How Many Hours a Day Should You Spend on Your Feet?
New research on standing points to a minimum daily goal
London’s bright-red double-decker buses are one of the city’s hallmarks. Seventy years ago, those buses and their operators were at the center of one of the first occupational studies to examine the role of sitting on health.
Back then, each bus had a driver and a conductor. For a 1954 study, researchers at London’s transportation department examined the heart-disease incidence among these and other transit workers.
The researchers found that conductors, who spent most of the day on their feet collecting fares, were about 25% less likely than the seated drivers to develop heart disease. The conductors also tended to experience milder forms of heart trouble.
By today’s standards, that study was riddled with methodological flaws. But it was one of the first papers to suggest that a sedentary occupation could lead to health problems. These days, many more people spend the workday behind a desk, and the risks of immobility are now far better mapped.
Researchers have found that spending most of your day seated increases your risk for heart disease, death, some cancers, and metabolic diseases such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes. If you have a chronic pain condition —…
