No Thanks, I’d Rather Stand
A new study suggest that if you work 40 hours a week sitting at your desk, then you’re a “couch potato”–even if you manage to exercise 3-5 times a week for 30 minutes or more. Not only are you a “couch potato”, but if you sit for most of your day then your risk of heart attack increases by 54% compared to those who barely sit all day. Some of the healthy benefits of regular exercise seem to be minimized just by sitting at your desk!
Scientists at Pennington Biomedical Research in Baton Rogue, LA studied the lifestyles of more than 17,000 men and women over the course of 13 years. They found that people who sat for most of the day were 54% more likely to die from heart attack than those who barely sat.
More surprisingly, when they compared smokers to nonsmokers, overweight people to those with a healthy weight, regular exercisers to couch potatoes, it didn’t matter! No matter how much the study volunteers weighed, or whether they ate right, or exercised regularly, if they sat for a major part of their day, their odds of heart attack were greater.
Not only does sitting at your desk all day increase your risk of heart attack, but there are other disadvantages. Sitting for long periods causes muscle stiffness, neck and back pain, and slumped posture from leaning over your keyboard. Your muscles structure and your posture changes even when you’re standing. Sitting all day pushes your belly out, making you look fatter.
Not only do you seem fatter, but not surprisingly, you can get fatter. Your largest muscle group, the [1] gluts (or butt) forget how to work properly, become lazy and burn less calories. Workers who sit on average burn 60 calories an hour less less those that stand. That’s a difference of roughly 500 calories a day!
The researchers at Pennington led by Dr. Peter Katzmarzyk believe that if we stop thinking about exercise as something we do at specific time in our day, then we’ll be a lot healthier. Movement is key! If we take breaks every hour to get up and walk around or get a drink of water, stand rather than sit when talking on the phone, take a walk during our lunch break, or get up and talk to our coworkers rather than send long emails, we can improve our health.
You can even modify your desk so that its a standing workstation by moving your monitor up to eye level and your keyboard and mouse within reach when standing with arms bent at 90 degrees. Your feet may hurt at times, but in the end, you’ll adjust and will ultimately burn more calories.
There are lots of little lifestyle changes you can make to add more movement to your day and break up long periods of sitting. There are also a number of clinical trials designed to study how these lifestyle changes impact your health. If you are interested in finding out more about participating in these studies, visit paidclinicaltrials.org. In the meantime, if sitting all day means back pain, poor posture, and a flabbier figure, I think I’d rather stand a bit. How about you?
Venita Gresham Watson, Ph.D.
Tags: I’d Rather Stand, No Thanks
Articles and Updates
