Standing has become so important nowadays, that maybe all you have to do is stand, right? As long as you reduce sitting, could your new desk be the replacement for your gym?
Probably not, according to a new study.
Researchers in the Netherlands found 61 men and women, all of whom did not exercise. And what they had them do was pretty interesting, to say the least. According to this article:
…the researchers had each volunteer complete three distinct, four-day sessions of living calculatedly exaggerated lifestyles.
During one, the men and women sat for 14 hours a day, their chair time interrupted only by bathroom breaks.
During another of the four-day sessions, they substituted one hour of their sitting time with exercise, pedaling a stationary bicycle at a moderate pace for an hour. The other 13 hours, they were back in a chair.
Finally, for the third of the sessions, they sat for about eight hours a day but spent the other five or six hours of their waking time standing or strolling about at a casual, meandering pace.
Pretty crazy, right? And the results were also pretty nuts.
After constantly sitting, the group saw a spike in their insulin resistance and cholesterol and an increased risk of cardiovascular problems only after four days.
And when they went through the other two rounds, exercise helped them in some areas, but not in others… but those areas were helped by sitting. In other words, the people had to both exercise and stand to get back to normal.
So we’re sorry, but even if the study was small, it looks like both standing and exercise work together to make you healthier. Doing one of them is better than nothing, but if you are really concerned with leading a healthier life, then get off that couch, hit the gym and when you come home limit your couch time, no matter how comfy it may be.
-Shane M.
