Christina Sumners: It’s science explained. You’re listening to Science Sound Off on Texas A&M Health Talk. Welcome to Science Sound Off. I’m Christina Sumners.
Tim Schnettler: And I’m Tim Schnettler.
Christina Sumners: With us today we have Dr. Mark Benden, Director of the Ergonomics Center at Texas A&M, and a department head at the Texas A&M School of Public Health. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Benden.
Mark Benden: Well thank you, it’s great to be here.
Christina Sumners: So, let’s just talk a little bit about your research. But to start off with, what is ergonomics?
Mark Benden: Ergonomics is the study of how people work, and what we really are concerned about nowadays is kind of making our environment, our tools, our equipment, could be office space, ’cause that’s about 2/3 of our workforce now, but making all those things fit people, instead of having people struggle, and a lot of times develop problems and aches and pains and diseases, to fit things. And so we’d rather make it where it’s custom, and adjustable, and can adapt to the person, and work with them and any of their unique sizes or shapes or peculiarities, we all have those. So ergonomics is really concerned about that, and making sure that people can work for as long as they want, and we are all working longer now, that’s a economic reality, it’s also part of the fact that we’re living longer, which is a good thing. So we need to be able to make people comfortable, we need to make them productive, and safe.
Christina Sumners: Interesting, and I know that one of the ways your research is working to do that is to help people have different options to sit or stand when they’re working.
Mark Benden: Correct, we struggle with sedentary behavior nowadays, it’s really common that our, particularly our technology workers, I think all of us sitting here, today, unfortunately, would be subject to that, we tend to spend a lot of hours now in front of a screen of some kind, and we tend to do that at a very low level of physical activity, and so figuring out how to get us up and get us ambulating and moving, we were designed and built to move, it’s how we heal ourselves, we become stronger that way. When we sit around too much we become weaker, and it’s a real challenge for our modern society to get us moving more.
Tim Schnettler: And you mentioned workers, but I know y’all’ve taken this to a different level and you’ve started at it with the younger generation, and as a kid who grew up obese, tell me a little bit about things you guys have found out or things you can do to help youth nowadays.
Mark Benden: Yeah, it’s very critical, and I know it sounds terrible as if we’re kind of giving up on the adults. We’re not giving up on the adults, but we recognize that the reality is we have to start younger. The habits that most of us have as adults, we formed when we were young, and when you look at young children below school age, they are extremely active. I have locally here a three-year-old and one-year-old grandson, and if I were to try and keep up with them for probably about 30 minutes, it would be the world’s greatest CrossFit workout ever. I probably wouldn’t make it, but you know, the thing is we’re so physically active when we’re young and out of school, and once we get in school, we’re told by teachers and of course our environment to kind of sit down, sit still, be quiet, don’t move, and it’s m
