Exercise Can Counteract Effects of Sitting at Work

A new study found that office workers who exercise on a regular basis can fend off the health problems related to sitting for prolonged periods at work.

In an effort to examine the associations of multiple categories of physical activity and sedentary time in comparison to markers of diabetes and heart disease, a group including researchers from the University of Leicester analyzed data from the 2008 Health Survey for England to create a nationally representative sample of English adults.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED CONTENT
Yoga Improves Cognitive Function in Sedentary Seniors
Sedentary Lifestyle Twice as Deadly as Obesity
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The investigators grouped people into categories including the physically active and low sedentary “busy bees,” the physically active and high sedentary “sedentary exercisers,” the physically inactive and low sedentary “light movers,” and physically inactive and high sedentary “couch potatoes,” according to the authors.

The researchers found that being physically active may counteract the negative effects brought about by long periods of inactivity, which individuals working in offices typically experience during the workday. The researchers determined that those maintaining a physically active lifestyle outside of work demonstrate a more desirable health profile compared to those who are physically inactive and spend large amounts of “high sedentary time.”

The findings “yield a clinically important message for primary care practitioners who may be concerned about their patients in deskbound occupations and/or living habitually sedentary lifestyles,” said Kishan Bakrania, PhD, a postgraduate researcher in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Leicester, and a coauthor of the study.

Based on these findings, primary care practitioners “can deliver a simple, clear-cut message to these sets of patients, advising them to incorporate routine and regular exercise—at least 150 minutes/week—into their regimes outside work, in order to stave off chronic health diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, that are associated with high sedentary behavior,” Bakrania added. “This piece of guidance may be the prime intervention at first in such patients, particularly in individuals who may be at high-risk.”

—Mark McGraw

Reference:
Bakrania K, Edwardson CL, Bodicoat DH, et al. Associations of mutually exclusive categories of physical activity and sedentary time with markers of cardiometabolic health in English adults: a cross-sectional analysis of the Health Survey for England [published online January 12, 2016]. BMC Public Health. doi:10.1186/s12889-016-2694-9.