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The Health Risks of Prolonged Occupational Sitting and the Benefits of Physical Activity

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The 2020 World Health Organisation guidelines on physical activity highlighted the importance of reducing sedentary behaviour due to its negative health effects. However, the specific impact of prolonged sitting at work, particularly in the context of varying levels of physical activity, has not been fully explored. A recent prospective cohort study in Taiwan, published earlier this year in JAMA Network Open sheds light on this issue, focusing on the health outcomes associated with occupational sitting among apparently healthy individuals. The study followed 481,688 participants over an average period of 12.85 years, collecting data on their occupational sitting habits, leisure-time physical activity (LTPA), lifestyle choices, and metabolic health. The findings revealed that individuals who predominantly sat at work had a 16% higher risk of all-cause mortality, and a 34% higher risk of cardiovascular disease mortality compared to those who predominantly did not sit at work. These increased risks persisted even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, education, smoking, drinking, and body mass index. To counteract the negative effects of prolonged sitting, the study suggests that individuals who sit most of the day at work should aim to add 15 to 30 minutes of physical activity per day. This additional…

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Americans Are Sitting at Record Rates. Here’s Why That’s So Dangerous

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The following article was written by Alice Park and was originally published by Time on April 23, 2019. Every day, we modern humans stay comfortably seated on our behinds for hours at a time: binge watching shows on Netflix, pecking away on keyboards at work, scrolling through social media feeds. But do people really sit more than they used to? That’s what Yin Cao and an international group of colleagues wanted to find out in their latest study published in JAMA. While studies on sitting behavior in specific groups of people — such as children or working adults with desk jobs — have recorded how sedentary people are, there is little data on how drastically sitting habits have changed over time. “We don’t know how these patterns have or have not changed in the past 15 years,” says Cao, as assistant professor in public health sciences at the Washington University School of Medicine. The researchers used data collected from 2001 to 2016 by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which asked a representative sample of Americans ages five and older how many hours they spent watching TV or videos daily in the past month, and how many hours they spent…

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What is sedentary behaviour and how common is it?

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Sedentary behaviour refers to any waking activity characterised by low energy expenditure and a sitting or reclining posture. Common sedentary behaviours include sitting while watching television, driving a car or working at your computer. In Australian office workplaces, sitting behaviour is so common that over three-quarters of the work day is spent sitting, with much of this sitting time accrued in long, unbroken bouts of 30 minutes or more.Further, workplace sitting is the largest contributor to an office worker’s overall daily sitting time. We at BeUpstanding™ can see the potential in reducing sitting in Australian workplaces to improve health outcomes, as well as overall wellbeing, for a healthier, happier workforce.

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Feeling foggy? It might be time to get up…

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The following article was published in The Conversation on July 27th, 2017. Could too much sitting be bad for our brains? Sitting affects our glucose levels, which affects our brain. Unsplash/Andrew Branch, CC BY-SA Michael Wheeler, University of Western Australia; Daniel Green, University of Western Australia; David Dunstan, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, and Paul Gardiner, The University of Queensland In many aspects of life where we need to use our brain power, we also tend to sit down: at school, at work, sitting exams or concentrating on a crossword. In a new paper, we explore how prolonged sitting may affect the brain’s fuel supply and have a negative impact on brain health. The brain is a glucose hungry organ. It weighs about 2% of body mass but demands about 20% of our resting energy requirements, which is mostly in the form of glucose, the primary brain fuel. If this energy supply is disrupted it can impair and even damage brain cells. Therefore, the availability of glucose to brain cells may have implications for brain health. Exposure of the brain to both high glucose levels and low glucose levels can increase the risk of developing dementia. Also, switching between a…

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