Standing Up Is an Easy Way to Improve Your Health
You exercise, eat well and don’t smoke, but if you think that’s all it takes to be healthy, think again.
New research says the time many of us spend in office chairs could be undoing all that hard work.
Studies by the British Journal of Sports Medicine and Centre of Inflammation Metabolism in Copenhagen indicate sitting for eight hours at a time could be as bad for us as smoking or abusing alcohol.
Dr. Anup Kanodia of the Wexner Medical Center says that since standing up burns 50 percent more calories, being on our feet more would go a long way toward making us healthier.
In fact, his workplace takes the whole thing so seriously that it’s ditched all its chairs and conference tables. That may sound crazy, but if you spend a lot of your day locked in pointless meetings, there’s another upside: Dr. Kanodia says meetings at Wexner now only last about half as long as they used to.
“Not everyone should have a desk and a chair,” he added. “We should talk about health-chair reform — not health-care reform.”