MSP132 [] #AtHome Hacks: Doomscrolling & Successful Sitting

This is a download from BFM 89.9, the Business Station. BFM 89.9, the Business Station. Beluting weight gain, crisps and doom-scrolling. 2020 has not been tied to MSPs at my momentage.

Following the do-as-I-say principle, MSP has been experimenting with some ways to stay physically fit and mentally healthy in these strange times. Matt, you want to start today by telling us about your morning routine? Hey, Rich, well, you know, why not? I've had a very similar routine for much of the last four years.

I opened my eyes and I reached for my phone and I thumbed to my new site of choice to find out what Donald Trump has or hasn't done during the eight odd hours that I've rolled fitfully on the mattress. So far, to his credit, he hasn't done anything that might directly kill me. But, you know, even before coronavirus came around, I was waking up every morning expecting the worst. Well, that can't be very healthy.

Well, it's not, but it's symptomatic, I think, of something wider. So to give you some context, I'm generally quite an anxiety-prone person. Quite a lot of the kind of smaller surveys and anecdotal reports from health professionals and, of course, the anxious themselves have seemed to concur that during the coronavirus, people with anxiety issues have actually coped quite well, possibly because a lot of our anxiety comes from uncertainty in our interactions with the wider world. So, you know, by, by con, on the country, rather, lockdowns and procedures have provided a certain amount of certainty for the anxious in dealing with the threats around us.

Plus, of course, many of us already have coping mechanisms that help us to deal with, you know, essentially life. So it's kind of been a bit of a bussman's holiday then? Well, yeah, you know, for those of you unfamiliar with 1970s British sitcoms, a bussman's holiday is the idea of doing the same thing for holidays you do for work. But yeah, you know, I coped with the restrictions of the first phase of Malaysia's movement control order pretty well.

If someone tells me I'm not allowed to go anywhere or interact with people, you know, that's absolutely fine with me because I generally don't want to go anywhere or interact with people. How does this relate to your morning routine then? Well, like many people who I think are anxious, I'm actually coping with the reopening less well than I coped with the closing bed. Being around groups of people freaks me out, eating in restaurants feels uncomfortable and weird.

My wife tends to go out a lot more than I do, and I scream super spreader at her every time she comes home. So far, you know, most of my clients are still on lockdown protocols, so work contacts are still all virtual for me. So I haven't had to worry about that kind of face-to-face contact with people so far. But I am kind of scared of the day that I will.

So I'm scaring the web for stories about how safe it is to eat out, to go and meet clients, how I can mitigate the risks if I do have to do those things. And of course, then you get the stories about these situations where everything went wrong. So I think there was news this week about a religious gathering in a place called Warrior Creek in Alabama, where 40 people, essentially, pretty much an entire church congregation, ended up testing positive for coronavirus after a revival meeting. So your doom-scrolling?

Yeah, and I'm not alone. In fact, most people hadn't heard or used the term doom-scrolling until this year. It wasn't common currency. I think it's only been around since about 2018.

But I've been doom-scrolling President Trump for the last four years. And you're still alive? Hence, it's the scrolling that's actually keeping me safe. It's shroading as orange cat.

And until recently, I limited my doom-scrolling to international politics. Obviously, I've been reading about the coronavirus, but it's mostly been scientific and news-based stuff, research for the shows, things just related to kind of work. Fairly dry, academic, and I've stayed away from most first-person accounts and human interest-type stories, and definitely know COVID in my social media. I'm not down with engaging with conspiracy nuts at the moment.

I definitely don't have the patience for that. Jeff did mention you were a little long-winded about getting to the point. I mean, you could just have said that I was getting a little off tangent. Well, you know, I've no idea what that tangent even is.

OK, I can see that your breaking in period is going to be long and painful. Probably best conducted in a Samper room. Bussman's holiday mate. Bussman's holiday.

Fair enough. I'll have to do some hellish thinking. And that's essentially what doom-scrolling is all about. So this year, people have been doom-scrolling in earnest.

So if you're not familiar with the term, you're probably going to be familiar with the behaviour. It's essentially the compulsion to endlessly scroll through your news and social media feeds, starting, you know, literally from when you wake up in bed in the morning and ending in bed at night. Again, still scrolling before you go to sleep. Obviously, this will be punctuated by long periods of doom-scrolling throughout the day.

There's another variant which is doom-surfing. And that's going a little bit deeper. That's falling into that rabbit hole of link-surfing into the darkest regions of the web. And as I said, I think we've all been a little bit guilty of it this past few months.

