More people are becoming couch potatoes, and desk jobs only make things worse. In Europe, at least 50% of the workforce spend as much as 6hours of waking time sitting, a form of sedentary lifestyle. Most probably, the same is happening in many developed countries.
A new study published in European Heart Journal provides an alternative to combat "doing nothing." It involves simply standing for about 2 hours.
The objective of the study is to understand the relationship between every small activity such as standing, sitting, and stepping and overall health of a person. For the study, they had almost 800 men and women as participants. Aside from having their blood samples drawn and weight and height measured, they also received trackers that helped monitor their movement, including the time they spent doing every activity.
After the experiment, information from the trackers was then inputted in software, which then compared it to blood and weight results. Based on the model, standing for about 2 hours a day could already help reduce glucose and triglyceride levels including cholesterol by 2% and 11% respectively.
More movement, of course, led to better health outcomes. Stepping, for instance, can decrease body mass index by as much as 11%. Further, it also tightened the waist by almost 8 centimeters. Waist circumference is considered a good measure for determining central obesity, which is linked to metabolic syndromes, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
In a report by AFP, Dr. Francisco-Lopez Jimenez, who works in Minnesota's Mayo College of Medicine, says that a person can further boost his or health by walking for about 2 hours, standing for at least 4 hours, and doing other movements like attending to chores in the remaining hour. Overall, a person will burn higher calories than an hour's worth of jogging. Dr. Jimenez wrote the editorial published along with the study.