Standing up at work benefits health, experts say
Experts say you should start standing up at work for at least two hours a day — and work your way toward four.
That is a long-awaited answer for a growing number of workers who may have heard of the terrible health effects of prolonged sitting and have been wondering whether they should buy standing or treadmill desks.
The average office worker sits for about 10 hours, first in front of the computer plow- ing through emails, making calls or writing proposals and eating lunch — and then in front of the TV or surfing the Web at home.
Medical researchers have long warned that prolonged sitting is dangerous, associated with a significantly higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer and depression, as well as muscle and joint problems. Some have said that the office chair is worse for your health than
smoking and kills more people than HIV. Even working out vigorously before or after work may not compensate for extending sitting.
Those researchers have come up with suggestions for how much time to sit and stand that could dramatically change work habits.
According to a statement released in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Americans should begin to stand, move and take breaks for at least two out of eight hours at work. They should work up to spending at least half of the eight-hour workday in what researchers call these “light-intensity activities.”
“Our whole culture invites you to take a seat. We say, ‘Are you comfortable? Please take a seat.’ So we know we have a huge job in front of us,” said Gavin Bradley, director of Active Working, an international group aimed at reducing excessive sitting that, with Public Health England, convened the expert panel. “Our first order of business is to get people to spend two hours of their workday not sitting. However you do it, the point is to just get off your rear end.”
Bradley said the first level of activity is simply standing.
While the group endorses the use of sit/ stand desks, Bradley said there are other activities that can get people to move for two hours during the workday: “Taking your calls standing. Walking around. Pacing. Holding standing meetings. Walking meetings. Walking over to a colleague’s desk instead of sending an email. Using the stairs instead of the elevator. Taking a lunch break. Simple stuff.”
Bradley has changed the way he works since taking on the challenge to get people out of their seats. He starts his day standing on a comfort mat and has his sit/stand desk programmed to tell him, through a pop-up notification on his computer, to change his posture every 20 to 30 minutes.
“It’s all about mixing it up,” he said. “Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting. The enzymes that move the bad fat from your arteries to your muscles, where it can get burned off, slow down. The muscles in your lower body are turned off. And after two hours, good cholesterol drops 20 percent. Just getting up for five minutes is going to get things going again. These things are so simple they’re almost stupid.”
Researchers have known of the link between inactivity and higher rates of sickness and mortality dating to studies of bus drivers and office-based postal workers in the 1950s. Recent observational studies comparing workers who sit for long periods with those who sit fewer hours have found that sedentary workers have more than twice the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a 13 percent increased risk of cancer and a 17 percent increased risk of dying.
Authors of the new guidelines said they were a starting point, designed to give people a research-based target rather than rely on the claims made by the manufacturers of treadmill and sit/stand desks that are becoming all the rage.