And, you know, while I can kind of arrest the COVID stuff a little, that's largely because I already have my political doom-diction to serve. Doom-diction. It's just another thing I'm trying out addiction to about news. But there are genuine negative health impacts that can result from this kind of behaviour.

So scientists have noted that we are instinctively drawn to negative news. There may be any evolutionary aspect to that. It's looking for threats, looking for information that threatens us. But it can also colour the way that we view the world.

So since the 1970s, we've identified what's been called the mean world syndrome. And it's the idea that the world is a terrible, and dangerous and violent place to live in. And that gets reinforced by things we see in movies and books and news reports. And of course, now, with social media.

So you're telling listeners to this show, to ignore dystopian messaging? Well, at least I make the point of telling people that it doesn't have to be so dystopian. You know, admittedly, that's usually after I've painted a picture that makes the red wedding look like a day out at a water park. But, you know, the algorithms of our social feeds can seem to amplify this messaging.

Once we've disappeared down that rabbit hole, the algorithms serve up more of the same kind of content. And that's why my YouTube feed is now pretty much largely unwatchable. I think I got recommended a cop car chase reality show called The Interceptors on YouTube last night. Did you watch it?

Well, just as research for the show, not for any enjoyment purposes, you know, just as a proof of point. But, you know, once the algorithms have a hold on you, it can be difficult to break the pattern. But there are some strategies I think you can take. The New York Times writer Brian Chen has published a few doom-scrolling pieces himself after falling into that same trap that many of us find ourselves in.

So he spoke to a bunch of health professionals who helped him to come up with some methods to actually break the habit. Is it a structural thing? Partly, or at least it is according to the neuroscientist, Asim Ghazali, the way he describes it is similar to a dieting plan. You sketch out a plan for your meals, you control what you consume.

So one way to bring back that sense of control is to actually structure your day. Like work. Well, exactly. So we had a chat earlier in the week, and you mentioned that BFM's rotation structures really kind of work for you.

You know, you find yourself overall happier and more productive, being able to work from home one week out of every two. So you have kind of the best of both worlds. You have the structure of office life one week, and the relative freedom of working from home to next. And I know a lot of people are back at their physical workplaces at least part of the time, but we're still a little bit constrained.

You know, most of us are still spending more time at home than we were a year ago. And our leisure activities are still quite curtailed. So it can help to plan out your days in the same way as you would a traditional working day. Are you a planner, Matt?

As somebody who charges by the hour, and no, not like that, I am actually pretty self-disciplined about this stuff. So I have a mental plan, but even without I fall into the pattern of doom scrolling. So Adam Ghazali suggests scheduling pretty much everything, you know, your work times, your meal times, your quality time with loved ones, even down to the breaks you take throughout your day. But aren't the breaks where we do scroll?

Well, when you look at breaks from a work perspective, you know, we take them frequently throughout the day. Some of them are just quick pauses, you know, to run to the bathroom or to go and grab a glass of water. Others are longer. And they're more than just time away from the screen and away from tasks and from meetings.

There are a chance to socialise with colleagues, to catch up on the human stuff, like, you know, brand new recipes and why cats speak kids. And that's an aspect that, so I work from home and social distancing are making much harder for us to do. Cats beating kids. What do you want about?

If only that was a YouTube channel. That would be the most awesome thing. Cats are better than kids. I mean, I don't think I'd want cats physically beating kids.

That would be a bit strange. But you know, it's we're talking about that kind of social aspect of things. We still interact with people, but it's without those same friendly edges. So I've been working with a group of people who have just started working at a company and forging those personal relationships has been really challenging for them.

Some of them are yet to meet face to face, let alone go and grab a coffee together. But you can overcome it. So I was reading the Twitter feed of the well-known British tech writer, broadcaster and thoroughly nice man Bill Thompson this week. Now he said he's taking the hanging around at the end of Zoom meetings to see who else is slowed to log off.

And he just grabs a few minutes to chat with whoever is hanging around at the end. Because we forget how important those kind of chance encounters are for sparking ideas and concept. And just for increasing that sense of wellbeing. OK, when we come back more ways to control your doom scrolling habit.

And believe it or not, Matt believes you can sit your way to health. BFM 89.9, the Business Station. Baba from Malacca. BFM 89.9, the Business Station.

BFM 89.9, the Business Station. This is MSP. Now we've been following Matt's daily routine on today's show. Do you ever get out of bed?

Well, I would admit that the coronavirus has been an excuse to sleep late and do a lot of my initial stuff from bed. But in general I'm up and about. We were talking about making plans. And one of the reasons we often fail at intentions to diet or change other habits is that we tend to over plan.

