Transcript: How technology is changing our bodies

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘How technology is changing our bodies’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos.

Last year, for the first time ever, the World Health Organisation put out a report warning about the risks of being sedentary. The WHO said hundreds of millions of people will develop heart disease, diabetes and other diseases over the next 10 years because of how little we move. And that makes sense because a lot of us get paid to sit in front of our computers, and when we’re off, we stare into the vortex of our phones. But scientists are actually pretty sure they know the best way for us to deal with this, and it’s to get up and move, and not just at the gym for an hour once a day, but to do it regularly throughout our day. Manoush Zomorodi is a longtime technology journalist and podcast host who recently challenged thousands of her listeners to do this. She partnered with Columbia University Medical School for a project called Body Electric on her podcast, TED Radio Hour, and she’s with me today to talk about it. Manoush, hi. It’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. 

Manoush Zomorodi
Oh, Lilah, the pleasure is mine. I’ve been looking forward to this. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
First, I would love to hear you tell us a little bit more about, just big picture, how did you go about setting up the experiment? Yeah. Where did the initial data come from? 

Manoush Zomorodi
Well, this goes way back to a revelation that I had, that I feel like crap when I sit on my technology all day. And, you know, I mean, it just got worse during the pandemic. I was like, I don’t understand. All I’m doing is sitting here working. Why do I feel so bad? And it just made me want to understand a couple of things, which was, you know, is my body adapting to my technology? Like, will gamers have very long thumbs two generations from now? Weird questions that goes through my mind. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right. And as you’re trying to answer that question, you came across this study that actually said, yes, this is affecting us, and yes, we can fix it. 

Manoush Zomorodi
Yes. I came across a study in January 2023 that was done at Columbia University Medical Center, where they had run interventions in the lab where they had people come in work at a desk on their laptop and then take breaks on a treadmill — take five-minute breaks every half-hour, take a five-minute break every hour, take a five-minute break every two hours. And when I say break, I mean walking two miles per hour on the treadmill. So not like sprinting, not doing jumping jacks, nothing big. And the effects that they found were extraordinary. And in fact, they came to the conclusion that five minutes of gentle walking every half-hour is the most efficient way to mitigate the effects of your sedentary, screen-filled life. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. And what they’re saying is that that’s actually better than going to the gym for a concentrated hour, like before work. Is that right?

Manoush Zomorodi
That’s the sad part. Like, even if you go to the gym and work out, that’s great. Don’t stop doing that. But if you think that’s taking care of your health for the rest of the day, unfortunately, that is incorrect. So even if you’re working out, you need to be taking these movement breaks to, you know, get your blood pumping, literally. That also is the case for a standing desk. For some people, it makes them feel better. So if it works for you, great. But that does not replace the actual movement. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. And before we get further into that, can I ask, how bad is it? How much is technology and sitting too long affecting us? 

Manoush Zomorodi
Oh. It’s like really bad. So it is the reason why countries around the globe are in the midst of a slow-moving health crisis. We see skyrocketing rates of early-onset diabetes, hypertension. We also see rising rates of myopia, eye problems, macular degeneration. And, you know, some of these, I was like, well, is it directly because of that or do we know? But with the sitting part, yes, we know this. And, you know, some of the reasons are really fascinating, which is, when you sit you put a bend in your arteries at knee level. So like, if you think about it as like a garden hose, like, and you kink the hose and everything gets kind of stuck, the same thing is happening with the blood that is pooling in your legs. And so this has detrimental effects on the vessels in your legs. And some research even suggests that sitting for hours can actually damage the inner lining of your blood vessels.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. All right. So as I understand it, this Columbia paper gets your mind running, and you call the head of the lab, Keith Diaz, and he tells you that he needs more data from the real world to see if, whether people would actually do this in their lives. Right? 

Manoush Zomorodi
Yeah. He’s like, I don’t know. He’s like, you’re totally right. Because if no one can do this, what is the point of my lab running more of this? So he invited me in to give it a try myself. So I went to his lab, and one day I sat at a desk and worked for eight hours without getting up. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. How is that? 

Manoush Zomorodi
Pretty much like a normal day, actually, Lilah. (Laughter) I mean, I had all these contraptions strapped to me, so that was a little different. And then I came back again a week later, and they got me up every 25 minutes to stroll on the treadmill that was next to the desk. And then when I walked, my blood sugar was cut nearly in half.

