Buzzed to Get Up

Anyone who has been paying attention has a pretty good idea that sitting around in front of a computer screen or just sitting at a desk isn’t so good for their health. But what are you going to do about it?

That’s simple — just get up and move around every hour.

Okay, but honestly we sometimes get immersed in what we’re doing and before you know it, two hours have passed and we’re on our way to diabetes, hypertension, depression, anxiety, and an early death. Oh no!

Determined not to let this happen to us, we dutifully checked out our options. An applicaiton on your computer or your phone can give you a buzz every 45 minutes to get up. But your computer or your phone doesn’t necessarily know when you got up and moved last.

So we settled on a fitness tracker. Two of the leading offerings with idle alerts are the Vivosmart by Garmin and Jawbone’s UP3 band. The UP3 incorporates some pretty sophisticated technology. Somewhat better reviews and a more appealing design steered us to the Vivosmart instead.

This expensive smart watch, fitness tracker, and buzzer-to-get-you-off-your-bottom every hour might be worth it. It’s unobtrusive, looking like a minimalist watch design. And it does a pretty good job of bugging you to get off your bottom every hour. The inactivity monitor, shown above, keeps track of how long you’ve been physically idle. After an hour it vibrates and tells you: “MOVE!” And it will keep bugging you (gently) at regular intervals until you’ve taken about 200 steps. This smartband does other cool stuff, too.

Will such innovations save us from our idleness? There’s suggestive research that electronic prompts can help, but nothing definitive yet. After a week of using it, though, we’re satisfied that our money for a smartband was well spent.

Click here for more from ConscienHealth on the dangers of physical idleness.

Buzzer, photograph © foamcow / flickr

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