We come up with a structure that isn't realistic. Me working from bed for an hour in the morning is something that's realistic. You know, I don't drink coffee in the morning. I'm not hungry when I wake up.

So it's a quiet time for me to get organised and actually plan my day. Then I can get up, exercise, shower, eat and kind of hit the computer. I was wondering when we'd get to the exercise. Well, more about that later when we get to sitting, actually, conversely.

But for now, yes, another way to break the doom-scrolling is to put the screen down and do something physical for, you know, just for 15 minutes, go for a walk or a run. If you can't get out of the house or wherever you are, you know, maybe do some yoga, meditation and mindfulness work for some people, they don't work for me. I can honestly say I never feel more anxious and short to breath than the times that I've tried to meditate. So it really is about finding the methods that work for you?

Well, yeah, Chen at the New York Times also spoke to the author, Dr. Vivek Murthy, a former vice admiral and surgeon general under Barack Obama. Now, he's shifted a lot of his zoom and other calls to when he's out walking because he said that stops him sitting and leaning towards a camera, which he feels, you know, has a bad effect on his body. I do something similar.

I take all my video calls and do all my video meetings at a standing desk. It helps me to feel more comfortable. It's a more natural position. I tend to feel less tired by the process of the meetings.

And also, it means that I'm a little bit further away from the screen. Now, Dr. Murthy also suggests that we follow a Japanese practice called a Moai. This is a small group of trusted friends and associates who get together regularly and can speak sort of candidly and in confidence.

Do you have a Moai? Yes. Dr. Murthy has two friends in his.

They speak once a month for a couple of hours. Mine is a little bit larger. It consists of me, Jeff, Brushtail and Trooper. They're cats, aren't they?

Well, you know, people are problematic. Apart from Jeff, who's obviously my cat, they're all neighborhood strays. But they're great listeners and they know everything that's going on indeed the neighborhood. And the point is it's a support structure that actually works for me.

Now, Jeff warned me that getting sense out of you might be nigh on impossible. It's all about perseverance. Another thing that has been a feature of our rather less active lifestyles of late has been our increasing waistline. So I've had to massively cut my carbon take just to keep my weight at that stable level of unhealthy.

Still fighting that crisp addiction? Yeah, it's worse than June scrolling. I think that one. What we're seeing as countries struggle to reorient to potentially long-term accommodation with coronavirus is governments pushing the idea of at-home health as a way of reducing pressure on their health systems.

Because we kind of have a two-pronged problem. Firstly, we know that people with underlying health conditions, you know, heart problems, diabetes, they're at a greater risk of serious complications from the virus. Second, that forcing people to stay at home, restricting and controlling their exercise options, that can actually increase the risk for some people of developing conditions like diabetes and heart problems. So circling back to your crisp addiction?

Well, things like low-carb diets certainly seem to help people lose weight in the short-term. We are less sure of their long-term effectiveness simply because many of these diets are actually relatively new. So we haven't had the physical time to run long-term surveys and tests. We know that a lot of people can shift weight by dieting, but that they have more trouble preventing the weight from creeping back on.

This is the case for more consistent exercise. Well, obviously exercise is good for a whole host of reasons. You know, burns energy, regulates mood, it's good for your mental health, it can help to stabilize blood sugar levels. So exercise is definitely good.

If you're not somebody who exercises a lot, you should maybe get some medical advice to figure out what level of exercise is suitable for you. But one of the things is there's no clear link between exercise and weight loss. It can certainly help you in preventing weight gain, but there's no direct or clear link between the exercise and weight loss. So this is leading some countries to look at more drastic solutions to keep potential second waves of the coronavirus at bay.

The UK, to which I can add to my own anecdotal evidence, has a growing problem with obesity, is considering massively increasing the access of British citizens to surgical solutions to weight management problems. Like gastric bands? Yes, so the new scientist has reported that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, probably no stranger to the seductive power of the potato chip himself, is considering making surgical options more widely available on the National Health Service. And how effective is gastric surgery?

Well, certainly gastric bands and bypass surgeries are effective in that they reduce how much food can either be consumed or digested. So they are effective, if radical, when it comes to reducing weight. But they're not without plenty of issues themselves. You know, for one thing, it's a major operation and any kind of major surgery has associated risks.

There are complications with things like the absorption of vitamins and minerals from the food that you eat. The process of eating itself can become more difficult and, of course, less pleasurable. And according to new scientists, there's also evidence that a percentage of recipients of gastric band or gastric surgery simply swap the food addiction for something like alcohol addiction. So there are also these kind of mental health support requirements that come along with taking this surgical intervention approach.

