8/10/2019 Stints of standing.pdf

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By Janice Neumann

The evils of too much sit-ting include body aches,pains and fatigue, but anew study suggests that

30-minute stints of standing atwork may relieve aching backswithout harming productivity.

Australian ofce workers alter-nated between sitting and stand-ing every 30 minutes for a weekand felt less fatigued and less backpain and lower-leg pain than whenthey stayed seated the whole day.

Our results conrm what weexpected that introducing reg-

ular breaks across the workdayleads to improvements in fatigueand musculoskeletal symptomscompared to sitting all day, saidAlica A Thorp, a postdoctoralresearch fellow at the Baker IDIHeart and Diabetes Institute inMelbourne, Australia, who led thestudy.

Prolonged sitting has beenlinked with a variety of health

problems, but ofce workersoften have little choice about theirwork environment. Past researchhas found ofce workers spendabout 75 percent of their workday sitting in a chair, Thorpsteam writes in Occupational andEnvironmental Medicine.

The researchers set out to studyvarious effects on health includ-ing joint and muscle pain and onworkers focus and productivity oftaking standing breaks duringthe day.

For the study, 17 men and six

women were randomly assignedto one of two groups. Everyoneused an electric adjustable-heightworkstation, but one group satwhile working over the course ofan eight-hour day and the otheralternated every 30 minutes

between sitting and standing.The workers did this for ve

days, then during a second ve-daywork week, the groups switchedroles.The participants were mostlymiddle-aged, 15 were overweightand the rest were obese.

People in the sit-stand group,who adjusted the height of thetable as they stood up to work,

wore a physical activity moni-tor on their right thigh to gaugetheir sitting, standing and walk-ing times.

On day ve of each work week,everyone lled out questionnairesmeasuring their fatigue levels,musculoskeletal discomfort, feel-ings about their own productiv-ity and how well they liked theadjustable workstation.

People had an average fatiguescore of 52.7 when they sit-stoodwhile working, compared to 67.8when they sat all day. A score of66 or more was considered an ele-vated level of fatigue compared towhat a healthy person would feel.

People in the sit-stand groupalso had 32 percent fewer muscu-loskeletal symptoms in the lower

back and 14 percent fewer in theirankles and feet compared to whenthey sat all day.

Workers reported better focusand concentration while seated,

although work productivity didnot differ signicantly betweenthe two study groups. There wasalso a trend toward better pro-ductivity and less impatience andirritability in the sit-stand group,the researchers said.

The workstation was also muchmore pleasant overall for the sit-stand groups, who rated theirenjoyment of it at 81 out of 100,versus a score of 64 for the sitting-only groups.

While we didnt see a statis-tically signicant improvementin productivity, the nding thatintermittent standing across theworkday did not adversely affectworkers productivity is impor-tant, Thorp said.

Given that we observed a sig-

nicant reduction in fatigue lev-els over ve consecutive days, it ispossible that over a longer periodof time this would have translatedinto a signicant improvement inproductivity, she said.

Dorothy Dunlop, a professorof medicine at NorthwesternUniversity Feinberg School ofMedicine, said the study was awake-up call about the impor-

tance of physical activity forhealth, though too small to gaugeproductivity or concentration.

I think this is a promisingstudy which adds important evi-dence supporting the benets ofreduced sedentary behavior, saidDunlop, who wasnt involved in theresearch. To my knowledge, itsthe rst study showing well-doc-umented reductions in sedentary

behavior are clearly tied to betteroutcomes, she said.

The Holy Grail will be nd-ing interventions that can besustained over a long period oftime and produce good long-termoutcomes . . . but this is a strongstarting point, said Dunlop, whostudies physical activity as a wayto prevent disability in olderadults.

I think the evidence were

starting to accumulate showsstanding is more benecial thansitting and moving is more bene-cial than standing, said Dunlop.We want people to get up andmove.

To get moving in an ofce job,Dunlop suggested also walkingover to talk to colleagues ratherthan emailing, taking stairsinstead of elevators or standing

during a phone call or meeting.Another small study of thepsychology of work environmentsrecently found that productiv-ity may be enhanced in meetingswhere everyone is standing.

The message for sedentaryworkers should be to alternateregularly between sitting andstanding across the work day forhealth, Thorp said.

SOURC E: bit . ly/1lWS4OyOccupational and Environmental

Medicine, online August 28, 2014.Reuters

Stints of standingwhile working mayreduce back pain