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The Evidence

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Simple activities to be active at your desk – Part 1

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Guidelines recommend regular breaks from prolonged sitting, and at team BeUpstanding, we encourage breaks at least every 30 minutes. Here are three activities that you can do at your desk to help combat some of the impacts of prolonged sitting. Wall Sit with Calf Raise We all sit hunched over in our chairs whenever we work on a project or browse on our computer. Sometimes people tend to hunch over when eating food at a table. If you have ever seen anyone walking around with a curved lower back, or excessive lumbar lordosis, their posture may have been severely impacted from sitting hunched over at a desk all day. Wall sits help improve your posture and improve your lower body muscle endurance, while strengthening your muscles. Here are the steps to executing a wall sit with a calf raise. Place your back against the wall Squat down until your legs are at 90 degrees Raise up your toes and lower your heels back down to perform one repetition Add a weight on your legs for an extra challenge Performing this exercise allows the body to engage the abdominal muscles as you brace your core in order to keep your back…

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Sitting less and moving more for heart health

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A new article by two of the BeUpstanding academic team – Professor David Dunstan and Professor Neville Owen – highlights the importance of supporting adults to both move more and sit less for their cardiovascular health – something that the BeUpstanding team strongly endorse! The article, published in Nature Reviews Cardiology, provides a great summary of the effects of sedentary behaviour on health outcomes. As can be seen in the Table from the article, there is now strong evidence that there is a dose-response relationship of sedentary behaviour with increased risk for all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality, as well as incident cardiovascular disease. The article also summarises the potential mechanisms for these relationships, highlighting that it is likely that sedentary time acts across multiple biological systems to regulate blood pressure, vascular function, blood glucose and brain blood flow. Importantly, there is emerging evidence to suggest that regular physical activity interruptions to sitting time, such as through simple resistance activities like going up onto your toes or going for a short walk, may help to attenuate these detrimental processes. A number of key points were highlighted: Both physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease…

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Free webinar on why and how to reduce sedentary behaviour

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The International Society for Physical Activity and Health (ISPAH) has paired up with WHO to run a series of webinars based on the release of the WHO Guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. The latest one on the 4th March featured BeUpstanding principal investigator A/Prof Genevieve Healy as part of the line-up, talking about the evidence on how to reduce sedentary behaviour. Check out the video below. You can also catch the other webinars in the series at: https://www.ispah.org/resources/free-webinars/

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WHO releases 2020 Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines

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In late 2020, the World Health Organisation released their guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. The development and/or updating of guidelines follows a clear protocol to ensure that the best available evidence is used. A full summary and explanation of the guidelines can be found here. For physical activity, it is recommended that all adults should undertake 150–300 min of moderate-intensity, or 75–150 min of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or some equivalent combination of moderate-intensity and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, per week. Regular muscle-strengthening activity is also recommended. This is in line with what we have with our Australian guidelines.  The big update for the 2020 WHO Guidelines was the inclusion of sedentary behaviour for the first time. In reviewing the evidence regarding the health impact of too much sedentary behaviour, it was concluded that higher amounts of sedentary behaviour in adults are associated with detrimental effects on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality and cancer mortality and incidence of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. These are similar conclusions to what was reported for the scientific report for the US guidelines. For sedentary behaviour, the guidelines state that: Adults should limit the amount of time spent being sedentary. Replacing sedentary time…

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New report examines occupational sitting and mental health in young people

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A new report, funded by Wellcome, explores the potential health risks associated with high levels of occupational sitting and methods to reduce excessive sitting in the workplace or home working environment. Below is a summary of the report, taken from here. A full summary of the report can be found here, while a summary presentation of our key findings can be found here, and a podcast can be found here. BeUpstanding investigators David Dunstan and Genevieve Healy were co-authors on the report, which was led by Aaron Kandola. Full author list: Aaron Kandola, Jessica Rees, Brendon Stubbs, David W Dunstan, Genevieve N Healy, Joseph F Hayes Background Due to the rising prevalence of desk-based work, excessive sitting represents an emerging occupational health and safety issue. Employed adults are typically sitting for over 9 hours per day. Spending large periods of the day seated with insufficient active breaks increases the risk of several physical and mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety disorders. Allowing or facilitating excessive sitting in the workplace can affect employees’ mental health and compromise the duty of care between an employer and employee. Combatting excessive occupational sitting with regular breaks involving light activity for a couple of…

