Most people know that sitting for long periods is unhealthy, but new research from Swinburne suggests we might need to move even sooner than we thought. The paper is published in the journal npj Exercise Medicine and Health.
Dr. Christian Brakenridge from Swinburne, who studies daily habits like sitting, standing, and sleeping, led the research.
His team used special shorts with sensors to track muscle activity in people’s daily lives, collecting data from over 7,000 sitting sessions.
They discovered that sitting for more than 25 minutes at a time lowers muscle activity, which could lead to health problems.
“Our research found that we use our muscles less when sitting for a prolonged time than if sitting for a shorter time,” says Brakenridge. “But we found that breaking up sitting with exercise or walking means our muscles are more active during sitting.”
Brakenridge explains that when our muscles are less active, blood flow and blood sugar uptake can drop. This may raise the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
The good news is that the way you sit can actually help your health.
Some types of sitting, like driving, chatting with friends, or working at a desk, involve small muscle movements. These are less harmful than sitting still to watch a movie for a few hours.
“Even small movements during sitting have been linked to better health outcomes, like lower BMI, waist circumference and cardiovascular disease risk.”
Brakenridge says that taking breaks from sitting is an easy way to reduce its negative effects.
“Consider a total daily sitting duration of 10 hours,” he explains. “Breaking this up with an activity every 25 minutes could result in approximately 1.5 hours of increased muscle activity during sitting time. This would correspond to a 10% reduction in muscle inactivity during waking hours, which our previous research has shown is associated with better health outcomes.”
“As we increasingly spend time at screens, particularly when working a sedentary job, it’s more important than ever to schedule movement to break up sitting.
“Tiny changes like having a small glass of water so you get up to refill it often can make a drastic impact on your daily routine.”