By Janice Neumann

Reuters Health

The evils of a lot sitting include body aches, pains and fatigue, but new research signifies that 30-minute stints of waiting on work may relieve aching backs without harming productivity.

Australian workers in offices alternated between sitting and standing every Around 30 minutes for any week and felt less fatigued and less back problems and lower-leg pain than whenever they stayed seated the whole day long.

\”Our results confirm that which we expected – that introducing regular breaks throughout the workday brings about improvements in fatigue and musculoskeletal symptoms in comparison to sitting all day,\” said?Alica A. Thorp, a postdoctoral research fellow at the?Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne,?Australia, who led the analysis.

Prolonged sitting has long been related to a number of medical problems, but office workers will often have little choice with regards to their workplace. Past reports have found workers in offices spend about 75 percent within their workday in a chair, Thorp’s team writes in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The researchers began study various effects on health – including joint and muscle pain – in addition, on workers\’ focus and productivity of taking standing \”breaks\” through the day.

For the learning, 17 men and six women were randomly used on a couple of groups. Everyone used a adjustable-height workstation, just one group sat while working over an eight-hour day as well as other alternated every Thirty minutes between sitting and standing.

The workers did this for 5 days, then after a second five-day workweek, the groups switched roles.

The participants were mostly middle-aged, 15 were overweight and also the rest were obese.

People inside sit-stand group, who adjusted the height of the table when they stood as many as work, wore a physical activity monitor on their own right thigh to gauge their sitting, standing and walking times.

On day five of each one workweek, everyone filled in questionnaires measuring their fatigue levels, musculoskeletal discomfort, feelings about their own productivity and how well they liked the adjustable workstation.

People had a typical fatigue score of 52.7 when they sit-stood while working, compared to 67.8 whenever they sat non-stop. A score of 66 or over was considered an \”elevated level\” of fatigue as compared with what healthy person would feel.

People while in the sit-stand group also had 32 percent fewer musculoskeletal symptoms in the spinal area and 14 percent fewer within their ankles and feet in comparison with every time they sat non-stop.

Workers reported better concentration and focus while seated, although work productivity failed to differ significantly backward and forward study groups. There was clearly another trend toward better productivity and much less impatience and irritability inside sit-stand group, they said.

The workstation was much more pleasant overall for any sit-stand groups, who rated their enjoyment of computer at 81 beyond 100, versus a score of 64 for that sitting-only groups.

\”While we didn\’t notice a statistically significant improvement in productivity, the discovering that intermittent standing round the workday wouldn\’t adversely affect worker\’s productivity is vital,\” Thorp told Reuters Health in a email.

\”Given that any of us observed a big loss of fatigue levels over five consecutive days, you\’ll be able that a longer time of your energy this may have translated to a significant improvement in productivity,\” she said.

Dorothy Dunlop, a professor of medication at?Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said the analysis was obviously a \”wake-up call\” regarding the significance about training for health, though too small to gauge productivity or concentration.

\”I think this is the promising study which adds important evidence supporting the many benefits of reduced sedentary behavior,\” said Dunlop, who wasn\’t working in the research. \”To my knowledge, it will be the first study showing well-documented reductions in sedentary behavior are clearly stuck just using better outcomes,\” she said.

\”The Holy Grail will likely be finding interventions which might be sustained over a long period of time and convey good long-term outcomes . . . however is really a strong place to begin,\” said Dunlop, who studies exercising so as to prevent disability in older adults.

\”I think evidence we\’re starting to accumulate shows standing one is the most beneficial than sitting and moving is a bit more beneficial than standing,\” said Dunlop. \”We want website visitors to rise up and move.\”

To get moving within a office job, Dunlop suggested also walking over to talk to colleagues rather than emailing, taking stairs in lieu of elevators or standing within a phone call or meeting.

Another small study of the psychology on the job environments recently learned that productivity might be enhanced in meetings where everyone is standing (see Reuters Health story of June 20, 2014, here: http://reut.rs/1m5u0Sh).

Dunlop noted, however, that more and more work was needed before coverage change on continuous employing office jobs.

In accessory for musculoskeletal problems, the Australian study was primarily dedicated to risk factors for diabetes and coronary disease, therefore the researchers recruited only overweight and obese participants to see if their risk for those conditions was worsened to take a seat.

The study cannot say regardless of if the lumbar pain benefits include the same for normal-weight people and those with back disorders much more serious versus the mild aches the result of sitting for too long.

In general, though, Thorp said office workers must take an exercising cue from your study, but cautioned against standing for over per hour, which will also cause fatigue and musculoskeletal problems. She added that they hoped the research is needed bring about public changes to our policy in?Australia?that reduce workplace sedentary time.

\”The message for sedentary workers must be to alternate regularly between sitting and standing all over the workday for health,\” Thorp said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1lWS4Oy Occupational and Environmental Medicine, online August 28, 2014.