- Keith Diaz (Keith Diaz)
- “dialogue”
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Many office jobs involve prolonged sitting
To reduce the health hazards of sitting for too long, get up and move around for five minutes every half hour. That’s the main finding of a new study by my colleagues and me, published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
We asked 11 healthy middle-aged and elderly people (volunteers) to sit in our laboratory for 8 hours – representing a typical working day (office workers) – for a total of 5 days.
On one day, the volunteers sat for a full eight hours, taking breaks only for brief trips to the bathroom.
But on other days, we tested different tactics for interrupting the volunteers’ sedentary situations, for example, standing up and walking for a minute every half hour on one day; Let them walk for 5 minutes every hour.
Our aim was to find a way to minimize the effort, but also offset the harmful health effects of sitting for a long time. Specifically, we measured changes in the participants’ blood sugar and blood pressure, two important risk factors for heart disease.
We found that walking lightly for 5 minutes every half hour was the only effective way to lower blood sugar significantly compared to sitting all day. In particular, walking for 5 minutes every half hour can reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes by nearly 60%.
At the same time, compared with sitting all day, it can also reduce blood pressure by 4 to 5 percentage points. But even shorter and fewer bouts of walking can improve blood pressure. Even walking for 1 minute every hour can lower blood pressure by 5 percent.
In addition to the health benefits, taking breaks to walk can also have mental health benefits. In the study, we asked volunteers to rate their mental state with a questionnaire. We found that walking for five minutes every half hour reduced fatigue compared to sitting all day, it also put volunteers in a better mood and helped them feel more energized.
We also found that even moving around every hour was enough to improve mood and reduce fatigue.
Why is it important?
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Getting up and moving can help your health
Those who were sedentary for several hours a day had significantly higher rates than those who were active all day, including diabetes, heart disease, dementia (commonly known as dementia) and several types of cancer.
A sedentary lifestyle also puts people at greater risk of premature death. But daily exercise alone may not be able to reverse the harmful health effects of sitting.
public health issues
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Some jobs make it hard to move around every half hour
Thanks to technological advances, the amount of time an adult in an industrially developed country like the United States spends sitting has risen steadily for decades. Many adults now sit most of the time. And the problem has only gotten worse since COVID-19. With more reasons to work remotely, people are now less willing to venture outside. It is therefore clear that strategies are needed to address this growing public health problem of the 21st century.
Current guidelines recommend that adults should “sit less and move more”. But the recommendations don’t offer any specific advice or methods on how often or for how long.
simple and easy
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Some units let employees work standing
Our work provides a simple and easy method: get up and walk lightly for 5 minutes every half hour. If your work or lifestyle requires prolonged sitting, this simple behavioral change may reduce the health risks associated with being sedentary.
Our research also provides employers with clear guidance on how to make workplaces healthier. Although, it may sound counterintuitive, getting up and moving around on a regular basis can actually help employees be more productive than working continuously without taking breaks.
Our research focused primarily on regular light walking. Some walking strategies — for example, walking briskly for 1 minute every hour — did not lower blood sugar. We don’t know if there are health benefits to walking faster in the same circumstances.
Next step
We are currently testing more than 25 different ways to counteract the health hazards of sitting. Many adults are unlikely to walk every half hour due to the nature of their jobs, such as truck or taxi drivers.
Therefore, the ability to find alternatives with similar effects can provide the public with several different options, and ultimately allow people to choose the one that is most suitable for their work and lifestyle.
Note: Keith Diaz is Associate Professor of Behavioral Medicine, Columbia University. This article was originally published on the creative sharing website “Dialogue” (the Conversation)superior.