Sitting all day is bad for your health, but there is an alternative

If your work or studies require you to spend many hours sitting, there is a way to reduce the harmful effects this has on your health: take a gentle walk (brief and leisurely) of five minutes every half hour. This is the main finding of a new study that my colleagues and I published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

To do this, we asked 11 healthy middle-aged and older adults to sit in our lab for eight hours – a standard workday – over the course of five days. On one of those days, participants remained seated for the entire eight hours, with only brief bathroom breaks. The rest of the days, we try different strategies to interrupt the time a person spends sitting with walks. For example, one day, participants walked for one minute every half hour. Another day they walked five minutes every hour.

Our goal was to find the shortest walking duration possible to counteract the harmful health effects of sitting. To do this, during the day we measure changes in blood sugar levels and blood pressure, two important risk factors for heart disease.

We discovered that walking slowly for five minutes every half hour was the only strategy that substantially reduced blood sugar levels compared to sitting all day. Specifically, five-minute walks every half hour reduced the blood sugar spike after eating by almost 60%.

Blood pressure drops between four and five points
This strategy also lowered blood pressure by four to five points compared to sitting all day. Likewise, shorter, less frequent walks improved blood pressure. Even a one-minute walk every hour reduced blood pressure by five points.

In addition to the physical health benefits, walking breaks were also beneficial for mental health. During the study, we asked participants to evaluate their mental state using a questionnaire. We found that, compared to sitting all day, a five-minute walk every half hour reduced feelings of fatigue, put participants in a better mood, and helped them feel more energetic. We also found that walking once every hour was enough to improve mood and reduce feelings of fatigue.

Why it is important to move
People who sit for hours develop chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, dementia and various types of cancer at a much faster rate than people who move frequently throughout the day. A sedentary lifestyle also increases the risk of premature death. The problem is that simply exercising daily may not reverse the harmful health effects of sitting.

Due to technological advances, in recent decades the amount of time that adults in industrialized countries spend sitting has been constantly increasing. Many adults today spend most of the day sitting. This problem has only gotten worse since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The trend toward teleworking has meant that people are now less willing to leave the house. Hence the need for strategies to combat a public health problem of the XNUMXst century that is increasing.

Movement yes, but how often?
Current guidelines recommend that adults “sit less and move more.” But these recommendations do not offer specific advice or strategies on the frequency and timing of movements.

Our work offers a simple and affordable strategy: take a gentle five-minute walk every half hour. If you have a job or lifestyle where you have to sit for long periods, this one behavior change could reduce the health risks of spending so many hours in your chair.

Our study also provides clear guidance for employers to promote a healthier workplace. Although it may seem counterintuitive, taking regular walk breaks can help workers be more productive than working non-stop.

In terms of intensity, our study mainly focused on taking regular breaks for slow walking. We do not know if some of the walking strategies – for example, one-minute walks every hour – would have provided health benefits from moving at a forced pace.

An alternative for truck and bus drivers
We are currently testing over 25 different strategies to counteract the harmful health effects of prolonged sitting. Many adults have jobs where they simply can't walk every half hour, such as driving trucks, buses, or taxis.

Finding alternative strategies that produce comparable results can ultimately allow people to choose the strategy that best suits them and their lifestyle.

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Source: The Conversation. Authorship:

Keith Diaz
Associate Professor of Behavioral Medicine, Columbia University

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