Get Up!: Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It

Excellent

This book is excellent. The book, like many others, has one central theme - that we must get up and move. I like the emphasis of James Levine on a healthy, walking lifestyle.I am not sure about putting standing desks and treadmill desks everywhere.I like his idea of a classroom of the future, and the sarcastic use of the word, "Chairman."An excellent book, one that should wake us up.

I do physical rehabilitation and personal training and just finished emailing a recommendation for this book to all my clients.This covers,in a very readable way,the impact to our lives when we do - and don't - sit.This book balances information and motivation well.

This is an incredible read. Dr Levine is well-spoken and uses wit, and would be enjoyable even if he were re-writing the phone book. But he doesn't re-hash anything (except possibly the small bits about visualization and positive self-talk we all know so much about already).Yes, as some people mentioned, the author does talk about his own life. It's necessary to the tone of the book, and makes reading all that much more enjoyable. Mainly, though, this book is full of wonderful and remarkable observation, studies, and other treats that explain why being chairbound is killing us. And was, until I read this book, very literally killing me.My case (please read if you're at all skeptical about the quality of information in this book): I'm sixty-five. I was a professional dancer, working in L.A. theatre and (later) teaching drama on campus into my fifties, when my husband divorced me for a twenty-two year old girl and a free trip to Europe (I'm not kidding). I went into depression, stopped my dance classes, and started teaching scriptwriting (so very sedentary). With the exception of Yoga practice, I was then completely sedentary. Over the years, old dance injuries locked up my neck and back and I couldn't lift my left arm above shoulder level. Doctors couldn't figure out what was going on. I had to stop Yoga. I finally stopped everything, bought a decent reclining chair, stopped teaching on campus, and began editing scripts from my recliner, on my laptop. After a lifetime of being "the skinny one," I began to gain weight. I didn't look odd, but it just wasn't me. (If Dr Levine ever comes across this confession, he'll have a stroke.)Since reading "Get Up!", I asked my best friend (and new husband) to bring my old laptop desk up from the garage, and raised it to it's top height. I now edit standing up. Since watching movies and plays-on-tape is part of my job, I watch them while working out on a balance ball. I sucked up my embarrassment and bought a wheeled walker so I can go for walks, and go places with friends who don't mind being seen with the walker. (Southern California actors are vain to the nth degree.) I'm losing the weight I gained. And the "brain fog" is lifting.After years of reading self-help books, having hormone panels run, seeing osteopaths, getting warnings from my cardiologist, suffering three-day migraines, and trying every new trick/self-assessment/diet to come around, I'm no longer depressed and it's getting easier to be "normal" again. I re-applied for part-time teaching again, and was accepted. I expect, by the end of the year, to be able to donate my walker and the wheelchair I've used on bad days (I forgot to mention that one) to the Salvation Army so someone who is still sitting can make use of them.None of it would have happened if I hadn't read this book. I'd become honestly afraid to even try to exercise, but when Dr Levine said that just standing still was so far superior to sitting and reading/working, I realized I didn't have to try to run a marathon or even attempt a dance class. I just had to Get Up.I hope this helps somebody else who has placed blame on everything but sitting in a comfy chair, and for those who have tried every self-help book (and even seen psychiatrists and other therapists). This book very honestly changed my life, and I can only say that about two other books in sixty-five years of reading.

Leading experts agree, that sitting actually causes more ill health than smoking. What a message! The author Dr. James A. Levin was a pioneer in the scientific research on the correlation between body movement and health. The book explains through samples of a company and a school how life improves through implementing movement back into your life and reduce sitting to a minimum. Health improves, social interaction improves, grades in school improves, creativity improves, ADHD of children decreases or vanishes! The benefits of moving more and sitting less are countless. He stresses particularly the importance of walking for at least 15 minutes after meals.

Interessante e "divertente" da leggere; si apprezza la competenza specifica dell'autore e la sua "preoccupazione" divulgativa, ai limiti della paranoia (non è una critica)

Really liked this book. Turns the usual advice of '30mins exercise 5 times a week for health' on its head. You are wasting your time! It's what you do in the remaining 23.5 hours that actually keeps you healthy. He compares sedentarianism of developed countries with the active lifestyles of others and proves we really are sending ourselves to an early grave. He has made it his life's work to prove this and also has plenty of other research and references to back up his theories. I really like his writing style. It almost reads like a novel a time and a few times I found myself laughing out loud at his self depracating humour. He falls in love with a snail! Read the book to find out more!It's given me a right shake-up and has made me see the folly of my ways. I'm a lazy, immobile , sedentary person,finding it difficult to lose weight no matter what diet I have tried.Time to buy a treadmill - then I can carry on reading books, knitting, watching television,etc. As long as I am pacing at 1.1 miles perhour while doing this. It's so obvious but I still had to have it pointed out to me.