Stand up, live forever

You're reading this sitting down, aren't you? Hope you live long enough to make it to the end. Sitting is one of the worst things we can do for our health. I've written about this before, but here's more:

A new study has found that it is not just the length of time people spend sitting down that can make a difference, but also the number of breaks that they take while sitting at their desk or on their sofa. Plenty of breaks, even if they are as little as one minute, seem to be good for people’s hearts and their waistlines.

The study found that prolonged periods of sedentary time, even in people who also spent some time in moderate-to-vigorous exercise, were associated with worse indicators of cardio-metabolic function and inflammation, such as larger waist circumferences, lower levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol, higher levels of C-reactive protein (an important marker of inflammation) and triglycerides (blood fats). 

Oh man, that's bad.

However, the study also found that, even in people who spent a long time sitting down, the more breaks they took during this time, the smaller their waists and the lower the levels of C-reactive protein.

Whew! That's good.

“Our research showed that even small changes, which could be as little as standing up for one minute, might help to lower this health risk," says Dr. Genevieve Healy, a research fellow at the School of Population Health, The University of Queensland, Australia.

She should know. Those Aussies are always jumping up to chase a kangaroo.


Here are some of her suggestions:

• Standing up to take phone calls
• Walking to see a colleague rather than phoning or emailing
• Having standing meetings or encouraging regular breaks during meetings for people to stand up
• Centralising things such as rubbish bins and printers so that you need to walk to them
• Taking the stairs instead of the lift where possible. 
• Going to a bathroom on a different level 

By "different level," does she mean metaphysically?