Shock to the Heart. And Sitting's to Blame

Ever been implored by someone to “have a heart”? It’s not a difficult request. The majority of the human population today has a standard-issue one that they got at birth. The question is how healthy that heart is. If you find yourself consistently sitting for a large part of the day, the chances that your heart is at risk are quite a bit higher than if you and your heart spend the day being more active together. Yes, it turns out that the blood-pumping buddy that’s been with you since you were first birthed does not handle the sedentary life very well.

You may be asking yourself, “What do these people mean by sedentary?” Well, I’m glad you asked. It turns out that sedentary means you don’t move much. Think sloth in a tree kind of deal. Only if you’re really hardcore, you probably didn’t make it up into the tree. So sloth on the ground, I guess, just so we have all of the bases covered. But at what point does this kind of lifestyle start to impact your ticker? It turns out that a team of researchers found this question interesting enough to do an experiment. Published in the journal, JAMA Cardiology, the team decided that they would do an experiment over eleven years to see at just what point sitting too much becomes “too much”.

The study looked for associations between sedentary time and incidences of cardiovascular disease. Basically, how long were these people sitting and did they have any heart issues. The total number of patients was 700,000. Of those 25,769 had hearts that weren’t huge fans of the time they spent sitting around.

It turns out that the cutoff maximum was around 12 hours of sitting daily. When compared with people who sat only 2.5 hours daily, those who sat for 12 hours or more on a daily basis had a 14% more likely chance of having a heart problem. This also accounted for time spent just lying around as well.

Given this data, researchers suggest that all of that sitting can be combated through the use of stand-up workstations or other office equipment that let you mix a little activity into your day. There are a few options that come to mind. Perhaps an UPLIFT Treadmill Desk or the UPLIFT Motion Stool, which activates your core as you sit? Or maybe our affordable UPLIFT 900, which allows you to break up your periods of sitting with periods of standing? Either way, if you have more questions about how you can stand up for your health, don’t hesitate to give us a call here at 1-800-531-3746.