?Do you smoke? ….No, but I sit.? ?mt
As I clicked on my third movie of the weekend, I felt the twinge of guilt that comes at lazy times such as these. I convinced myself that days like this were actually designed for movies, blaming the cold drizzly weather, the quiet house all to myself.
But even so, a little whisper kept telling me to do, well, pretty much anything other than click ?Play? (again). Wash something, fold, stack or wipe things. I beat my conscious and gave in to my lazy ways, but that doesn?t mean reality wouldn?t get back to me in a more roundabout way.
The third movie was ?Love and Other Drugs.? It was set in the mid-nineties, which apparently was a prime time for drug reps to become rock stars. Zoloft was at war with Prozac and another little unnamed pill was brand new to the scene.
So I sat (remember that word) through my third two-hour movie, which was about, among other things, prescription drugs and side effects.
Side effects. A not-so-funny reality, but the butt of jokes and major source of income for television. Drug companies pay a lot of money to list the potential hazards of their products on commercials. If it weren?t for what could happen, the commercials would be over in half the time and we would never know that depression meds could cause depression (!) or turn your toes blue.
(I made that last one up. Or did I?)
No, not funny, really, but if they don?t laugh, people could get really freaked out by the risks and that could quickly send them into the fetal position on their couches.
And that particular move, unfortunately, also puts them at risk. Basically, the hot topic now is that the act of sitting, SITTING?not totally unlike curling up into the fetal position and/or watching three movies from a recliner?creates a higher risk of cancers, depression, increased blood pressure, emotional problems, anxiety and worsening mental illness.
And if those potential problems aren?t enough, let me borrow a line from a CNB News article. There is an inevitable result of ?a large amount of force on the body tissues that make fat cells.? (Real world terms?at the very least, your butt will get bigger.)
I guess the warnings are true?sitting is the new smoking. Where will they slap that label?
I recently told someone that at least secondhand sitting doesn?t affect the one next to you. But I was wrong. Ask my dog. She was there through six hours of movies, inhaling lazy, without a fresh-air potty break.