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s huge.

Manoush Zomorodi
Yeah, huge. My blood pressure was down five points and I rated my mood and work as better, higher. So to me, I was like, well, clearly, I mean, it works like there’s no question. But then it comes down to, like, the cultural, softer science, social science of it all. Can it be done? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. And so for that you needed your listeners.

Manoush Zomorodi
I did.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Is that right? Like, yeah. So, you’re right, because your experiment basically took . . . was it 20,000 of your listeners signed up? 

Manoush Zomorodi
That’s exactly right. Yeah. We put out the invitation to listeners like, will you give this a try? Will you tell us if it works or doesn’t work for you? So should I tell you what we found? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. 

Manoush Zomorodi
OK. You’re not gonna be surprised, Lilah. It was hard. It was really frickin’ hard. Only 50 per cent reported being able to take movement breaks every five minutes every half-hour. What got in their way? It was feeling too busy to take a break. Being worried that they were gonna look weird in their office if they got up or they were on a call or something. Feeling pressured, you know, to make sure that green button on Slack didn’t go off, to be productive. So that was mostly what got in their way. But the people who did manage, it was extraordinary. People felt more positive emotions, fewer negative ones. They felt more energised. They reported an average of 25 per cent reduction in fatigue. And this was correlative, right. Like, so if you did the five minutes every two hours, you felt 15 per cent reduction. If you did it five minutes every hour, you felt 20 per cent. The more there were, there was movement, the better people felt. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. So the sort of nuts thing to me is that it was hard to do, it was hard to stick to, but it made them feel better. And I feel like this is the thing that I come back to a lot. We know that there are things that will make us feel better, but it’s just hard to do them. 

Manoush Zomorodi
Yes, yes, yes. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
What was the hardest part for listeners? 

Manoush Zomorodi
I think the hardest part is, you know, it’s a pain, right? You know that you’re in the middle of something and your buzzer goes off and you’re like, oh, God, I gotta walk again? And I think that’s OK. If there’s a moment where you’re like, I’m not gonna do it this hour, that’s fine, that’s fine. But if you try to do it like maybe three of the hours during your day, that’s always better than nothing. Always.

So people found that setting timers, having a buddy system, connecting it to a certain work — like one woman would, you know, she started scheduling her zooms to be 55 minutes and her day was packed, but that five minutes is now when she walks. And I have a . . . I know some people who are doing that who are, they’ve just decided to make their day work around these breaks. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
I think a timer is a thing that would work for me. 

Manoush Zomorodi
Yes. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Manoush, you know, I want to get into more practical things so our listeners can start to figure out how to do this, too. But before I do, I would love to take a step back with you and just reflect, big picture, I feel like we all have the sense that the amount that we’re sitting, the amount that we’re looking at our phones, like the way that we sit is bad for us. I mean, I feel this, like, elbow problem and realise that it’s because of the way that I’m holding my phone and the years in which I’ve been holding my phone that way. And part of the reason that I reached out to you is because you’ve been doing this for so long. You’ve done these experiments. You did this one 10 years ago called Bored and Brilliant that pushed us to be bored and go off our phones. I guess, is this like a losing fight? Why, you know, why haven’t things changed for the better since then? I guess is the question I have. 

Manoush Zomorodi
So I want to be clear that, like, it’s really hard to talk about technology as like a monolith, right? But really, I think what we’re starting to understand — and when I say we, I mean the incredible scientists out there who are doing this mapping — is what I like to call the mind-body-tech connection. This really, you know, we’re talking about mind-body and what we’re using is technology to sort of break pathways in many ways. And so I’m just really fascinated to add my layer of tech to some of the things that they’re discovering. And I can give examples. So, you know, I’ve been doing Pilates for 10 years now, and I’ve always wanted to understand, like, why do I feel like I don’t give a shit about anything after class? Like, I will walk in so stressed out and I just don’t care afterwards. And a neurobiologist, Peter Strick, at the University of Pittsburgh found that actually there is a relationship between our core muscles and the brain and the adrenal glands that we didn’t know. And so that means that, like, if you are sitting all day slumped over your computer, you are not activating that conversation that they all have to each other. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. It actually affects your brain. 

Manoush Zomorodi
Exactly. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Your core affects your brain, yeah.

