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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."
I mean if I get up and go outside for a quick drag once an hour, that's a five minute walk right there.
I don't have any evidence that standing will help as much as walking, but I was thinking this is why we should have more standing desks at the office. By standing desks, I mean the ones that convert from sitting to standing easily and encourage people to change their body positions often during the work day.
It's not just a good idea, but it's probably something to keep your work population alert and productive!
I learned years ago to work in CD increments. As in, put on a CD, work, when the CD is over get up, pee, get coffee, and walk around a bit to get the kinks out. Repeat as needed.