We are used to getting up in the morning, sip quickly from our cup of coffee, maybe have a cigarette or two, check out the news and rush to the office only to stand quietly, glued to our desks for long hours. According to a new study, standing at the office doesn’t exactly help our health. As experts note, standing is the way of the future. It seems that standing improves our blood sugar, fats in the blood and lowers cholesterol levels.
Long walks and extended hours of standing can lower our body mass index, make us more resilient in front of stress conditions and keep our body position steady. The advantages of standing rather than sitting at the workplace were outlined by a recent research which involved 782 participants between the ages of 36 and 80. The study subjects took part in the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study and were given activity monitors. With the help of these devices, each participant had tracked down how long he spent sleeping, sitting or lying down, standing and stepping.
After giving blood samples and measurement of their blood pressure, weight, height and waist circumference, subjects each wore an activity monitor on their thigh for 24 hours a day over a week’s period. After that, researchers used a statistical technique also known as isotemporal analysis, in order to estimate the potential impact on health of reallocating time from sitting to standing or stepping.
The conclusions were surprising. Findings revealed that replacing two hours a day of sitting with stepping, is related to 11% lower average BMI and a 7,5 smaller average of waist circumference.
So, office workers all over the world, choose to stand up for your health and improve everything which can be improved in order to better manage your general state of wellbeing. Extra standing is also associated with higher average levels of good cholesterol and a 6% lower average total cholesterol ratio, which indicates an improvement in the total amount of HDL cholesterol, in relation to “bad” LDL cholesterol.
It is now clear that standing rather than sitting at your desk improves your health so get over your laziness and let your feet hold the weight of your body, in order to have all those inner processes working properly.
However, not all sitting is bad, but incorporating alternatives to sitting whenever that is possible, could offer some great benefits. The expert’s message to all the office workers out there is to “stand up, sit less, move more”.
Image Source: thewirecutter.com
