Most of us know that parking yourself in a chair all day takes a toll on your health. But is staying on your feet for hours on end any better? Getting up and moving for at least a minute every 30 minutes can offset the damage caused by too much sitting and sedentary time, as well as by any long stretch in a single fixed posture — standing included — while you work.
Does your job keep you on your feet for hours at a time — working retail as a sales clerk or cashier, or banking as a teller? If so, you could face roughly twice the odds of developing heart disease compared with someone who sits at a desk all day, according to a recent study out of Ontario, Canada. The researchers examined 7,300 working adults in the Canadian Community Health Survey. None of them had heart disease when the study began, and the team tracked the group for more than 12 years. Those whose jobs demanded prolonged standing carried double the risk of heart disease — even after accounting for age, education, marital status, body mass index and other health conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure — compared with their seated counterparts.
What explains the link? When you stay upright for hours on end, blood tends to pool in your legs, forcing your body to labor harder against gravity to push it back up to the heart. That extra effort can raise the pressure inside your veins, and over time that added strain may raise your risk of heart disease.
Together, these results suggest that standing at work is a cardiovascular risk factor that frequently goes unnoticed. Ideally, your workplace lets you shift your body position over the course of the day. The answer for people who sit too much isn’t to stand for long stretches — it’s to stay active. Simply walking for a minute every half hour should help bring your risk down. I’m Dr. Michael Hunter.
