The price for a sedentary lifestyle is too high

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

How much should we sit and how much should we stand during the working day? Many scientists are trying to answer this question, since a sedentary lifestyle today is a ubiquitous phenomenon that leads to serious health problems.

Lack of physical activity or complete lack of it, including sitting in one place for long periods of time, increases the risk of developing dozens of chronic diseases - from cancer and diabetes to cardiovascular diseases and non-alcoholic liver diseases. Ergonomics experts warn: you should not stand too long either, as this negatively affects health, varicose veins, pain in the legs and back, and diseases of the carotid arteries may appear.

The way out is to change the types of activity throughout the day. Sitting all day and standing all day are equally bad. Alan Hedge Professor of Ergonomics, Cornell University

Every half hour of office work, you should sit for 20 minutes, stand for eight minutes, and the remaining time to walk and stretch, says Professor Hage. If you stand for more than 10 minutes in a row, a person begins to slouch, and this leads to problems with the back and the musculoskeletal system in general.

The British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) published recommendations from an international panel of experts earlier this year. Scientists suggest mixing two to four hours of standing with light physical activity during the working day. NASA researchers also found that standing for two minutes 16 times a day is enough to keep your bones and muscles in good shape.

Other scientists have tried to answer the question of how to mitigate the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle. Of interest is a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM) on fussiness. The researchers looked at data from the British School of Girls, a large group of girls in their 20s took part in the experiment. The 13,000 participants were asked to rate on a scale of one to 10 how often they fidget and fidget. It turned out that girls who do not fidget at all have a higher risk of death than others.

You don't have to run a marathon. Perhaps you just need to make a couple of movements, and already this will give you certain advantages. Janet Cade Professor of Nutrition Epidemiology at the University of Leeds

But a number of studies show that even regular exercise cannot compensate for all the negative effects of sitting still for an entire day. A sedentary lifestyle leads to physiological changes in the body and can lead to the onset of chronic diseases such as diabetes.

When you are standing, you burn one more calories per minute than when you are sitting. This means at least 240 additional calories will be burned in four hours. Sitting still for more than an hour lowers lipoprotein lipase levels, which causes calories to be channeled to fat stores rather than muscle. Alan Hage Professor of Ergonomics, Cornell University

Scientists are also trying to figure out how to convince people to sit less. An article published in the online journal Health Psychology Review reviewed 38 different measures that can induce people to leave their chairs. What really worked:

• Educating people about the benefits of being more active.
• Changing the working environment, such as installing desks that can be used while standing or tables with adjustable heights.
• Keeping track of time spent sitting.
• Setting specific goals: what to do while you are sitting.
• Introduction of a special signal and cue, after which people must stand up.

The non-working measures were mainly aimed at getting people to devote more time to physical education. Going in for sports and sitting less are still not equivalent concepts.

Michael Jensen, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester who specializes in obesity and diabetes, tries to sit less himself and recommends it to his patients. When Jensen needs to meet one person, he looks for a place where they can walk together rather than sit. He advises patients who have children to be on their feet during the sports games of their offspring, and not just sit and look at them.