Standing more often has the potential of lowering a person's BMI, or body mass index, along with improving blood sugar, fats, and cholesterol levels, a new study revealed.
The study, posted on the European Health Journal website on Sunday, pointed to research involving 782 people from ages 36 to 80 involved in an Australian diabetes and obesity lifestyle program,
Reliawire.com reported.
The participants were given monitors that recorded time spent sleeping, sitting, lying down, standing, and stepping. Researchers also took blood samples and measurements from the participants over a seven-day period.
"We found that time spent standing rather than sitting was significantly associated with lower levels of blood sugar and blood fats," said study leader Dr. Genevieve Healy, senior research fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia.
"Replacing sitting time with stepping was also associated with a significant reduction in waistline and BMI," Healy continued. "While the study cannot show that less time spent sitting causes the improvements in these markers of health, the associations it reveals are consistent with what is known already about the benefits of a non-sedentary lifestyle. More work is needed to understand cause and effect."
Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, of the Mayo Clinic and Mayo College of Medicine, wrote that the study provided more information against a sedentary lifestyle.
"A person walking while at work for two hours, standing for another four hours, and performing some daily chores at home for another hour will burn more calories than jogging or running for 60 minutes," Lopez-Jimenez explained.
The discussion section of the study suggested that additional research should be done to confirm the study's findings but the results clearly warrant such additional work.
"These findings provide important preliminary evidence on the potential benefits of standing for cardio-metabolic risk biomarkers, especially improved lipid metabolism,"
stated the published study. "This has important public health implications given that standing is a common behavior, the most common alternative to sitting, and predominantly replaces sitting in some types of effective and acceptable environmental sitting-reduction interventions.
"Findings suggest that the potential benefits of sitting reduction is likely to depend on the behaviors with which sitting is replaced; this should be tested by comparing cardio-metabolic outcomes from sitting-reduction trials that achieve comparable sitting reductions by increased standing (e.g. sit-stand workstations and activity-permissive desks) vs. by increased stepping (e.g. treadmill desks)," the study's statement continued.
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