Why standing up can be good for your body, your metabolism, and your mood

We’re spending more time sitting down than ever before—and our sedentary lives are having a big impact on our long-term health.

But did you know that just getting up from your chair and spending time standing can help lower your blood sugar levels, increase your heart rate, burn more calories, and reduce your cardiometabolic risk?

It can even improve your psychological well-being.

And if you want to incorporate some moves into this habit, so much the better.

Next, you’ll understand how the astronaut experience in space reinforces the importance of gravity on our bodies—and how standing up helps keep our bones and muscles strong.

health consequences

Sitting for extended periods of time, without interruption, is a reality for many people—especially in some professions.

“We know that most people spend between 70% and 80% of their time awake sitting, and if you look back at the 1950s, that’s probably twice as much. [da frequência daquela época]”says John Buckley, professor of applied exercise science at the University Center Shrewsbury, UK.

But the price for health can be high.

“In the UK, many of us spend ten hours a day or more sitting down, and unfortunately this is linked to very unpleasant health problems, including an increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and even death from all causes. [de óbito]”explains British physician and journalist Michael Mosley.

A 2017 study showed that women who spent ten hours a day or more sitting down had shorter telomeres (a kind of cap at the end of each strand of DNA that protect the chromosomes), which is an indicator of greater cell aging.

Bus drivers provided the first evidence of the correlation between sitting and heart health. A study in the 1950s in the UK found they were twice as likely to have a heart attack as bus conductors.

The main difference is that drivers spend 90% of their shifts sitting, while toll collectors in Great Britain had to walk up and down the (double-decker) vehicle, remaining upright for long periods of the day.

Standing up, in fact, is not an option if you are a bus driver. But if your job allows it, this habit can really make a difference.

In a recent randomized controlled trial, 146 employees of the NHS (UK public health service) were divided into two groups: one of them received height-adjustable desks that allowed them to work standing up for part of the day, while the other continued to work normally.

Over 12 months, those who used the desks to work standing up reported being less anxious, less tired, and more involved with their work.

Mosley says he participated a few years ago in a study in which office workers were told to spend at least three more hours a day on their feet for a week.

“We found that just standing up increased your heart rate, so much so that one of the researchers calculated that if you did this for a year, you would burn the same calories as if you ran about 10 marathons,” says the doctor.

“And when [os participantes do estudo] were standing, the blood sugar level dropped much faster than when they were sitting.”

The explanation

But why spend a lot of time sitting down?

“It just slows down our metabolism, there’s a complete lack of stimulation anywhere in the body, whether it’s our bones or our circulation or our metabolism controlling our blood sugar…it just drops to a resting level.”

“Like a hunter-gatherer machine, we’re designed to be on the move most of the day and then sit for periods of time to eat, recover, and then sleep,” explains Buckley.

Also, the force of gravity plays an important role.

“One of the best ways to see this is in studies where people took prolonged rest and lost bone density, had reduced circulation, simply by not standing up and allowing the force of gravity to act on the body, which is a small force. , but constant. And, in fact, sitting is not far from being in bed.”

A lesson we can learn from astronauts.

Despite being in top physical shape when they reach space and spending two hours a day doing high-intensity exercise on the space station, they return to Earth with loss of bone density, aerobic fitness, and muscle strength due to weightlessness.

“They get three to four times more exercise than the average person on Earth, and yet they come back to Earth with a loss of fitness, loss of lung function, loss of bone density.”

“This shows that the gradual pull of gravity on our bodies seems to be working lightly all the time. So just standing up allows gravity to do its work on our bodies,” explains Buckley.

Can I compensate with physical activity?

A lot of people think it’s okay to spend a lot of time sitting down, as long as they have an active life outside of working hours. But this is not always the case.

New evidence suggests that unless you get at least 40 minutes of moderate strenuous exercise a day, you can’t reverse the damage done by sitting for an extended period of time.

And, to top it off, this bad habit can also diminish the benefits of physical activity.

Not to mention that there is a risk of you being more sedentary than you think.

“People tend to underreport their sitting time by a factor of between 80% and 100%, then almost twice as much. We seem to be more sedentary than we say we are, and less active than we say we are,” says Buckley.

How to reduce sitting time

Just in case, you just need to cut down on the time you spend sitting, and stay upright throughout the day as much as you can.

A tip is to get up from the couch or chair for a few minutes at least two or three times every hour.

Another way to incorporate this habit into our routine is to answer the cell phone while standing. When we do that, the tendency is for us to walk while we talk — which represents an additional health benefit.