What’s the one simple thing that could transform your health? No, it’s not the Ozempic jab, or an obscure berry being touted as the latest ‘superfood’, or a new app for your phone.
It’s pretty basic: you need to stand up and move about more.
The fact is, whether it’s sitting at a desk all day or glueing ourselves to the sofa watching TV for hours, our sedentary lifestyle is creating a pandemic of ill health.
Our bodies are designed to be active. Food – specifically the glucose it’s broken down into – is the fuel that drives it.
But if we sit all day, expending very little energy, the levels of glucose in our blood remain higher than they should. This, in turn, causes the chronic diseases I now see so much of in A&E – type 2 diabetes, heart attacks and cancer, affecting old and young alike.
Dr Rob Galloway says our sedentary lifestyle is creating a pandemic of ill health
Study after study has confirmed the risks of prolonged sitting. In one of the most recent, researchers in Taiwan examined data from nearly half a million people over a 20-year period and found that those who worked sitting down were 34 per cent more likely to die of a heart attack and 16 per cent more likely to die of all causes (including cancer) than those who moved around for work.
As James Levine, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in the US and a pre-eminent endocrinologist, famously said: ‘It took nature two million years to design the walking, dynamic human, and it took those humans 200 years to reverse the art of nature and cram people all day long into chairs.
Professor James Levine says it has taken humans 200 years to reverse two million years of nature’s design
‘Sitting is more dangerous than smoking and kills more people than HIV. We are sitting ourselves to death.’
While we don’t know exactly what’s going on to make sitting so dangerous, we do know that it leads to raised glucose levels – this increases insulin levels which lead to type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and also helps cancer cells divide and multiply.
But when we move, even simply standing, our muscles contract, which burns up glucose. But what if you have a desk-based job, as an estimated 40 per cent of workers in Western economies do? You might assume a standing desk would be the answer.
To go by a recent news story, maybe not. Last week, I had a call from a friend who works in HR for a premier league football team. She had been looking at getting standing desks for the admin staff but as she was about to order them, she read a news headline that changed her mind: ‘Experts issue a health warning over standing desks.’
A standing desk is helpful, but a walking treadmill at the desk may be even better as it will make you move and costs as little as £200
This much-publicised story was about a study in Australia which looked at the amount of time people were stationary, based on data from over 80,000 participants (who wore special wrist monitors) in the UK Biobank study. This is an ongoing project to identify environmental and genetic factors that lead to disease.
The study revealed that after six years, the participants’ chances of cardiovascular illness (such as stroke and heart attack) or an illness from poor circulation – such as leg ulcers and varicose veins – was directly linked to how much time they spent being stationary.
The results showed that being stationary is bad for you, sitting or standing, but sitting still is much worse than standing still: with prolonged standing there is no greater risk of stroke or heart attack, ‘just’ illness from poor circulation – no surprise, really, as we do know that standing without moving means your blood flow is not as good.
In fact, the researchers didn’t mention standing desks, that came from reports about their study, which made some incorrect assumptions that people using standing desks are completely stationary.
Those reports also missed this key fact: standing at desks replaced sitting at our desks which we know is so dangerous for our health.
The truth is, there are good medical reasons why standing – even if you don’t move about – is still healthier than sitting: it helps with posture and core muscle strength, and burns more calories as big muscle groups need to be activated to help you stand up.
You burn an extra eight calories an hour when standing, which doesn’t sound much but actually over a year of a nine-to-five job that’s an extra 13,440 calories burned off – about what you get from 77 Mars bars.
If you have a sedentary job, the best thing you can do is get a desk that can convert from sitting to standing. In addition, take regular breaks – or even better, in my view, get a walking treadmill to go underneath your desk.
This is what I now use at home – the small walking treadmill that fits under my desk cost just over £200 but is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
When I’m working from home on a non-clinical day, I typically walk 10km while in meetings, marking medical school student assignments and writing – and often carrying my five-month-old baby in a baby carrier.
The baby is walked to sleep, I burn calories and even my back pain has gone – probably because I’m keeping active.
(If you get back pain from prolonged standing, switching between standing and sitting can be the best thing to do; a sit-stand desk is the answer. But even more important is to move more.)
Standing desks are not dangerous: being stationary is. And it’s much worse to sit and be stationary than to stand and be stationary. But try to keep moving, you really don’t want to ‘sit’ yourself to death.
@drrobgalloway