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Moving for your mind

Latest evidence

We’ve all heard that moving is good for our bodies and that the more we do it, the better. Being active not only supports circulatory, muscular and skeletal system health, helping to make us fitter and stronger, it also has the power to reduce the likelihood of some cancers developing. So, what about our minds? What happens to our mental wellbeing when we are physically active? It turns out, exercise can play a key role in reducing the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Even for moderate to severe cases of depression or for those experiencing chronic health or neurological conditions, where the risk of developing depression is greater. Exercise can also help with improving our sleep quality, which can be impacted by depression and anxiety. And whilst engaging in regular physical activity in leisure time not only helps to reduce symptoms of depression in adults, it may even play a role in preventing depression from developing. So, how much physical activity is ‘enough’? And can we count the house-work? The Australian Government recommends that the average adult should aim for 2.5 to 5 hours of moderate intensity physical activity each week or 1.25 to 2.5 hours of vigorous intensity…

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Sedentary Behaviour and Sleep Quality

Latest evidence

High-quality sleep is an important factor in sustaining health and improving well-being. Previous evidence has demonstrated the positive associations between increased physical activity and reduced sedentary behaviour (SB) with sleep quality. In a recent study published in Scientific Reports in January 2023, researchers in Japan aimed to explore the relationship between sedentary behaviour (SB), light-intensity physical activity (LPA), moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sleep quality in middle-aged adults. The study used an isotemporal substitution approach to examine the relationship between physical activity and sleep quality. This approach involves replacing one type of activity with another while keeping the total amount of time spent active the same. The participants were middle-aged adults who wore accelerometers to objectively measure their daily time spent in sedentary behaviour, light physical activity (LPA), and MVPA. They also completed self-reported questionnaires to assess their rest by sleep and sleep quality. The results of the study showed that each 60-minute unit of sedentary time or LPA replaced with MVPA was associated with improved rest by sleep in women. However, there were no significant associations found between physical activity levels and sleep measures in men across all three models. The study highlights the importance of considering substitutional relationships…

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The importance of data

The Evidence

As researchers, we like data. Data helps us to understand questions such as: is our program working? How is it working? Who is working for? Are we reaching the right people? Are champions running the program as we intended? Are there any barriers or facilitators to implementation? How can we improve? Good data is essential for building the evidence base around supporting desk workers to sit less and move more. We are currently deep in the process of cleaning, coding and preparing to analyse the data from the implementation trial of BeUpstanding and thought this might be a good opportunity to discuss the importance of data. So, how do we decide what data to collect?  The type of data depends on the research question we are trying to address. In BeUpstanding, we are trying to address a lot of research questions, so we are collecting lots of different types of data. For those of you who have taken part in the program, you may have completed surveys. Surveys are a very common data collection method as you can easily collect large amounts of data and — if you are asking numeric questions — the data can be relatively easily analysed.…

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A Menu of Strategies to Reduce Sitting and Promote Activity

Latest evidence

It has been well established that high levels of sitting can negatively impact on health and wellbeing, including increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. Workplace sitting time has been recognised as an emergent occupational health and safety risk, with research now dedicated to finding effective, feasible and cost-effective strategies to reduce sitting time and promote activity. To date, only two studies (Brakenridge et al. 2018; Stephens et al., 2018), have evaluated sitting-reduction strategy use in workplace interventions and the effectiveness of strategy selection on behaviour change outcomes.  Both these studies are authored by members of the BeUpstanding team: Dr Charlotte Brakenridge and Dr Samantha Stephens. What were these studies about? These two studies evaluated what strategies workers chose during the intervention, and whether these strategies led to reductions in sitting time and/or increases in activity. Dr Brakenridge worked collaboratively with a workplace champion at one large organisation to understand the impact of organisational support, wearable technology, as well as other behaviour change strategies, on workplace sitting and activity time. Within this study, the workplace champion delivered the intervention and provided support to promote the strategies, specifically: walking meetings; standing in meetings and using the stairs instead of…

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New resources to support physical activity

Key resources

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion have released a new set of resources to help support everyone to be more active. As detailed on their website, the resources are part of the Move Your Way® campaign which was developed in 2018 to share the key recommendations from the second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. The resources include videos, fact sheets and an interactive activity planner tool and are written for consumers. They highlight simple steps and actionable tips for getting active, with the resources available in both English and Spanish. Resources are available for: Adults Older adults Pregnant and postpartum people Parents Check them out via this link. Images from the campaign are used in this blog article.

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Can we transfer what works in the office to the home work environment?

