Stand Up for Your Health

Today we are sharing our new Stand Up for Your Health infographic which contains practical research-based tips on how to break up your sitting time at home.

There are lots of ideas on how to get active during the current Coronavirus restrictions and this remains crucial, but less attention has been given to how to keep the amount of sitting we do in check, and this can be important for our health too. 

It can help to think about being active and reducing our sedentary time as two separate actions that we can take to address our inactivity. These days it is quite possible to be active, for example by going for a 30 minute brisk walk, and also sit for 7-8 hours with few breaks, in the same day.

Breaking up prolonged periods of sitting is good for our health, especially when our physical activity levels are low. For many of us, our usual working day involves a lot of sitting at a desk or in meetings but changes to our working routines can help us disrupt old habits and form new ones, including how much we sit and how often we take standing or movement breaks. 

The infographic gives tips ranging from setting simple reminders to having standing video conferences or creating a DIY standing desk and we hope that some of these solutions can be taken back to people's workplaces when life returns to normal.

If you struggle to reduce your sitting time, there is evidence that a high level of physical activity can protect against some of the health harms of sitting. However, this level is about 60-75 mins per day for adults - at least twice the minimum recommended level - and this is not achievable for many adults. For most people though, getting a balance of regular physical activity and breaking up their sitting time will be most realistic. 

We hope that these ideas will help people to look after themselves whilst working from home.