The most important statements from the interview with Dr. Dieter Breithecker:
- (Back) pain is an “early warning system” – it shows that something is wrong and calls for action.
- Children cannot sit still for 3 minutes, adults can only sit still for 20 minutes.
- Autarkic (unconscious, self-organized) movements (when speaking, sleeping, sitting, etc.) must not be restricted.
- Being lazy is natural and used to make sense in terms of energy – today it is only temporarily suitable.
- When it comes to sitting, the dose makes the poison. And the quality of the sitting.
- Passive-static sitting makes you sick: diabetes, depression, arthrosis, cancer, dementia, sciatica…
- Inactivity is the main risk factor.
- We must succeed in integrating exercise into our everyday lives.
- We should sit for no more than six hours a day and spend more time standing and walking the rest of the time.
- When we sit, we should use high-quality seating features.
- High-quality seating functions allow spontaneous position changes as needed.
- Dynamic sitting is more than the movement offered by a synchronous mechanism.
- What is important when sitting is a freely flowing three-dimensional seat function that allows variable sitting positions in all directions.
- The Aeris Swopper is more suitable than any office chair that only has a synchronous mechanism.
- There is no reason why the Aeris Swopper should only be used as a second chair. On the contrary: The Aeris 3D function guarantees the important, autonomous micro and macro movements "from within". This keeps us physically and mentally more alert.
Sit until the doctor comes?
Just google it once and you'll have the right answer to almost any question. The internet seems to know everything - but of course there are also numerous rumors circulating online. Many people who are interested in healthy active sitting come across one thing again and again: that the 3D active chair Swopper from Aeris is great, allows a lot of movement and is noticeably good for the back - but that it is only suitable as a "second chair" and not for long periods of sitting.
In practice, the exact opposite is the case. A survey conducted by Aeris in 2012 among 1,207 Aeris Swopper owners confirms this. 65 percent said that they mostly sit on the Aeris Swopper and do not use any other office chair at the same time. In reality, everyone just needs to follow their gut feeling to know how long they want to "swopper". Every movement counts. If it feels good, you don't need to stop after two or four hours.
Nevertheless, we at Aeris wanted to ask an expert again about how long periods of sitting and the Aeris Swopper relate, and how unhealthy rigid sitting really is. The movement scientist Dr. Dieter Breithecker, Chairman of the Board of the Federal Association for Posture and Movement Promotion eV in Wiesbaden (BAG), was available to answer our questions.
Aeris: Dear Dr. Breithecker, 80 percent of our waking hours are currently spent sitting. Everyone does it - always, everywhere and completely automatically. Usually no one thinks about it - until something happens. Until back pain and tension become so severe that you are forced to do something. Sitting until the doctor comes - is that necessary or is there something you can do to prevent it from getting that far?
Dr. Breithecker: It is per se an advantage for us when the back sends pain signals. This makes us noticeably aware that we need to act. It would of course be better if we didn't let it get that far. From a developmental physiological perspective, we are not designed to remain in one and the same position for long periods of time. Regular changes of position and varied movement - not necessarily sport and fitness - are essential for maintaining our genetic makeup, i.e. for the quality of all the physical and mental functions we have acquired during our development. The reason: every muscle activity triggers complex mechanisms in our biological system. In addition to increasing blood flow, a variety of molecular messengers are released (enzymes, hormones and proteins) that have a positive effect on our metabolic functions.
Aeris: When does “lack of exercise” begin? The body is also at rest at night.
Dr. Breithecker: That depends on a variety of factors, such as age or the respective supply requirements of our biological functions. Pre-school and primary school children, for example, cannot sit still for an average of three minutes due to their highly sensitive maturation processes. Adults need to change position significantly after about 20 minutes of a sedentary activity. If we give an engaging lecture, this is accompanied by spontaneous movements depending on mental or emotional requirements. We are usually unaware of these autonomous movements because they are self-organized (from within us) in order to maintain physical and mental well-being. They have nothing to do with sport or physical fitness. Even when we sleep, we change our body position around 40 to 60 times. A healthy life consists of movement. It is the adequate response to physical and mental supply requirements. Standing still means undersupply - and ultimately death.
You can quickly see this for yourself with a simple exercise. To do this, you stand in a relaxed position. If you then close your eyes, you can feel it: you are always swinging around your body's plumb line autonomously, i.e. not intentionally. The same applies when we sit relaxed in the theater or at a concert. After a few minutes, we start crossing one leg over the other and then switching again, we slide back and forth... If these self-organized processes are restricted, physical and mental deterioration occurs.
Aeris: How could it come to be that people today live in a world that is so dominated by sitting that they are essentially constantly harming themselves?
