3 Short Walking Breaks Can Reverse Harm From 3 Hours of Sitting

An anonymous reader writes: Medical researchers have been steadily building evidence that prolonged sitting is awful for your health. One major problem is that blood can pool in the legs of a seated person, causing arteries to start losing their ability to control the rate of blood flow. A new experimental study (abstract) has discovered it's quite easy to negate these detrimental health effects: all you need to do is take a leisurely, 5-minute walk for every hour you sit. "The researchers were able to demonstrate that during a three-hour period, the flow-mediated dilation, or the expansion of the arteries as a result of increased blood flow, of the main artery in the legs was impaired by as much as 50 percent after just one hour. The study participants who walked for five minutes for each hour of sitting saw their arterial function stay the same — it did not drop throughout the three-hour period. Thosar says it is likely that the increase in muscle activity and blood flow accounts for this."

Comments

+10 health for smokers

[Anonymous Coward]

since smokers tend to smoke literally every hour and a cigarette takes 5-6 minutes to smoke.

Re:+10 health for smokers

[Anonymous Coward]

+10 for axious pacers
+10 for nervous fidgeters
+10 for furious masturbaters
+10 for immature being my captcha

Re:You should see

[BringsApples]

Seriously, hack into their computers and activate their cameras.

Would you please? That would be awesome. I'm running an older version of slackware on this PC, and can't get the camera to work.

Re:So smoking is good for you?

[mjwx]

I mean if I get up and go outside for a quick drag once an hour, that's a five minute walk right there.

Not quite sure how the drag helps, but getting changed back into your work clothes afterwards would probably count as exercise.