We already knew that spending a lot of time sitting, what some experts have called the ‘chair effect’, is very harmful to our health. In fact, an investigation in which the San Jorge de Zaragoza University participated came to the conclusion that it could even cause a significant number of deaths: around 4% of deaths in the world. And it is that more than 60% of people spend more than three hours a day sitting ; a figure that rises to 4.7 hours in the case of adults.
Studies have shown that doing short five-minute periods of physical exercise every hour – which may consist of simply walking – improves blood circulation dramatically, helping to prevent cardiovascular problems.
And now, new research, carried out by scientists from the University of Granada (UGR) and published in the journal PLOS ONE , takes a step forward in this regard by reaching the conclusion that spending more time on our feet allows us to increase the energy expenditure and thus avoid negative health problems derived from sedentary lifestyle . Likewise, this study specifies that, for every six hours that we stand, we burn 45 kilocalories.
From a practical point of view, these conclusions would find their application in the fight against sedentary lifestyle with the implementation of height-adjustable tables so that people could work both standing up and sitting down . This type of furniture is already quite common in offices in the Nordic countries.
Fight obesity and type 2 diabetes
The main author of the article, Francisco José Amaro-Gahete, PhD student of the Biomedicine program of the International Graduate School of the UGR and member of the Department of Physiology of the UGR, explains that “Spaniards spend between 8 and 10 hours sitting or lying down for the day, not counting the hours of sleep . Therefore, if we combat sedentary lifestyle with small lifestyle changes such as spending more time on our feet, this could reduce the risk of developing diseases such as obesity or type 2 diabetes ”.
The UGR researchers classified a total of 53 young adults into two groups, ” energy savers” and “wasters”, according to the energy expenditure they carried out if they were sitting / lying down or if they remained standing . The former were those who consumed very little energy when carrying out their activities, so that the difference between sitting / lying down or, conversely, standing was practically nil. The change was much more noticeable in the “wasters”, who burned around 10% more energy when instead of sitting or lying down they remained standing.
The question that arises is obvious: what causes a person to expend more or less energy? Researchers are trying to answer this question, related to, for example, why some individuals lose weight very easily and others, on the other hand, find it much more difficult to lose height. Amaro-Gahete points out one of the factors that affect the most: “People with more muscle mass expend more energy than people with less muscle mass.”
Given these results, the authors of this research recommend spending more time standing in the office to try to increase energy expenditure and thus avoid its storage in the form of fat. And Jonatan Ruiz, another of the authors of this article, emphasizes that it is very important to change your position often. “If a person gets up, takes ten steps and sits down again, it seems that the effects of sedentary lifestyle would be greatly reduced. Therefore, we must educate our children and young people as well as teachers from school about the importance of avoiding spending long periods of time sitting to considerably reduce the negative consequences of sedentary lifestyle such as overweight and obesity or the risk of developing diseases. cardiovascular ”, he emphasizes.
