Health specialists have lengthy recognized that an excessively sedentary way of life is dangerous for you in some ways, elevating dangers of so many well being issues — diabetes, weight acquire, despair, dementia, a number of cancers — that it’s typically equated with the hazards of smoking cigarettes.
Mark Pireira, a professor of epidemiology and group well being on the University of Minnesota, doesn’t like that analogy. Evidence doesn’t truly present that sitting is simply as hazardous as smoking. But the 2 unhealthy habits do have one factor in frequent, he mentioned.
Both smoking and sitting are extremely influenced by social norms and peer stress.
People have a tendency to begin smoking as a result of their mates smoke, they usually stop if no person round them smokes. Similarly, they’re extra prone to stand up out of their chairs at work if others are doing the identical.
“It’s difficult to stand up in a meeting if everybody’s seated,” Pireira mentioned.
That discovering could possibly be useful to firms’ managers, who’ve a vested curiosity in encouraging worksite wellness packages that may decrease well being care prices and doubtlessly improve productiveness.
And it could possibly be helpful as folks steadily return to their places of work.
Working at dwelling typically doesn’t require as a lot motion as strolling to an workplace from a bus cease or parking spot, stopping by colleagues’ cubicles, visiting the restroom, going up and down stairs to completely different departments. Those who put on a step-counting machine (corresponding to a Fitbit or Apple watch) have found that they placed on many extra steps once they’re within the workplace.
In a research known as Stand & Move at Work, carried out between 2016 and 2017, Pireira partnered with Matthew Buman, director of the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, to measure the consequences of utilizing sit-stand desks (desks whose top could be adjusted to be used in both place).
They wished to see whether or not the desks and encouragement to maneuver in the course of the workweek would immediate folks to spend much less time sitting and extra time standing, and to learn how it affected their well being. The outcomes have been promising, and the research in some instances triggered habits that caught round lengthy after it was over.
The researchers chosen 24 workplaces and divided them into two teams of 12. They gave everybody activPAL units that, like Fitbits however much more correct, measure motion all through the day. Everyone in each teams was inspired to spend time shifting at work, and acquired emails with ideas.
But one of many two teams additionally acquired free sit-stand desks, courtesy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
After a yr, the researchers met with folks with the adjustable desks and located they have been spending about an hour a day standing. Although that was an enchancment, variations in well being metrics have been minimal for the group general.
But a subgroup of 95 contributors with elevated blood sugar within the prediabetes or diabetes vary noticed extra dramatic enhancements to blood sugar, blood stress and physique fats.
Meanwhile, the management group of the 12 workplaces that didn’t get new desks initiated office motion actions, together with standing in conferences.
Tribune News Service
Source: www.bostonherald.com”