Standing
has benefits for improving your posture and therefore back pain, it
improves your circulation and therefore cardiovascular health and it
also promotes greater mobility in general.
‘If you are standing you are likely to be moving around a little bit more.
‘There’s no minimum time for standing but it’s about being mindful about not sitting down for six or seven hours a day.’
Standing-up
increases the heart rate by about ten beats a minute, which in turn
burns an extra 0.7 calories a minute, or 50 an hour.
Professor
Fenton said that by standing at their desks, office workers would be
inclined to move about more and take the stairs rather than lift.
Going up a typical flight of stairs burns two or three extra calories, which soon adds up if done many times a day.
In
October, Public Health England will issue new guidelines on exercise
which will encourage adults to become more active by making small
changes to their lifestyle.
This
will include taking short walks with the family, getting off the bus a
stop earlier and going jogging with friends or colleagues.
Around 1 in 4 adults are now considered obese and the rate has increased four fold in the last 25 years.
But some academics say this is mainly down to us becoming more inactive rather than us eating more calories.
Professor
Fenton, who formerly advised the US Government on public health, said:
‘I would recommend that people start standing an hour a day, half an
hour in the morning, half an hour in the afternoon and then build that
up gradually. Standing lunches, standing coffees.
In
2012 a study by Harvard researchers published in the Lancet medical
journal claimed that sitting down had caused more deaths globally than
tobacco.
They
calculated that 5.3 million deaths from heart disease, cancer and
diabetes, would be avoided each year if all inactive people exercised,
slightly more than the 5 million deaths annually from smoking.
Amy Thompson, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘Your heart is the most important muscle in your body.
‘It
doesn’t matter how you get your heart pumping, whether it’s taking
regular walks or skipping the lift for the stairs, it can all make a big
difference to your health.’ FULL STORY
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