So this isn't one of your recommended hacks then? Definitely not. You know, this is something that only a physician should recommend and probably only after you've exhausted all the far less drastic options to control your weight. Obviously, this is not a medical advice show.

It's, you know, I just wanted to illustrate some of the hidden risks that we face by this process of, you know, sheltering in place, to which I'll add another hidden danger that we face in our homes. At this point, I'm at a loss. Household cleaning products, whiplashing, guitar strings, Lego on the stairs. All of those things are definitely dangerous, so they're valid and good points.

I was actually thinking more of the couch. Stream and Jill has been an enormous part of most of our lives for the past six months, and let's face it, chairs are just so comfy. And let's be fair, daytime napping is fun too. Well, it is.

You know, there have been so many slothful delights that the past few months have helped us to turn into habits. So as I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, we know the health risks that sedentary behavior poses, all those lovely illnesses that I want bother repeating. So we may actually have limited options for what we can do with, you know, our environment at the time being. Not everyone can get a standing desk to work from home or gym equipment that can mitigate the risks a little bit.

But one thing we can do is to change the way that we sit. Now we've mentioned Tanzania's had so people on the show before. They're one of the few model hunter-gatherer societies left on earth. In terms of their relatively low levels of disease and long lifespans?

Yeah, and you know, a lot of the studies so far have looked at their health from the perspective of activity. So they have a lifestyle that requires them to be physically active many hours a day. But the activity didn't explain all the differences between people in developed countries where averages, average weights are increasing, people are getting heavier with the lifestyle that the the heads of people have. So the researchers started looking into the way that they rest.

And that's where it started to get kind of really interesting because they found that the heads of were at leisure for roughly the same number of hours as many of the slothful populations of Western Europe. What was different was actually the way that they rested. No Netflix do chill with. Well, more importantly, I think no sofa and no chairs.

So we've long known that chairs are not great for us. I think back in 2012, I'm in Lee, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, analyzed mortality data from things like heart disease, diabetes and cancer, and determined that prolonged periods of inactivity, especially from sitting, were killing around 5 million people every year. Even going back to 1953, a survey found that London bus drivers, who of course would sit for long periods each day, were more likely to develop heart conditions and they developed them at a younger age than the conductors on the same buses, who stood and walked around the buses all day. Yet the heads of people spend similar amounts of time at rest as we do, but without the negative effects.

Because they don't have chance to sag into? Yeah, I mean the team researching the heads of living alongside them for a decade or so, said that they were attracted to the researchers camp chairs. You know, it's this weird thing. We think about a long day at work and we dream of getting back to that comfy supportive chair and just sitting back and relaxing and watching our TV.

We don't think of the chair as being our enemy, but chairs actually allow us to switch off our muscles because we're allowing the cushions and the back of the chair to support us. NASA studies dating back to the 1950s on the prolonged effects of zero gravity on astronauts determined that this kind of inactivity can lead to loss of muscle mass, thinning bones and an increase in fats like triglycerides in the blood, which of course are linked to heart disease. OK, we're running out of time. Bottom line, if we're stuck in our homes, how can we copy those hunter-gatherers?

Simply by ditching the chairs. Now, I know a lot of people want like this answer, but squatting is actually a really healthy way to sit. The researchers with the head saw found that squatting requires five to ten times as much muscle activity as slumping against those cushions and other so-called active sitting postures, whether it's kneeling, sitting cross-legged, some of the yoga style seating postures are also a lot more beneficial than just sitting there slumped and vegging on the couch. Presumably you're sitting whilst we're recording this.

I am actually kneeling. I've had one of those fancy kneeling chairs for a few years. A few months ago, I took the back rest off it because I found again that I would slump against the back rest too much. Now it's a lot less comfortable and my posture is much better, so I guess it must be working.

Have you ever been squatting ago? Where I've read the new scientist's report that outlined the benefits, yes, I tried it, and like most, let's say, stomach-ly balanced middle-aged people who have not spent much time squatting, I found that my muscles don't really do that. But I did find a lot of resources online that can help you to find these kind of active sitting postures that will work for your body, even if it's just sitting on the sofa with your knees up. So yeah, if you want to stay healthy during the pandemic, eat less, exercise more, and squat.

Spoken like a true tyrant. Great at-home hacks from MSP, if for some reason you actually enjoyed that. You can find more episodes of MSP on the BFM website and the app. Of course, now for transcripts of these shows, head over to culturepop.com and you can find my on all the usual social channels.

He's at CulturePop on Instagram and at CulturePop up on Twitter, BFM 89.9, The Business Station. Thank you for listening to this podcast. To find more great interviews, go to bfm.my or find us on iTunes, bfm 89.9, The Business Station.