Dr. Breithecker: Our everyday activities have changed and so have the spaces. Study and work spaces usually have chairs and people then live out what these facilities reflect: they sit and take care of themselves. This is in keeping with their nature, because evolution has trained them to use energy sparingly until hunger drives them back to physically strenuous hunting. But since we no longer need to hunt to survive these days, we lack these physical demands and constant sitting becomes a threat to our physical and mental functions. Sitting is now heavily stigmatized by headlines such as "Sitting is the new smoking" or "Sitting makes you stupid", but it is as always: the dose makes the poison, i.e. the length of time you sit and the quality of the sitting function.
Aeris: Are these findings new?
Dr. Breithecker: The findings have expanded in recent years due to the results of studies, especially with regard to the extent to which prolonged sitting affects our health and the quality of our sitting behavior. Years ago, the topic was almost exclusively focused on avoiding back pain through orthopedic and biomechanical ideal sitting behavior, but today the findings and recommendations go far beyond that. They are based on the whole person as a psychosomatic unit. Passive-static sitting behavior has negative and disease-causing effects on all physical and mental functions and is responsible for lipid metabolism disorders (including type II diabetes), depression, dementia and even certain types of cancer.
Aeris: So is sitting really one of the biggest health risks of modern times?
Dr. Breithecker: With some restrictions, yes. But as already mentioned, the length of time we sit and the way we sit plays a key role. The main risk factor is inactivity. We must be able to integrate exercise into our everyday lives. That is why we should limit the amount of time we spend sitting to a maximum of six hours a day and avoid static, passive sitting in the long term. We should spend the rest of our waking hours standing or moving around more.
Aeris: The longest periods of sitting occur in the office. An office worker is "at risk" from sitting for up to 80% of the day. The office chair industry is increasingly reacting to this with various concepts for "dynamic sitting". What is important in your view?
Dr. Breithecker: Basically, current findings call for more movement that is integrated into everyday life. In detail, this means qualitatively that we need improved seating functions that allow spontaneous, dynamic seated position changes, and quantitatively that we significantly reduce the amount of time spent sitting in favor of standing and moving around the room.
The promotion of "dynamic sitting" has become very inflationary and has therefore become watered down. Even a completely normal synchronous mechanism is being promoted with this slogan. Dynamic sitting requires more, however, and should enable a greater variety of dynamic postural changes while sitting. The goal should be autonomous, complex sitting behavior. Complex and therefore physiological sitting behaviors cannot be recommended or taught! They must be able to organize themselves spontaneously and intuitively based on individual needs in the form of micro and macro movements. From the inside out. In order to enable complex sitting behavior, special chair functions are required. The pivotal point here is a freely flowing, three-dimensional (3D) seat function that is detached from the synchronous mechanism and enables variable seating variations in the three dimensions of the room.
Aeris: The Aeris chairs with 3D technology - Swopper, Swoppster and 3Dee - not only offer the most movement, as studies have shown, but also the most natural. This is due to the great hip mobility, which is closest to the natural movement pattern of humans. The Aeris chairs adapt to the person, not the other way around. They accommodate spontaneous and intuitive, autonomous changes in posture and do not hinder them, but rather challenge and encourage them. This is what makes them unique, and for this they are recognized, awarded and recommended worldwide.
It is sometimes claimed that you can only sit for a maximum of two hours a day, meaning that the Aeris Swopper can only be seen as a second chair at most and that a conventional office chair is absolutely necessary as the main chair. Is there any ergonomic justification for this?
Dr. Breithecker: As already mentioned, it is the dose that decides - i.e. the length of time you sit. And of course, the individual needs should be the priority. Basically, sitting for hours - even with the best seat functions - is not "natural" and, as mentioned, should be interrupted more often. I don't understand why there can be claims that the Aeris Swopper should only be used as a second chair, especially since it can also be used with a backrest - for those who feel better that way.
The Aeris Swopper is definitely more suitable than any office chair that only has a synchronous mechanism. Sitting with the special 3D function of Aeris and the pelvis that is "unlocked" as a result guarantees both variable micro and macro movements. This in turn enables rhythmic tension and relaxation changes in the physiological structures involved in the sitting position. This unconscious and self-organized sitting behavior triggers a complex interaction between the sensory (proprioceptive), neuronal and muscular systems. This keeps us physically and mentally more alert (awake).
In order to autonomously organize the physiological posture when sitting - analogous to free standing - it is essential to maintain these control circuits, which we perform automatically and involuntarily many times per second. This is also the reason why the BAG awarded the Aeris concept of 3D technology as "particularly moving" in 2013.