Latest evidence

COVID-19 has brought about massive shifts in working practices resulting in many employees now working at home/remote working at least some days of the week. While there have now been a number of studies addressing prolonged sitting at the workplace, how these strategies translate to the home work environment is less well understood.  An article titled ‘What works to reduce sedentary behavior in the office, and could these intervention components transfer to the home working environment?: A rapid review and transferability appraisal’ was recently published in Frontiers in sports and active living to help understand this issue. The aim of the review was to build on existing evidence to identify what works to reduce sedentary behaviour in an office environment, and consider whether these could be transferrable to support employees working at home. The results of a systematic search of databases CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, PsycInfo, CINHAL, and SportDiscus from 10 August 2017 to 6 September 2021 were added to the references included in a 2018 Cochrane review of office based sedentary interventions. Informed by the Behavior Change Wheel, the most commonly used intervention functions and behavior change techniques were identified from the extracted data. Finally, a sample of common intervention strategies were…

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Standing desks alongside other measures cut office workers’ sitting time by an hour a day

Latest evidence

Using a standing desk alongside a package of other measures to encourage office workers to sit less and move more, reduced sitting time by about an hour a day over one year, finds a trial published in The BMJ. These measures were also linked to small (though not clinically meaningful) improvements in stress, wellbeing, and energy levels at work. BeUpstanding team members Professors Genevieve Healy and David Dunstan were part of the research team that was led by A/Prof Charlotte Edwardson from The University of Leicester in the UK. What was the study about? The randomised controlled trial was evaluating the impact of the Smart Work and Life intervention with and without a sit-stand workstation, compared to a comparison group. The Smart Work and Life intervention is designed to support desk-based workers to sit less and move more, both in the workplace and at home. The trial involved 756 office workers from two councils in Leicester, three in Greater Manchester, and one in Liverpool. Similar to BeUpstanding, the Smart Work and Life (SWAL) intervention uses workplace champions to deliver the intervention. Those in the intervention group were given a range of resources to help them reduce their sitting time, and highlight…

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How your input is helping build BeUpstanding

BeUpstanding Stories

The BeUpstanding program is based on over a decade of research evidence into what works to help desk workers to sit less and move more. Throughout the program we have worked with multiple stakeholders, including current and potential users of the toolkit, employees, managers, and policy and practice partners, to continue to improve the program. We recently published a scientific article describing this user centred design process and how it was used to adapt the program to be ready for the national implementation trial. The article showcases the multiple people and multiple disciplines involved in developing and implementing a workplace health promotion program like BeUpstanding, including content experts, design thinking and interaction design, business and product development, software development, implementation science. The article also describes the multiple ways in which data were collected to inform the iterative adaptions, including through deep dive interviews, surveys, toolkit analytics, and ad hoc communication and feedback. The BeUpstanding Journey Map was developed to help users understand what was involved in the BeUpstanding program.  As we wrap up the national implementation trial, we are busily applying the user centred design approach to build the next iteration of BeUpstanding. This approach ensures that the program meets…

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Staying physically active during self-quarantine – guidance from WHO

Key resources

With COVID-19 cases still high and influenza cases rapidly escalating, we are continuing to spend substantial amounts of time confined to home. The WHO recently released guidance on why and how to stay physically active during self-quarantine. The article, which is available here, has been reproduced below. Although written for the European region, the key messages are applicable to our Australian context. Stay Physically Active During Self-Quarantine Warning: This guidance is intended for people in self-quarantine without any symptoms or diagnosis of acute respiratory illness. It should not replace medical guidance in case of any health condition. As new COVID-19 cases continue to emerge in the WHO European Region, many healthy individuals are being requested to stay at home in self-quarantine. In some countries, fitness centres and other locations where individuals are normally active, will remain temporarily closed. Staying at home for prolonged periods of time can pose a significant challenge for remaining physically active. Sedentary behaviour and low levels of physical activity can have negative effects on the health, well-being and quality of life of individuals. Self-quarantine can also cause additional stress and challenge the mental health of citizens. Physical activity and relaxation techniques can be valuable tools to…

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Simple activities to be active at your desk – Part 3

Bite size facts

Desk-based workers can spend a lot of time at their desk sitting. If you are a regular follow of this blog, you will know that high levels of sitting time can have several detrimental impacts on health and wellbeing, including on cognitive function, risk of diabetes, physical function and quality of life. Prolonged sitting – that is, sitting for a long time without taking a break – is emerging as particularly harmful, which is why we promote regular breaks from sitting at BeUpstanding. Indeed, a 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis by Loh and colleagues highlighted the beneficial effects of having regular physical activity breaks on blood sugar, insulin, and triacylglycerol measures. Their article concluded that taking short breaks from prolonged sitting results in better glycemic control and improved metabolic control compared to individuals who do not incorporate short physical activity breaks. One impact of too much sitting for too long is on our musculoskeletal health. Here, prolonged sitting can cause tight hip flexors and leg muscles. Vanroelen (2022) states that these imbalances are due to the shortened and lengthened muscles in your legs due to muscle weakness and tightness. These imbalances can lead to a compensatory hyperlordosis or excessive inward…

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