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Wherever you work, a safe and healthy workplace is for everyone

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By now we all know that the COVID-19 global pandemic has caused an unprecedented change in how and where people are working. Helping people to sit less and move more at work has been a key priority in recent years, with much of the focus being on the office workplace. The phrases ‘pre-COVID’ and ‘COVID-normal’ are thrown around a fair bit these days, but perhaps they are a fitting way to describe the shift that many desk-based workers have experienced. Even for those who have now returned to their workplaces, the ‘pre-COVID’ work environment is likely to be quite different to the ‘COVID-normal’ workplaces many are now working in. Other workers have seen a complete (perhaps long term) shift to working remotely, or a mix of both. What remains, however, is the need to ensure a safe and healthy workplace for everyone. We do not yet know the long-term impacts of these current changes to our work environment, but we do know that there is a clear need to continue to help workers to be able to sit less and move more, regardless of where they are working. The term ‘desk-based workers’ rather than ‘office workers’ is a term we often…

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New video resources available on creating healthy and safe computer work

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The Queensland Government has released a series of fantastic resources on creating healthy and safe computer work. There are six videos in the series, including: selecting and adjusting your chair, setting up your workstation, visual comfort for computer work, working from home, mobile computer work, and the video we are featuring today – how to stay active while working on the computer. Keep an eye out to see the link to BeUpstanding! All of the resources can be found here. Working on computers often involves long periods of being sedentary at your desk. When your work requires such little movement, plan movement into your day to reduce the risk of pain and chronic diseases. Exercising before or after work doesn’t protect you from these health risks if you spend most of your day sitting. Tips to get moving when you’re working on computers Position your printer, scanner, photocopier and rubbish bin away from your desk so you need to walk to them. Use your sit/stand desk to change position regularly throughout the day. Use a Bluetooth/wireless headset to allow you to stand and move during phone or video calls. Vary your work tasks so that you change your postures and…

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Tips for running Health and Well-being programs with a remote working team

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COVID-19 has upended business operations on a global scale and has forced many workplaces to rapidly transition to staff working remotely. However, with organisations adapting to change and staff experiencing the benefits of working from home, it may be the case that the shift towards telecommuting is here to stay. While the focus of organisations has been on ensuring the safety of their employees at this time, employee well-being is also becoming an area of greater significance. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), well-being is “the ability for individuals to address normal stresses, work productively, and realize their highest potential.” A wellness program should be designed to support the overall health and well-being of employees, while aiming to meet the specific needs of each individual employee. If you and your team are new to working from home, navigating this change on its own can be challenging. While your organisation may already have a wellness program or initiative in place, being able to adapt the program and make it relevant and engaging for staff working remotely can come with its own set of challenges. So how do you set you and your team up for success when it comes…

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BeUpstanding study protocol published

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Many of our work teams who have signed up for BeUpstanding are taking part in a national evaluation of the program. This evaluation is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) in partnership with our fantastic policy and practice partners. We have now published the protocol of this evaluation, and the free article is available online here. The key questions we are asking in the evaluation is: who is taking part in the program, how are the champions delivering the program, does the program work (and for whom does it not work), and how much does it cost. We are still recruiting for the trial and we are looking for desk teams from across Australia to sign up now. Importantly – you can run BeUpstanding even if your team is working from home, or has a mix of home and office. Indeed, BeUpstanding might be the perfect program to help your team stay connected while also supporting their health and wellbeing.    

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Virtual Workouts You Can Do From Home

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With social distancing regulations in place and gyms forced to close you are likely finding yourself adjusting to life indoors. But just because you may not be able to do your usual forms of exercise, it doesn’t mean you should stop altogether. Exercise not only has multiple benefits to your physical health but it is also a great stress- reliever. Continuing to maintain some sort of a routine is so important in times likes these where we can feel more stress than usual. We’ve put together a selection of online exercise platforms with on demand fitness content who provide free access to workouts you can do at home that cover a whole range of exercise styles.  You can access the content via a smartphone app, YouTube or live streams on social media and you don’t necessarily need any equipment. All you need to do is find a space and get started. The best thing is no one is watching! Just as you schedule your diary to organise your workload and meetings, you should find time to exercise. Treat exercise with the same priority as a phone call with a client. Blocking out time away from your desk means that you…

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