Office is best fit for health
Pandemic was proof
INCIDENTAL activity while moving around the office or travelling to work may be even more beneficial than deliberate exercise for some people, new research suggests.
In a quirk of fate, researchers were able to accurately monitor the movements of Melbourne office workers before and during Covid lockdowns, raising concerns about the effect of restrictions on type 2 diabetics.
Months before the pandemic, scientists at the Baker Institute placed Fitbits on a group of diabetics to monitor and encourage increase activity during their time working in offices.
When the lockdowns hit and the study participants began working from home, the devices continued to produce data showing just how severe the effect was, as well as surprising revelations about the value of deliberate and incidental activity.
Researcher Christian Brakenridge said that once lockdown hit, the previously active 11 study participants could be seen to be sitting for an extra hour a day and shedding 1500 steps – a tenth of their pre-pandemic activity.
“Pretty much immediately we saw changes because they are the type of people who are keen to change their lifestyle, Mr Brakenridge said.
“Even a drop of about 500 steps, or an increase of 500 steps, is associated with a 2-9 per cent change in risk of death and cardiovascular disease. So, even though these changes might seem kind of small and widespread at the public level, they actually have pretty meaningful implications for the rate at which our population encourages those illhealth effects.”
As well as Fitbits, the 11 office workers were provided with sit-stand desks to encourage more movement in the office as well as week-to-week coaching to help mange their diabetes.
Results of the Baker study, published in the open access journal JMIR Diabetes, track their activity over a combined 2447 days, highlighting a dramatic increase in sedentary behaviour as well as short periods of intense activity during permitted daily outdoor periods.
However, the monitoring revealed that even the unprecedented effort of walking around suburbs made by so many people during lockdown was not enough to offset the missed steps taken as part of a normal working day.
“When they did go for walks it was longer than what it was before the pandemic,” Mr Brakenridge said.
“But they missed the rest of that time doing incidental activity – commuting, incidental walking around the office – and on average and overall, the activity levels reduced.
“The pandemic restrictions were important for reducing the transmission of the virus, but they unfortunately also have other implications for chronic disease management.”