Are you sitting comfortably at your desk? Stand up for your health & wellbeing

When you think of something that could threaten your life, you probably don’t think about your chair at work – but according to many researchers, it’s one of the biggest potential threats to your health.

Research shows that you can reduce your chances of cancer, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, back pain and other health issues all with one simple lifestyle change: reduce the time you spend sitting.

“Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV, and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death,” says James Levine, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, in an interview with the LA Times. “The chair is out to kill us.”

You may have heard the saying, “sitting is the new smoking”, which is credited to Dr. Levine. He’s not the only one who believes that we’re sitting ourselves to death. There’s a growing body of research that supports his claim and the benefits of standing desks.

“We weren’t designed to sit,” claims Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division and author of the “Sitting Kills, Moving Heals”. “The body is a perpetual motion machine.”

Dr. Levine estimates that, in the US, we spend more than half of our waking hours sitting down, either watching TV, driving, or sitting at a desk at work or at home.

Exercise Doesn’t Negate Extended Periods of Sitting

You may be thinking, “But I work out several times per week.” The research shows that though exercise is good for you, it doesn’t negate the damage done by extended periods of sitting.

Professor Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, tells Men’s Health, “We see it in people who smoke and people who don’t. We see it in people who are regular exercisers and those who aren’t. Sitting is an independent risk factor.”

He further explains, “The cure for too much sitting isn’t more exercise. Exercise is good, of course, but the average person could never do enough to counteract the effect of hours and hours of chair time.”

As Katy Bowman, a scientist and author of the book: Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement, told Reuters: “You can’t offset 10 hours of stillness with one hour of exercise.”

The reason why is that marathon sitting sessions change your body’s metabolism. Gavin Bradley, director of Active Working, an international group aimed at reducing excessive sitting, explains part of the process, “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.”

Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, describes the process: “Sitting shuts down electrical activity in the legs. It makes the body less sensitive to insulin, causes calorie-burning to plummet, and slows the breakdown of dangerous blood fats, lowering ‘good’ HDL cholesterol.”

Dr. Levine actually started his research into the hazards of sitting and the benefits of standing desks because he was trying to figure out why some people seem to gain weight and others don’t. For his study, he put office workers who weren’t exercisers on a 1,000 calorie diet and had them not change their exercise routine. The result: some gained weight, some lost weight.

He then had the participants wear underwear that was lined with sensors that would tell him how much each worker was moving throughout the day. They discovered the missing link: the group that was losing weight was moving around 2.25 more hours per day than the group that put on weight.

You burn on average of 50 calories more per hour by standing. If you stand for 3 hours per day, five days per week, it adds up to 750 calories burned. In a year that adds up to 30,000 calories, which is almost 9 pounds. This is the equivalent of around 10 marathons per year and why Dr. Levine is a huge proponent of standing desks. See sitting versus standing calculator.

10 Health issues associated with prolonged sitting:

Weight gain/Obesity: your metabolism slows down by 90%after just 30 minutes of sitting, evidence linking physical activity patterns with obesity is increasing rapidly.

Depression & Anxiety: active muscles pump fresh blood and oxygen through the brain and trigger the release of various brain enhancing chemicals. Sitting for prolonged periods slows down brain function.

Type 2 Diabeties: the pancreas produces insulin, a hormone that carries glucose to cells for energy. Cells in idle muscles don’t respond as readily to insulin so the pancreas produces excessive amounts, increasing the risk of diabetes.

Heart disease: muscles burn less fat and blood flow reduces during long periods of sitting, encouraging fatty deposits to clog up the heart.

Dementia: many of the risk factors linked to dementia include diabetes, depression and high blood pressure can be affected by prolonged sitting.

Muscle degeneration: prolonged sitting can lead to tight back muscles and weak abdominal and leg muscles which can cause poor posture and exaggerate the spines natural arch.

Osteoporosis: weight bearing activities such as standing, walking, running stimulate hip and lower body bones to grow thicker ,denser and stronger. Prolonged sitting has the opposite effect.

Back & Neck pain and inflexible spines: spines which don’t move become inflexible and susceptible to damage in mundane activities. Sitting at a desk for long periods craning your neck towards a keyboard or tilting your head to cradle a phone while typing can strain the cervical vertebrate and lead to permanent imbalances.

Cancer: sedentary behaviour has been associated with an increased risk of endometrial, colon and breast cancer.

Mortality: estimated gains in life expectancy were two years for reducing excessive sitting to less than three hours per day.

Actions in the workplace to avoid prolonged sitting:

Stand up & take a break from your computer at least every 45 minutes, set an alert on your phone using the free app (Stand up) or on your computer or Fitbit to remind you.
Use your standing desk every 45 minutes, start with 15 minutes and increase your standing time gradually until you reach a 50/50 ratio 30 minutes/30 minutes.
Avoid static prolonged standing, shift your weight, move side to side and stretch.
Standing during phone calls.
Eat lunch away from your desk.
Have standing or walking meetings.
Walk to a colleague’s desk rather than emailing.

Implementing these actions into your working day will reduce the risk of these health issues and benefit your overall health and wellbeing.

Andrew Parsons

Personal Trainer