'Sitting is the new smoking!'
This is the alarming phrase seen in the media recently. So is sitting really so bad for you? And is it really reasonable to compare its risks with something like smoking?
Surprisingly, the recent research does support there being significant risks associated with sedentary behaviour, where sedentary behaviour basically means spending long periods sitting during the day. The risks include musculoskeletal discomfort, metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality (or “premature death”, to use another alarming phrase from the media).
Worryingly, recent evidence also suggests that these health risks are independent of whether you do regular physical exercise. Even if you run three times a week and go to the gym regularly it appears you may still have an increased health risk if you’re sitting most of the day. This has significant implications for organisations and office workers. It is important that this problem is understood and that there is clarity around ways to manage the risk.
This paper summarizes the current research on the health risks related to sitting, based upon an extensive literature review of the published and peer-reviewed research in this area.
View full white paper to put aside the hype and read the facts on sitting.
Refer to second paper 'Are sit stand workstations worth the investment?' research on how best to address this risk and the effectiveness of different interventions that can be considered in a workplace, such as the use of sit stand desks.\