Strictly speaking, this isn’t really publishing industry news per se, but since it pretty much affects everybody in the industry, I’m going to break the news to you anyway: a New Zealand medical study confirms that office workers are prime candidates for deep vein thrombosis, which basically means you get a blood clot in your leg veins, and if you’re really unlucky the clot breaks loose and moves up to your lung, where it kills you. As the AP reports, “34 per cent of patients admitted to hospital with blood clots had been seated at work for long periods,” sometimes as long as 3-4 hours, and these were people under the age of 65.
I can tell you from closely related personal experience this is serious stuff; you might recall that I had to take a day off from blogging last summer to have surgery on my varicose veins, which can lead to thrombosis if not treated. I inherited the condition, but it really shouldn’t have been a problem for another decade or so…except that I spent my salad days in the new media world sitting at a computer for hours on end. Now I make sure to get up at least once an hour and walk around, outside if I can manage it…and, at the risk of giving the smokers in the industry a free pass for more breaks, you should, too!