting’, movement scientist Yingyi Wu writes that it amounts to almost ten hours a day. Whether the students that she followed – first-year students of Biomedical Sciences at Maastricht University and at the Belgian KU Leuven – themselves realised how much time they spent sitting, is the question, Wu thinks: she believes that people easily underestimate this. “Keep a tally. You will be surprised by the results.” She laughs: “Yes, I myself too. During my PhD study I sat too much. My supervisor [FHML professor Hans Savelberg, ed.] won’t be happy if I say this. You always see him walking, or standing at a standing desk.”
"Take a seat!"
Is sitting wrong by definition? Not necessarily, “but all the available research data points to sitting a lot and a long time in succession being bad for your physical and mental well-being”. Diehard sitters run a higher risk of contracting certain types of cancer, diabetes, depression and poorer cognitive achievements. That is quite something, and it raises the question why we feel sitting is so natural. “It doesn’t take any effort and it is our culture,” says Wu. “When someone enters, we immediately say: ‘Take a seat!’ Also, whether we are at home or at the university, our physical environment invites us to sit.”
Universities can do something about this “by making it easier and more comfortable for students to stand. Currently, classrooms are almost always spaces filled with chairs, where only the person presenting can stand. But why?” Wu thinks that standing desks, such as those in the recently reopened university library in Randwyck, would be a good investment. “There is research that proves that doing the same work standing instead of sitting, already makes a difference. When you stand, you also move about a bit and every kind of physical activity is good.”
Sitting healthier
If you can’t avoid sitting a lot, there is a simple way to still make the day a little healthier, says Wu: “Cycle to the university, don’t take the bus; stand up during the breaks of your working group and walk to the coffee machine; do an online meeting during a walk in the park.” And, she emphasises, “set an alarm on your mobile phone when you are studying, so you will be reminded every hour to stand up and move for five minutes or so. Sitting is a habit, which you can only change by starting small.”