Manoush Zomorodi
Exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, the same is . . . information overload, doomscrolling. You know, I talked to one psychiatrist, Sahib Khalsa, at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research who is studying introception. This is the, our ability to understand, like, if let’s say we feel our heart pounding, is it because we’re having a panic attack or we’re really excited because we’re about to, I don’t know, go on a trip or something? We have to take the time to make sense of the sensations we feel. But when we’re online, you know, I put to him, I was like, what happens when we feel outrage, anger, sadness, shock, awe, wonder in three minutes, you know? And, you know, his whole thing is you reboot your laptop so it functions better. You need to reboot your brain and your body. This noisy world is, can feel like we’re overloaded. So we need to sort of turn ourselves off. Rest. Limit the amount of sensory input we get so that we can function. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s talk a little more about things that could work for people. I called you a few months ago, actually, which is part of why we have you on today, because I was writing a column about how physically uncomfortable it had gotten for me to get bored. (Laughter) And one framing that you gave me that I found helpful since is that actually, when you switch off and go for a walk, your brain needs a few minutes to adjust and click in and relax. Like, the discomfort is temporary. And if you can just get through it into the other side, you can actually have your best ideas on the other side. 

Manoush Zomorodi
Yeah, totally. It’s like, you know, you get into bed and you’re like, I’m not tired. I’m not tired. And then the alarm goes off, right. You know, the same sort of thing. Like you’re, like, just relax. You slept last night. You can sleep again. I mean, it’s really the same thing, right? It’s like, put the phone away for an hour and just get out a pen, pencil, pad of paper and do some brainstorming. Like, I don’t do that often enough, but when I do, it works. I know it works, you know, doesn’t have to be an hour. It could be 20 minutes. Or go for a walk and make sure your phone is in your bag. But like for me, I know that it has to be minimum 25-minute walk because the first 15 minutes are like, oh my god, I have to make dinner and shoot, what am I gonna do? That was so dumb. Why did I say that? You know, it’s all the things that I kind of have to, like, clear. Clear out the garbage before I get to, like, the gold. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
After hearing from all your listeners who took these five-minute breaks and stood and walked, what did you find is the best way to create, like, habits out of moving more? What seem to work for people? 

Manoush Zomorodi
Yeah. I mean culture shift really was the answer. And it really reminded me, you know, when I first started out as a journalist, people used to take smoke breaks. I don’t know if people remember that, but like, it was, everyone was like, no one would, you know, shush went out for a smoke break. Like, that was fine. Everybody was fine about it. And so, and then you get to the point where smoking is banned, and now everyone’s fine with that. And, you know, I’m not a policymaker and I am cautious about, you know, policy nudges. But if your, you know, pot at work or at home just has habits, they just, they stick. My kid walks himself now, he’s like, oh, I haven’t gotten out of the house. I really need to go for a walk. He didn’t used to say that. So it just, it becomes the thing where you’re like, I feel bad when I don’t do this, so I’ll just go do it. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. Manoush, this has been so interesting. I could ask you questions all day. But I guess my biggest, last one is just there are so many things we could do. Like, we could do the five minutes every 30 minutes walking, and we could do the, you know, the 20 minutes of Pilates and also the . . . and also the meditation and also the yoga, and our whole day would be filled. (Laughter) And so I guess my question is, like, how do we choose for us? Like, big picture, what do you think we should walk away thinking about as we figure out how to make ourselves feel better? 

Manoush Zomorodi
I mean, to me, and I’m really trying to do this as a parent, it’s about being tuned in to your body and, you know, giving yourself that little survey, maybe not from Columbia Medical School every night, but to yourself. You know, I made one for one of my kids during the pandemic, and it was really simple. Like, did you sleep last night, well or badly? You know, did you eat three meals today? How would you rate your anxiety? Did you poop? Literally going through mind and body and like, just asking yourself these questions. And when you see something that could, you know, maybe feel a bit better dialling it up in certain areas. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Pay attention. Trust yourself. 

Manoush Zomorodi
Yeah. Exactly. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Manoush, this was so thought-provoking and fun. Thank you so much for being on the show. 

Manoush Zomorodi
Oh, yeah. Good. Thank you so much for having me. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. You can find Manoush’s project by searching for the Body Electric wherever you listen to podcasts. It’s on the podcast TED Radio Hour. Also in the show notes are discounts for a subscription to the Financial Times and ways to stay in touch with me and with the show, whether that’s by email on X or on Instagram.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, and here’s my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a wonderful week and we’ll find each other again on Friday.