In the office or at home, sitting less makes you healthier

Working standing up could be beneficial to your health. — AFP

IT'S well established that spending too long sitting down is bad for you. But at work, it's not always easy to counter being sedentary. However, adjusting your workstation could benefit your health without impacting your productivity, according to a study published in the journal IISE Transactions on Occupational Ergonomics and Human Factors.

A research team from Texas A&M University has investigated the effects of spending long hours sitting down on office workers, who sit for most of their eight-hour working days. It is therefore not uncommon for them to suffer from symptoms resulting from physical inactivity, such as daytime exhaustion, hypertension and musculoskeletal pain.