HELP YOUR HEART

Move your legs, says Dr Bethany Barone Gibbs, head of the Gibbs Sedentary Behavior Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. ‘One of the amazing mechanisms your body has is called the muscle pump. Every time you flex the muscles in your calves and legs, it squeezes the blood back up the veins,’ she says. ‘That’s a huge, huge load off your heart.’ It’s probably fine to be seated for six to eight hours a day – ‘but not all at once’, says Dr Gibbs. Try to move around at least once an hour. Even just fidgeting or flexing your calves can help.